The Churches of Christ in the Twentieth Century: Homer Hailey's Personal Journey of Faith.

The Churches of Christ in the Twentieth Century: Homer Halley's Personal Journey of Faith. By David Edwin Harrell Jr. Religion and American Culture. (Tuscaloosa and London. University of Alabama Press, c. 2000. Pp. xx, 472. $34.95, ISBN 0-8173-1008-8.)

Although Auburn University scholar David Edwin Harrell Jr.'s work on Pentecostalism is well known, his two-volume study of the Disciples of Christ, Quest for a Christian America: A Social History of the Disciples of Christ (Nashville, Tenn.: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1966) and The Social Sources of Division in the Disciples of Christ (Athens, Ga.: Publishing Systems, 1973), is relatively obscure. His new work carries the story forward with a look at the conservative "Campbellites," known as the Churches of Christ, who have emerged as one of the largest southern religious traditions. This work begins with a brief introduction to the historical background of the Churches of Christ and of Homer Hailey, an important preacher of the tradition who lived through the controversies that Harrell narrates. A second, more interpretive section explores the major controversies of the Churches of Christ from 1920 to 1999. Harrell believes that a "wild democracy" existed for the tradition where controversy created a means for consensus around reevaluating "every belief in the light of a common-sense reading of the New Testament and by a primitivist commitment to restoring New Testament Christianity" (p. 42). Controversy also supplied the means for division, however, and Harrell traces the acrimony over pacifism, premillennialism, and institutionalism.

Harrell interacts with and often critiques the historical work of Richard Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996), Michael Casey, Saddlebags, City Streets and Cyberspace: A History of Preaching in the Churches of Christ (Abilene, Tex.: ACU Press, 1995), Douglas Foster, Will the Cycle Be Unbroken? (Abilene, Tex.: ACU Press, 1994), and Robert Hooper, A Distinct People: A History of the Churches of Christ in the Twentieth Century (West Monroe, La.: Howard Publishing, 1993). Harrell sees the institutional conflict over whether individual congregations could support extra-congregational projects--whether orphan homes or "Herald of Truth," a national television ministry--as the most important conflict of the twentieth century. The sectarian noninstitutionals, about 10 percent of the entire Churches of Christ and with Harrell among them, protested against these organizations and, during the 1950s, divided from the sociologically denominational mainstream. Harrell, as an outsider, traces the continuing controversies of the institutional churches including the rise of a progressive "left-wing" starting in the 1960s that rejected the old "commonsense" reading of the Bible. Conservatives have counterattacked, so Harrell controversially pronounces that the mainstream is now a divided stream and that "every congregation and every person" has to decide whether to associate with the progressives or conservatives (p. 201). Signs of a growing division are present, but no such choice has been foisted on the mainstream. Despite this shortcoming, this well-written section of the book documents the controversies with excellent primary and secondary sources and will give the reader an accurate feel for the fiercely independent-minded participants of the Churches of Christ.

Harrell shifts from an outsider to an insider in the third part of his book, where he traces the fascinating, but probably bewildering to outsiders, arguments of the noninstitutional Churches of Christ. Harrell tries to maintain a veneer of objectivity when he refers to his own argumentative efforts in the third person, yet, as Hailey has been attacked in the noninstitutional Churches of Christ for his heresy, Harrell has been his most insistent defender. This last section is both a defense of Hailey and a plea for the unity of the noninstitutional Churches of Christ. Harrell wants his particular part of the Churches of Christ to avoid the division that seems endemic to the tradition. For those interested in the Churches of Christ and in getting a glimpse into the sectarian background of a major historian, this book is essential reading.

MICHAEL W. CASEY
Pepperdine University