This first blog post is an excerpt from a chapter I’m working on that analyzes Alexander Campbell’s economic success and how it impacted the Campbellite journey from sect to denomination.

In 1823, Baptists in Kentucky hailed themselves the victors as their champion, Alexander Campbell, disposed of his foe, W.L. McCalla in public debate. So many people attended the debate that it had to be moved from its planned location, the Washington Baptist Church, to the Methodist camp meeting grounds. Kentucky Baptists believed that Campbell was one of them, promoting and defending their cause in the bluegrass. But Campbell had been a hesitant Baptist at best and to avoid the embarrassment of not being selected as a “messenger” for his own congregation and potentially excommunication at the upcoming Association meeting, he had recently orchestrated his own dismissal from the Brush Run Church, a congregation loosely affiliated with the Red Stone Association in Pennsylvania. So when Baptist preachers and lay members cheered Campbell’s success against McCalla, most of them did so without the knowledge that he was in the middle of a growing controversy. Ever the entrepreneur and self-promoter, Campbell shrewdly used this moment to draw attention to his newest venture, his monthly publication the Christian Baptist, and to bring converts to his cause.

(photo credit: http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/1824cam1.htm)

Baptists commended Campbell’s victory against McCalla and thanked providence for his arrival in Kentucky. Walter Warder, the minister of Washington Baptist Church, exclaimed “It seemed . . . that God had raised up Alexander Campbell for such a time as this.”[1] On the fifth day of the debate, Campbell was so “overwhelmed” by Baptist support that he decided to reveal his position to prominent Baptist preachers and members in his private room. He told them, “Brethren, I fear that if you knew me better you would esteem and love me less. For let me tell you that I have almost as much against you Baptists as I have against the Presbyterians. They err in one thing and you in another; and probably you are each nearly equidistant from original apostolic Christianity.” He paused and, in his telling of it, experienced “a silence . . . [and] a piercing look from all sides of the room, I seldom before witnessed.” The blows Campbell delivered to McCalla, in some regard, paled in comparison to the ones he dealt his Baptist supporters in that room. Reeling and stunned, it was Campbell’s own selected moderator, Jeremiah Vardeman, who broke the silence. He implored Campbell, “. . . we want to know our errors or your heterodoxy. Do let us hear it. Keep nothing back.”[2]

The evidence is compelling that Campbell earnestly believed the message he preached and that his actions were not the work of a swindler. Nevertheless, the moment that followed Vardeman’s request, gives the impression of a calculated measure. Campbell replied that he was tired from the debate and lacked the energy to attempt a task so immense as to verbally explain the numerous Baptist errors. Instead, he suggested an alternate solution, he said “I am commencing a publication called the Christian Baptist, to be devoted to all such matters, a few copies of which are in my portmanteau, and, with your permission, I will read you a few specimens of my heterodoxy.” Those present agreed to listen and, in fact, desperately wanted to know what their erstwhile champion had against them. Campbell went upstairs to his room and returned with ten copies of the Christian Baptist. He distributed the copies, in his words, “among the ten most distinguished and advanced elders in the room.” He asked them to read the periodical during the recess of the debate and to discuss it with him after.

Some of those present agreed with Campbell’s perspective, others remained resolutely opposed, while some vacillated in indecision. This was a signal moment in the beginning of Campbell’s insurgency among the Baptists and in his success as a publisher. In the Baptists, especially those west of the Appalachians, Campbell found a market that was ripe for the taking. As Baptist historian Frank Masters pointed out, there was no state organization, no school, no comparable denominational paper, an untrained ministry, and only a loosely unified group of twenty-five Baptist Associations to combat Campbell’s efforts and teaching.[3] In fact, the unity they did have served Campbell’s ends more than they inhibited them. Before the McCalla debate, Campbell did not have a single reader in Kentucky; shortly after the McCalla debate, he garnered thousands. Campbell’s continued association with Baptists throughout the 1820s – he joined the Mahoning Association after leaving Red Stone – and the lack of any substantial institutional organization to oppose him, allowed him to gain religious followers at the same that he built and grew a relative publishing empire.

[1] Frank M. Masters, A History of Baptists in Kentucky, (Louisville: Kentucky Baptist Historical Society, 1953) 209.

[2] Richardson, Memoirs, vol. II., 88.

[3] Masters, Baptists in Kentucky, 211.