David Lipscomb
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David Lipscomb (1831–1917) was an important minister, editor, and educator in the American Restoration Movement and one of the leaders of the theologically conservative faction of that movement, which by 1906 had formalized the division between itself as the Church of Christ and the more liberal faction, which is now generally known as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Early Life
Lipscomb was born to Granville Lipscomb (b. January 13, 1802 in Louisa County, Virginia, d. November 16, 1853) and his second wife Ann E. Lipscomb (b. January 25, 1799 in Louisa County, Virginia, d. January 29, 1835 in Illinois) (called "Nancy" in some sources.) Granville had previously been married, on December 14, 1825 in Spotsylvania, Virginia, to the former Ellen Guerner.Granville and his older brother William C. Lipscomb were active in the Bean's Creek Baptist Church, where they were listed as the church clerks for 1828-1831 (Granville Lipscomb) and 1844-1876 (William C. Lipscomb). Attempts to convert the Bean's Creek church to Restoration Movement theology was poorly received and Granville Lipscomb's family was expelled in 1831. [Early Life Of David Lipscomb] [David Lipscomb] at therestorationmovement.com.
The Lipscomb family, originally Baptist, were said to have converted to Restoration Movement Christianity in the mid 1820s while reading Alexander Campbell's periodical Christian Baptist, copies of which had been sent to the Lipscomb's family by Ann's sister Elizabeth (b. ca. 1797) and brother-in-law, physician Lunsford Lindsay (b. ca. 1793) of Todd County, Kentucky who would later participate in the formation of the Cadiz Christian Church in 1837. [WesternKentuckyHistory.org: Trigg County Chapter 6]
They were said to be charter members of the Old Salem church, according to Dr. Earl Irvin West's Lipscomb biography, The Life and Times of David Lipscomb.
- “The Old Salem congregation began in May 1834 with two male members and two females. Also, five colored people belonged. By Christmas that year the number had grown to thirty-four whites and twelve blacks.”
Lipscomb's father moved the rest of the family back to Tennessee in 1835 or 1836 and he married his third wife, Jane L. Breedan, (d. September 8, 1885), on April 11 or August 11, 1837. [MS 2473: The Bean's Creek Baptist Church Minute Book, 1814-1876] at the library of the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) A half-brother of David's, also named Granville, was born to Jane Breedan Lipscomb. William Lipscomb would help to found Neely's Bend Church of Christ in April 1872 [History of Neelys Bend Church of Christ]. Granville Lipscomb, Jr. would become a leader in the Lebanon Church of Christ founded in 1879 in Weakley County, Tennessee. [rootsweb.com: Lebanon Church of Christ]
Tolbert Fanning, farming in Georgia, and Franklin College
Lipscomb, along with his older brother William, was greatly influenced by conservative Nashville, Tennessee church leader Tolbert Fanning. Lipscomb was baptised by Fanning in 1845, and in 1846 he entered Fanning's Franklin College, graduating in 1849. While a student at Franklin, Lipscomb roomed with the father of Edward Ward Carmack.Lipscomb then spent two years managing a plantation in Georgia before returning to Tennessee.
Fanning was an enforcer of strict orthodoxy with regard to Restoration doctrines, seeing anything not specifically authorized by the New Testament as an unnecessary and hence sinful addition to the "primitive" Christianity of the 1st century, which the movement was by definition dedicated to restoring.
Gospel Advocate
In this spirit, in 1855 Fanning and William Lipscomb began publishing a magazine aimed at dissemination of this view throughout the Restoration Movement, the Gospel Advocate. Following the resumption of mail service which had been interrupted by the American Civil War, David Lipscomb revived the Gospel Advocate in July of 1866 with himself and Fanning as editors: Fanning withdrew making Lipscomb the sole editor until he was joined by P.S. Fall, John T. Walsh, Jacob Creath, Jr., T.W. Brents and Carroll Kendrick in 1867.The Advocate seemed almost invariably to take the conservative side of every issue facing the Restorationists – its stance was opposed to the use of musical instruments of any type in worship; in its early years, it was likewise totally opposed to Sunday school. (This latter position was later totally reversed to the extent that the Gospel Advocate is today one of the largest single publishers of Sunday School materials used in the Churches of Christ.)
Beliefs
Lipscomb was a pacifist. He did not believe in the use of violence for any reason. (He was for this reason totally opposed to American football, which some have noted was a much more violent game during his lifetime.) Some state that this view was shaped by the Union occupation of Nashville during and after the Civil War, others see in it an echo of the Anabaptist theological tradition which underlay some of the early Restorationist thinking. Most directly, it was also a belief of his primary teacher, Tolbert Fanning, who was convicted of treason for his pacifism. Quite likely, he was influenced by multiple sources before the Civil War, and his pacifism strengthened by events he witnessed during and after it.Like many of the Anabaptists, Lipscomb also believed that any involvement by a Christian with government beyond the paying of taxes was wrong; as far as he was concerned, faithful Christians had absolutely no business voting in elections or serving on juries. He was likewise opposed to membership by Christians in secret societies such as Freemasonry and similar fraternal organizations, stating that a Christian's true responsibilities were to his God, his church, and his family, not his "brothers" in a lodge which might include non-Christian members.
Nashville Bible School
Lipscomb for a time was a prosperous farmer in addition to his religious activities, at one time operating his own ferry across the Cumberland River from his farm north of Nashville to the side of the river on which the main part of the city was located. He eventually relocated to an estate south of Nashville. Today this estate is the campus of Lipscomb University. The log house in which he lived on his former farm has been dismantled and re-erected adjacent to his later home, which is used by the university for some social occasions.In 1891, Lipscomb and James A. Harding founded the Nashville Bible School the precursor to the current Lipscomb University, which was not named for him until after his death. As Lipscomb was a product of the predominant Southern culture of the time, this institution was segregated and was for many years solely for white students, necessitating a separate sister institution in North Nashville for blacks which was not totally dismantled and largely merged with the bigger white school until the 1960s.
Influence and Legacy
A trace of Lipscomb's pacifism survives in Churches of Christ today; the group contained few conscientious objectors even in World War I, while 199 Gingerich, Melvin (1949), Service for Peace, A History of Mennonite Civilian Public Service, p. 452, Mennonite Central Committee. served in Civilian Public Service camps during World War II, though it is not recognized as an historical peace church, which it would have been had Lipscomb's views in this area predominated. Lipscomb's views on voting and jury service are likewise nearly extinct within the group, held generally only by a few of the oldest members in rural areas, though there are current members of the faculties of both Harding University and Lipscomb University who do not vote, following Lipscomb's views on the matter. His views on fraternal organizations at times remain controversial; this issue arises in Churches of Christ only periodically and generally locally, and is somewhat in eclipse due to the lessening of the size and influence of such groups generally, at least in the Upper South and Texas where the Church of Christ is generally centered.It has been noted that Lipscomb's influence over the Churches of Christ was greatest in about a 150- to 300-mile radius of his base in Nashville; while he influenced the group considerably in Texas and elsewhere as well, his influence there was apparently never truly comparable to that which he exercised in the Nashville area.
When Lipscomb University recently began the Center for International Peace and Justice, several of the faculty associated with the program saw it as a way of manifesting David Lipscomb's continuing legacy of pacifism in a Church of Christ-supported University setting, though it must be noted that some of the faculty associated with the Center for International Peace and Justice do not share David Lipscomb's pacifist views.
Opposition to instrumental music and missionary societies
Lipscomb's Gospel Advocate developed significant though unofficial status within the Churches of Christ, more so than any of many other similar publications. The Churches of Christ had (and have) no recognized leadership hierarchy above the congregational level, yet debates of the day which concerned many congregation were framed within the pages of such periodicals. Churches of Christ still cling to the congregational model, with almost no inter-congregational political structures, leading to the well-known joke (that actually contains a lot of truth) that "the Church of Christ has no Bishops, only editors." Lipscomb's tenure at the Gospel Advocate was Bishop-like, in that his influence reached beyond his local congregation.Lipscomb already had become so influential as a young man that he engaged in a running correspondence with Alexander Campbell, one of the early Restorationists who was very influential but quite elderly by the time of Lipscomb's ascendancy. Lipscomb disagreed with Campbell most vehemently on the topic of the American Christian Missionary Society, a cooperative effort to fund and coordinate foreign missions among various congregations which Campbell accepted and encouraged but Lipscomb totally rejected as a sinful, unscriptural innovation.
Lipscomb noted that most of the congregations which supported the Missionary Society were likewise those which were not opposed to the use of instrumental music. He began to attack these as practices, and felt that those ministers who were not publicly opposed to these activities should not be allowed to address "sound" congregations (those that followed what he saw to be Bible truth). Notably, however, Lipscomb often spoke in non Church of Christ congregations that had instrumental music without ever alluding to his opinion on the matter, which is not directly addressed in the New Testament. He believed in the early (unofficial) Church of Christ creed that Christians should have liberty in matters of opinion.
The Church of Christ
The triumph of this line of thought within the conservative Restoration congregations was the impetus behind the 1906 decision made in the course of the religious census formerly conducted in years ending in "6" by the United States Bureau of the Census to list the "Church of Christ" and the "Christian Church" as separate bodies, formalizing what had long been the de facto case.Lipscomb's legacy is still felt within the Church of Christ today, perhaps primarily through the Gospel Advocate, which is still published and still tends to define mainstream orthodoxy within the body, although to a lesser extent than previously, and through its other publishing operations, notably in regard to Sunday School literature as noted previously. His namesake institution in recent years has been accused of selling out to "liberalism" by many of the more conservative voices in the church. The term "liberalism" in the context of the Churches of Christ is frequently linked to a form of doctrine founded upon a direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the heart of the sinner and saint as well as cooperation with denominational groups which differ in theology, doctrine and concept of truth. The term "liberalism" must be taken in a relative sense for both sides in this debate because to much of the religious world outside the Churches of Christ, the term "liberal" tends to denote teaching against plenary verbal inspiration while both sides tend still to be accepting the position of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible, a theologically very conservative position, while disagreeing its mode and medium.
Lipscomb and Anarchism
Lipscomb's beliefs on government can be classified as a religiously derived subset of radical libertarianism, even consistent with the fundamental positions of individualist anarchism, mutualism, primitivism, Premillennialism, anarcho-capitalism, and/or classical liberalism. Lipscomb believed in creating a peaceful, cooperative, decentralized communion in which freedom, worship, and family could thrive. Therefore, he was a pacifist, unlike many anarchists (particularly those of the early 20th Century) who sometimes advocated coercion as a legitimate means to freedom. For Lipscomb, violence and warfare were incompatible with Christianity, and, perhaps because of his experiences during the American Civil War, he noted that governments tended to support violence and warfare. In this context, Lipscomb appears to be a meliorist.Unlike the Christian anarchism of Leo Tolstoy, Lipscomb's anarchism developed without any influence or knowledge of the early anarchists like Pierre Proudhon and Josiah Warren who developed their beliefs without reliance on religion. Anarchism after Lipscomb remained unaware of Lipscomb's contributions to anarchist thought.
When Lipscomb was discovered by radical libertarian scholars, some such as Prof. Edward Stringham noted that Lipscomb had independently questioned common assumptions that
- Governments need to make laws.
- Governents are created for the public good.
- Democracy is for the common good.
- Governments may seek to increase disorder to expand their power.
- People should abstain from voting, instead seeking change through persuasive and non-coercive methods.
- Peaceful civilization is not dependent on the state.
- Governments are created for the benefit of the rulers, not the people.
References
Books
- Robert E. Hooper, Crying in the Wilderness: A Biography of David Lipscomb (Nashville: David Lipscomb College, 1979)
External links
- [David Lipscomb] at the Restoration Movement pages at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
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