What I Saw At the Moonrise
Jeff Gill
When the moon finally came out from behind a band of cloud, glowing bright orange both dimmer yet more distinct than the lights of Newark spread out below, I was watching my son. He had been dashing from point to point, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t bump the photographer from the Advocate, when a person right in front of me said softly but clearly, "There it is."
I looked up, and my eyes went right to it. A harvest moon, some call it, when wide and low on the horizon a pumpkin of a moon first lifts up with a heave from the land’s edge.
Gasps, and quick mutters of conversation quickly turned into shouts and approving commentary, as if we had somehow helped the celestial body orbit into the right position to be seen by us. There was a sense of participation and involvement, along with the quieter but stronger feeling of witness.
We all were witnesses to something, people ready to testify that an occurrence had in fact taken place before our eyes, made all the more momentous by our having been in this particular place precisely to see exactly what we were looking at. We were witnesses, but we were not innocent bystanders. We were complicit. We were involved.
But what I saw at the moment of moonrise, northerly alignment with angles of earthworks, or whatever the significance, was that my son was there, he was safe, and he was not in any trouble. I saw him interact with professors and journalists, citizens and officials, the learned and the uninformed, other kids and seniors who had welcomed a cart ride up the slope to our hilltop perch.
What I saw, as others saw the moonrise just before I did, was that my child was in the middle of a crowd, finding his proper place (with no little nudging and more direct guidance from his mother and father), sharing in a moment which he could only dimly understand. He had been to planning meetings and conferences, in the Police Building and the Transit Barn, walked the earthworks and alignments of ancient architects for TV cameras and newspaper reporters, and also along the sidewalks of officialdom while his dad made some of the more prosaic arrangements for these events.
My kid had no more idea of what went on that night than he understood why we went to county commission meetings or to the hospital to meet with administrators. He knew that his dad and others thought "the octagon and circles and stuff" were important, which to a seven year old is roughly equivalent to the importance of a bottle of lemonade or a bag of cookies, which is pretty darn important.
He knew he was where he was supposed to be, but I watched him closely, more closely than the patch of sky which was why we were all out there that night, because he also wanted to be other places, like over there, or there, or there. And I was distracted a bit as well, because while I was where I had planned and worked to be that night, I was not quite where I wanted to be; we were not where I had hoped and worked for months and indeed years to put us on that night. So like the little guy, I wanted to be where I was not, too.
When the moon rose, and the ripple of awareness went through the crowd, we all cast our eyes and our awareness out along 51 degrees north, toward the valley of the unified Licking River heading east. We were on Memorial Hill in Geller Park of the City of Heath, but part of all of us was aimed at a point ten miles to a distant horizon, and some 250,000 miles across space to the single satellite of this planet Earth. We may not want to be standing on the surface of the moon, but some aspect, some element of our selves was hurtling out to that steadily moving point in orbit round and round us.
I lost track of my boy for a moment, as I looked intently at what was suddenly revealed in the eastern sky. I saw a vivid idea drawn on the landscape before me, of the Great Circle to my right and the Octagon assemblage to my left behind the trees, and the lines between sketched in thought, with the viewscape framing a neatly divided angle right in front of me. A bit more hazily I saw people standing just in front of me, roughly clothed figures who had supervised unimaginable effort to build a set of enclosures which they knew, but could not be sure, would predict and point to this very phenomenon. All along the hilltop, and in places on ridges behind me and in earthworks before me, I could readily imagine those ancient architects and astronomers, exhilarated by the success of their assumptions, proven once again by the moon’s course.
Then I snapped back to the hard-edged present, and looked to see where he was, and my wife was there, with her arm around him. They were in front of me, in a way those long go residents of this valley would never be, but they were staring intently at just what would have been watched two millennia ago. Call it 500 years the culture we call "Hopewell" would have held sway across this landscape, making use of this valley full of astronomical observation points in earthen walls. Divide, for simplicity, by 20. 25 times, maybe 27 to use the more precise 18.6 year lunar cycle, but almost certainly no more.
25, 27 times to stand in these places with family, with officials, with the community, is all that they had.
Then turn the clock forward, 1500 years. In the wake of Hively and Horn’s rediscovery, we come to this day, or rather these days, since a series of opportunities mitigate the cloudy intervals, both now and then. But this is it, the first time to consciously and intentionally stand and witness that the movements of moon and sun can be predicted, anticipated, comprehended. The first time in a millennia and a half, give or take a generation, and we are here.
My son will be 25 or so when this era’s second chance to witness the northernmost moonrise comes around again t the Newark Earthworks. Possibly he will know, or at least remember, that he was present at the last opportunity for this conjunction when 2024 rolls around. Possibly, I will stand there with him, a little less anxious about whose way he’s getting into.
Whether he will remember, whether he will understand what he witnessed that night, is up to me, to us his parents, and up to his community (educational community and otherwise). He may, and he may not.
But what I saw at the moonrise was that 25 year old and me in my 60’s, standing among the equally hypothetical 2000 year old figures. They are uncertain in outline, but they are real -- at least the past is provably real, since their knowledge is, in our felicitous phrase, "written on the land." My own figure, and that of my descendants knowledgeably taking their place in that group of witnesses standing vigil, is much less certain.
What I saw at the moonrise was people, standing on the surface of this planet, eyeing the antics of another heavenly body looping and curving around our own in odd but understandable patterns. What I saw at the moonrise was my child, my ancestors, and possibly my descendants if my witness is passed along properly. What I saw at the moonrise was my community, as it was before me, as it is at its best, and I believe I even saw how it might yet be, cycles and generations and millennia to come.
That is what, or rather whom I saw, at the moonrise.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Constructing a Faith at Work
(& Building Small Groups)
- - -
Working among Carpenters, Gardeners, and Sweepers in the Gospels
* * *
Introduction
(for reading to the group; leader’s notes at end)
Jesus used parables to teach the Good News of God’s love, or "gospel" message (an old word for "good news"). When we gather as Christians to reflect on God’s word in the four books we call "Gospels," Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we hear Jesus’ good news story through some very everyday examples, or parables.
Parables tell us about men building barns, women sweeping floors, and children singing and dancing. It all sounds pretty familiar. And even when the world of the parables looks a little different, it isn’t hard to imagine a truck in place of a mule when neither wants to start in the morning. Or you can see working in a vineyard then, as the shop floor or warehouse crew today.
John the Baptist was a preacher’s kid, Jesus grew up in a carpenter’s home, and James and John were sons of a sailor themselves. The work their families did shaped how they saw the world and what examples they used to describe it. We are just getting going as a small group to study the Bible and look for God’s direction in our lives. To begin, thinking about what our parents did for a living, and what we do ourselves at work is part of how we hear those verses of scripture. We can understand each other and support one another better when we listen to how different people respond to the same parables and teachings.
In each of these six sessions, after readings from the Gospels and a short prayer, some discussion questions are shown here to start a conversation. Everyone should have a chance to say their piece, but no one needs to feel like they have to talk. Remember, even a simple job can have an eternal place when Jesus talks about it, so don’t think that your story or viewpoint isn’t worth sharing because you haven’t done anything as interesting as the last person to talk! And your work or job perspective can be something you’ve done for a living, or it may be a hobby, too. The point is to bring our real world experiences into the equally real world of Jesus and the disciples 2000 years ago.
The idea is to put ourselves so completely inside the stories of the Bible that we can see ourselves, and each other, as part of them. The last step is to reflect on how being a part of this story of faith tells us where we’re going, as Christians and as part of this faith community. Let’s listen to each other, and listen to what the Living Word, Jesus himself, is saying to us right now!
* * *
Session One – "Where Are You From?"
Readings – Mark 6:1-6; Luke 1: 57-66
Even Jesus and John the Baptist had to deal with family pressures, even from birth. We all know the story about how Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, taking a pregnant Mary with him, because that’s where he was from. Everyone talks about how "it’s not what you know, it’s who you know," but the fact of where we’re from, and who our family is, can make problems for us, or limit how people see us as much as open new doors.
Even when we may not want it, our family and background define us and start our course through life. Our parents can also be our introduction into the adult world in ways that we never would have reached on our own.
1. What did your parents do for a living?
2. How does that show up in your speech, or your habits? Is their way of organizing the garage or setting up the kitchen still how you do it without even thinking about it? Are there phrases you use that reflect their upbringing or workplaces, like the farm or a business?
3. What did your family want you to be when you grew up? How did that work out?
---
4. What do you do for a living?
5. How does your workplace affect your homelife – do you bring work home, or does work follow you there?
6. Was there, or is there, something else you’ve always wanted to try as a job?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Two – "Learning a Trade"
Readings – Luke 2: 39-52; Matthew 4: 18-22
Even Jesus needed to grow, "in wisdom and in stature." We assume this included Joseph teaching him the trade of carpentry, along with his religious duties that their family observed like the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The word usually translated "carpenter" from last week’s reading is "tekton," which is a very particular craft. More than just a worker in wood, a tekton would have been the skilled craftsman who took the valuable solid timbers, so hard to find and precious in a rocky, desert environment, and made scaffolding and framing for the stoneworkers. The buildings of Jesus’ day, poor or rich, were mostly stone, but doors and archways had to each be filled with a wooden framework for the stone to fit around. Once finished, the framing would carefully be removed and quickly rebuilt for the next opening. To keep ahead of the stonemasons without wasting wood required a careful, meticulous eye and steady hard work.
There are many places in Jesus’ teaching where the mark of Joseph’s trade seems to show up (Matthew 7: 24-27, Mt. 16: 18, Luke 13: 4, Lk. 14: 28-30)*.
1. Have you ever known a real craftsman, a person, male or female, with a real talent or skill? What was it? Did you learn anything about that skill from them?
2. What did knowing that person show you about how to live? How did their skill translate into their life?
3. What talents do you think are born into a person, and which can be learned?
---
4. Read over the building verses* (let four people look them up, and each read one). What is the most complicated or difficult thing you’ve ever built? (Yes, Christmas morning stories count!)
5. Where did you turn for help?
6. What did you learn as you worked and after you finished?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Three – "In the Garden"
Readings -- Luke 13: 6-9; John 20: 1, 11-17
We tend to see spiritual growth as pretty much like developing physical fitness. More exercise, increased activity, walking farther (or running!) is what leads to growth in physical fitness. So we expect spiritual growth to result from more prayer, more Bible readings, getting more books on spirituality (look at how many are on sale these days), and just plain doing more.
But the Biblical model of spiritual growth is "fruitfulness." Images of gardens and gardening run through all the Bible, from the Garden of Eden to the Tree of Life in Revelation. In Jesus’ teaching, we "bear good fruit" like a well tended olive tree or healthy grape vine when our spirit is in line with God’s purposes.
How to develop this part of our lives is seen in the image of the gardener. Gardening is the single most popular hobby in America today, but for men and women in Bible times it was not a hobby but part of feeding your family. Fruitfulness was life or death in the countryside, so learning the skill of encouraging fruitfulness was for everyone.
Tending vines and olive trees involved a great deal of pruning, or cutting back the unproductive parts of a plant (see John 15: 1-11 for a very practical description). And manure whether from mules or cows or wherever – don’t ask! – was a precious commodity for promoting growth in thin and dry soil. Did it smell? Yes, but how they felt about the smell was very different than we do in a drive through the country today.
1. When have you felt the need to "prune back" your life?
2. Do you feel like you run yours or your family’s schedule, or does your schedule run you? How does that happen, and what can you do about it?
3. Has there been a time when you felt really good about getting out of a rut, or stopping a bad habit? Do you just replace one thing with another, or could you just "prune it back"?
--
4. Do you remember a time when some "manure" in your life led to new growth – something that seemed bad at the time, but turned out for good?
5. Has there been a project or practice that you really didn’t look forward to, but once you got into it, became really rewarding?
6. Does a spiritual discipline have to be hard or demanding? Can it just be fun?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Four – "A Clean Sweep"
Readings – Luke 13: 10-17, Lk. 15: 1-10
Nowadays, both women and men have a share in housekeeping. Modern schedules and fast moving families need everyone to pitch in sometimes whether it’s with cooking or laundry, mowing the lawn or checking the tire pressure.
Women have a special role in the home as mothers, and often particular tasks go along with that role. In Bible times, women were much more likely to sweep than men, and men were more likely to go out and pick the ripe olives. But ancient books show that not only did roles sometimes switch, but many jobs tied to the seasons were shared. Grape stomping and grain threshing called on the entire household to the fields or barns.
All of scripture is intended for everyone, even if particular passages might strike home better for some than others. Jesus knew that while we might not do each others’ chores, we were aware of them and knew something about how they were performed. Parables about housework and homemaking work in this way for all of us.
1. What is the biggest clean-up job you’ve ever been involved with? What made it so big, or hard? How did you get it done?
2. What’s the biggest meal you’ve ever been involved in: in your home, and then anywhere (but think about both kinds of meal). What role did you play, & how did it go?
3. How do men and women split the household tasks in your house now, and/or in the home you grew up in? (And how does that shape the way you read these verses?)
--
4. Read Luke 10: 38-42; when are you Mary, and when are you more of a Martha?
5. Talk about some Marys and Marthas you’ve known: which example comes easier, and why do you think that is?
6. Is this story more about how we should be like both Mary and Martha, or that we should figure out which one we’re like and just learn to be happy with who we are?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Five – "Doing the Dirty Work"
Readings – Luke 2: 8-20, Matthew 20: 1-16
Shepherds are charming figures in robes with crook-ended staffs wandering among the little white sheep, right? That’s the image we have after years of Christmas pageants and pictures in children’s books.
But in Jesus’ day, shepherds were about the lowest of the low, the most unclean of the ritually filthy, and the bottom of the social totem pole. Even tax collectors and prostitutes had more status than nasty, stinky, ignorant sheepherders. The Temple folk saw them as wilderness dwellers, far from proper washing facilities, so they couldn’t maintain any degree of ritual purity for prayer and religious observance (you hear another echo of this with John the Baptist), and they were poor enough to not even be able to afford simple sacrifices like a pair of pigeons. The sheep they herded were generally not their own, so they were usually hired help, but even with their own herds the profit margin was small.
Yet shepherds were who first heard the "Good News," or Gospel, out in their fields, watching their flocks by night. Away from official buildings, unable to keep the purity laws of their faith, and after darkness fell no less: this is as far as you can get from priests and temples and the official way of doing things in the light of day.
God clearly is sending a message here about who’s in and who’s out. We need to keep rethinking this message for our own time.
1. What jobs seem most awful to you; what job would you least like to have, and why?
2. What is the worst job you’ve ever had, and what did you dislike about it?
3. How can you keep God present at work, no matter what the job?
--
4. Read over Mt. 20: 1-16; have you ever been cheated of your fair pay on a job?
5. Have you ever seen someone else get a better deal than you that seemed unfair; how did you deal with that situation, in your work, and with that person?
6. Is there any work that God can’t be part of? Are some jobs just plain harder to keep God close to?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Six – "The Hardest Work There Is"
Readings – Mark 3: 31-35; John 19: 23-30
Mothers and fathers and parenting (and sometimes grandparenting) is, beyond a doubt, the hardest job there is. We know the story about Abraham and Isaac in Genesis (chpt. 22), and while we wonder about the faith that Abraham showed, most parents know that it can feel like a sacrifice every time we send our children out the front door, whether to school, sports, or off on their own. There is a feeling of pain or heartsickness that comes with watching our children experience hurt or rejection or failure.
We can barely imagine how God must experience the world’s response to Jesus in these terms. But the other side of this problem is that, as there are few challenges more difficult than parenting, there are also no joys greater than watching a child under your care learn and grow and develop.
For many of us, the experience of having and raising children also makes us re-visit what our parents must have gone through with us. Taking on the new perspective of parent changes many other perspectives we thought were settled, and can help us understand our childhood and our raising from a new angle.
1. Did you ever get told "wait ‘til you have children of your own!"? What do you think that means?
2. One of the Ten Commandments is "honor your father and mother;" how do you do that when you find you have to disagree with them? What does Mk. 3:31-35 say to you?
3. How does your understanding of parenting affect your understanding of who God is?
--
4. Read the passage from John again; what is Jesus saying from the cross about parents and children in the church?
5. How do you see Mary’s role in the story of Jesus? What does her life say to you?
6. When you read Paul’s letters to the first Christian communities, he speaks often about "adoption" as a model for who we become in faith, as brothers and sisters to one another, and as children of God. How does the idea of adoption work for you as a way to understand what God is doing in Jesus?
7. How has your relationship changed with the members of this small group over the six sessions? Do you feel more like co-workers, like adopted kids in a household, like re-united family members, or something else?
[closing prayer]
* * *
*
* * *
For the leader:
This small group outline is designed with two main purposes in mind: to create a basis for a small group, with prayer, discussion, and sharing all a natural outgrowth of the group sessions; and to give all participants a good overview of the four Gospels as they do so. The themes and questions focus on a very basic area of life – work -- and how our jobs or roles shape the way we see the world, and read the Bible. They are intended to give everyone a chance to hear how others do so, from their own perspective, in different ways.
The time spent on the material itself, with time for the readings, discussion questions, and prayer celebrations & concerns at the end, should be 20 to no more than 45 minutes; each may actually be done in two parts if you like, for 12 sessions together. Ideally, your group has another activity which is before or after the study time, whether it’s sewing or cycling, eating or exercising, serving or ministering in your group’s particular style. You could be the Repairs on Wheels fix-it squad, the Jocks for Jesus group playing basketball, the Christian Motorcycle Riders just before a run into the hills, or a Mother’s Day Out on second Saturdays of the month.
Our goal is to give participants a chance to see what small group sharing is like in a fairly comfortable setting, and to encourage them in continuing with spiritual growth in this kind of group. Basic Bible skills, like where the Gospels are and how the stories in them parallel and reinforce each other, will also support continued study and involvement.
After these six sessions, whether over six months, six weeks, or whatever your meeting frequency, the group and the members should be ready to decide what kind of group they want to be (prayer & study, mission-focused, program support for the church, etc.) and look for material to support a continued pattern of group-building.
From "A Life With Purpose," a book about Rick Warren and the work that has come from "The Purpose-Driven Life," these words about fellowship and small group sharing:
"Traditionally, fellowship means "shared experience." Although for many it may stand for chit-chat and a cup of coffee, according to Rick (Warren) it should signify much more than being a church member and faithful attendee. True fellowship emerges out of the formation of small groups, no larger than ten, who open themselves up to honest, soul-baring discussions. . .true fellowship means trusting one another enough to risk hurt and humiliation by being completely open, but knowing that your brothers and sisters won’t judge you." (pp. 146-7)
(& Building Small Groups)
- - -
Working among Carpenters, Gardeners, and Sweepers in the Gospels
* * *
Introduction
(for reading to the group; leader’s notes at end)
Jesus used parables to teach the Good News of God’s love, or "gospel" message (an old word for "good news"). When we gather as Christians to reflect on God’s word in the four books we call "Gospels," Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we hear Jesus’ good news story through some very everyday examples, or parables.
Parables tell us about men building barns, women sweeping floors, and children singing and dancing. It all sounds pretty familiar. And even when the world of the parables looks a little different, it isn’t hard to imagine a truck in place of a mule when neither wants to start in the morning. Or you can see working in a vineyard then, as the shop floor or warehouse crew today.
John the Baptist was a preacher’s kid, Jesus grew up in a carpenter’s home, and James and John were sons of a sailor themselves. The work their families did shaped how they saw the world and what examples they used to describe it. We are just getting going as a small group to study the Bible and look for God’s direction in our lives. To begin, thinking about what our parents did for a living, and what we do ourselves at work is part of how we hear those verses of scripture. We can understand each other and support one another better when we listen to how different people respond to the same parables and teachings.
In each of these six sessions, after readings from the Gospels and a short prayer, some discussion questions are shown here to start a conversation. Everyone should have a chance to say their piece, but no one needs to feel like they have to talk. Remember, even a simple job can have an eternal place when Jesus talks about it, so don’t think that your story or viewpoint isn’t worth sharing because you haven’t done anything as interesting as the last person to talk! And your work or job perspective can be something you’ve done for a living, or it may be a hobby, too. The point is to bring our real world experiences into the equally real world of Jesus and the disciples 2000 years ago.
The idea is to put ourselves so completely inside the stories of the Bible that we can see ourselves, and each other, as part of them. The last step is to reflect on how being a part of this story of faith tells us where we’re going, as Christians and as part of this faith community. Let’s listen to each other, and listen to what the Living Word, Jesus himself, is saying to us right now!
* * *
Session One – "Where Are You From?"
Readings – Mark 6:1-6; Luke 1: 57-66
Even Jesus and John the Baptist had to deal with family pressures, even from birth. We all know the story about how Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, taking a pregnant Mary with him, because that’s where he was from. Everyone talks about how "it’s not what you know, it’s who you know," but the fact of where we’re from, and who our family is, can make problems for us, or limit how people see us as much as open new doors.
Even when we may not want it, our family and background define us and start our course through life. Our parents can also be our introduction into the adult world in ways that we never would have reached on our own.
1. What did your parents do for a living?
2. How does that show up in your speech, or your habits? Is their way of organizing the garage or setting up the kitchen still how you do it without even thinking about it? Are there phrases you use that reflect their upbringing or workplaces, like the farm or a business?
3. What did your family want you to be when you grew up? How did that work out?
---
4. What do you do for a living?
5. How does your workplace affect your homelife – do you bring work home, or does work follow you there?
6. Was there, or is there, something else you’ve always wanted to try as a job?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Two – "Learning a Trade"
Readings – Luke 2: 39-52; Matthew 4: 18-22
Even Jesus needed to grow, "in wisdom and in stature." We assume this included Joseph teaching him the trade of carpentry, along with his religious duties that their family observed like the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The word usually translated "carpenter" from last week’s reading is "tekton," which is a very particular craft. More than just a worker in wood, a tekton would have been the skilled craftsman who took the valuable solid timbers, so hard to find and precious in a rocky, desert environment, and made scaffolding and framing for the stoneworkers. The buildings of Jesus’ day, poor or rich, were mostly stone, but doors and archways had to each be filled with a wooden framework for the stone to fit around. Once finished, the framing would carefully be removed and quickly rebuilt for the next opening. To keep ahead of the stonemasons without wasting wood required a careful, meticulous eye and steady hard work.
There are many places in Jesus’ teaching where the mark of Joseph’s trade seems to show up (Matthew 7: 24-27, Mt. 16: 18, Luke 13: 4, Lk. 14: 28-30)*.
1. Have you ever known a real craftsman, a person, male or female, with a real talent or skill? What was it? Did you learn anything about that skill from them?
2. What did knowing that person show you about how to live? How did their skill translate into their life?
3. What talents do you think are born into a person, and which can be learned?
---
4. Read over the building verses* (let four people look them up, and each read one). What is the most complicated or difficult thing you’ve ever built? (Yes, Christmas morning stories count!)
5. Where did you turn for help?
6. What did you learn as you worked and after you finished?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Three – "In the Garden"
Readings -- Luke 13: 6-9; John 20: 1, 11-17
We tend to see spiritual growth as pretty much like developing physical fitness. More exercise, increased activity, walking farther (or running!) is what leads to growth in physical fitness. So we expect spiritual growth to result from more prayer, more Bible readings, getting more books on spirituality (look at how many are on sale these days), and just plain doing more.
But the Biblical model of spiritual growth is "fruitfulness." Images of gardens and gardening run through all the Bible, from the Garden of Eden to the Tree of Life in Revelation. In Jesus’ teaching, we "bear good fruit" like a well tended olive tree or healthy grape vine when our spirit is in line with God’s purposes.
How to develop this part of our lives is seen in the image of the gardener. Gardening is the single most popular hobby in America today, but for men and women in Bible times it was not a hobby but part of feeding your family. Fruitfulness was life or death in the countryside, so learning the skill of encouraging fruitfulness was for everyone.
Tending vines and olive trees involved a great deal of pruning, or cutting back the unproductive parts of a plant (see John 15: 1-11 for a very practical description). And manure whether from mules or cows or wherever – don’t ask! – was a precious commodity for promoting growth in thin and dry soil. Did it smell? Yes, but how they felt about the smell was very different than we do in a drive through the country today.
1. When have you felt the need to "prune back" your life?
2. Do you feel like you run yours or your family’s schedule, or does your schedule run you? How does that happen, and what can you do about it?
3. Has there been a time when you felt really good about getting out of a rut, or stopping a bad habit? Do you just replace one thing with another, or could you just "prune it back"?
--
4. Do you remember a time when some "manure" in your life led to new growth – something that seemed bad at the time, but turned out for good?
5. Has there been a project or practice that you really didn’t look forward to, but once you got into it, became really rewarding?
6. Does a spiritual discipline have to be hard or demanding? Can it just be fun?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Four – "A Clean Sweep"
Readings – Luke 13: 10-17, Lk. 15: 1-10
Nowadays, both women and men have a share in housekeeping. Modern schedules and fast moving families need everyone to pitch in sometimes whether it’s with cooking or laundry, mowing the lawn or checking the tire pressure.
Women have a special role in the home as mothers, and often particular tasks go along with that role. In Bible times, women were much more likely to sweep than men, and men were more likely to go out and pick the ripe olives. But ancient books show that not only did roles sometimes switch, but many jobs tied to the seasons were shared. Grape stomping and grain threshing called on the entire household to the fields or barns.
All of scripture is intended for everyone, even if particular passages might strike home better for some than others. Jesus knew that while we might not do each others’ chores, we were aware of them and knew something about how they were performed. Parables about housework and homemaking work in this way for all of us.
1. What is the biggest clean-up job you’ve ever been involved with? What made it so big, or hard? How did you get it done?
2. What’s the biggest meal you’ve ever been involved in: in your home, and then anywhere (but think about both kinds of meal). What role did you play, & how did it go?
3. How do men and women split the household tasks in your house now, and/or in the home you grew up in? (And how does that shape the way you read these verses?)
--
4. Read Luke 10: 38-42; when are you Mary, and when are you more of a Martha?
5. Talk about some Marys and Marthas you’ve known: which example comes easier, and why do you think that is?
6. Is this story more about how we should be like both Mary and Martha, or that we should figure out which one we’re like and just learn to be happy with who we are?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Five – "Doing the Dirty Work"
Readings – Luke 2: 8-20, Matthew 20: 1-16
Shepherds are charming figures in robes with crook-ended staffs wandering among the little white sheep, right? That’s the image we have after years of Christmas pageants and pictures in children’s books.
But in Jesus’ day, shepherds were about the lowest of the low, the most unclean of the ritually filthy, and the bottom of the social totem pole. Even tax collectors and prostitutes had more status than nasty, stinky, ignorant sheepherders. The Temple folk saw them as wilderness dwellers, far from proper washing facilities, so they couldn’t maintain any degree of ritual purity for prayer and religious observance (you hear another echo of this with John the Baptist), and they were poor enough to not even be able to afford simple sacrifices like a pair of pigeons. The sheep they herded were generally not their own, so they were usually hired help, but even with their own herds the profit margin was small.
Yet shepherds were who first heard the "Good News," or Gospel, out in their fields, watching their flocks by night. Away from official buildings, unable to keep the purity laws of their faith, and after darkness fell no less: this is as far as you can get from priests and temples and the official way of doing things in the light of day.
God clearly is sending a message here about who’s in and who’s out. We need to keep rethinking this message for our own time.
1. What jobs seem most awful to you; what job would you least like to have, and why?
2. What is the worst job you’ve ever had, and what did you dislike about it?
3. How can you keep God present at work, no matter what the job?
--
4. Read over Mt. 20: 1-16; have you ever been cheated of your fair pay on a job?
5. Have you ever seen someone else get a better deal than you that seemed unfair; how did you deal with that situation, in your work, and with that person?
6. Is there any work that God can’t be part of? Are some jobs just plain harder to keep God close to?
[closing prayer]
* * *
Session Six – "The Hardest Work There Is"
Readings – Mark 3: 31-35; John 19: 23-30
Mothers and fathers and parenting (and sometimes grandparenting) is, beyond a doubt, the hardest job there is. We know the story about Abraham and Isaac in Genesis (chpt. 22), and while we wonder about the faith that Abraham showed, most parents know that it can feel like a sacrifice every time we send our children out the front door, whether to school, sports, or off on their own. There is a feeling of pain or heartsickness that comes with watching our children experience hurt or rejection or failure.
We can barely imagine how God must experience the world’s response to Jesus in these terms. But the other side of this problem is that, as there are few challenges more difficult than parenting, there are also no joys greater than watching a child under your care learn and grow and develop.
For many of us, the experience of having and raising children also makes us re-visit what our parents must have gone through with us. Taking on the new perspective of parent changes many other perspectives we thought were settled, and can help us understand our childhood and our raising from a new angle.
1. Did you ever get told "wait ‘til you have children of your own!"? What do you think that means?
2. One of the Ten Commandments is "honor your father and mother;" how do you do that when you find you have to disagree with them? What does Mk. 3:31-35 say to you?
3. How does your understanding of parenting affect your understanding of who God is?
--
4. Read the passage from John again; what is Jesus saying from the cross about parents and children in the church?
5. How do you see Mary’s role in the story of Jesus? What does her life say to you?
6. When you read Paul’s letters to the first Christian communities, he speaks often about "adoption" as a model for who we become in faith, as brothers and sisters to one another, and as children of God. How does the idea of adoption work for you as a way to understand what God is doing in Jesus?
7. How has your relationship changed with the members of this small group over the six sessions? Do you feel more like co-workers, like adopted kids in a household, like re-united family members, or something else?
[closing prayer]
* * *
*
* * *
For the leader:
This small group outline is designed with two main purposes in mind: to create a basis for a small group, with prayer, discussion, and sharing all a natural outgrowth of the group sessions; and to give all participants a good overview of the four Gospels as they do so. The themes and questions focus on a very basic area of life – work -- and how our jobs or roles shape the way we see the world, and read the Bible. They are intended to give everyone a chance to hear how others do so, from their own perspective, in different ways.
The time spent on the material itself, with time for the readings, discussion questions, and prayer celebrations & concerns at the end, should be 20 to no more than 45 minutes; each may actually be done in two parts if you like, for 12 sessions together. Ideally, your group has another activity which is before or after the study time, whether it’s sewing or cycling, eating or exercising, serving or ministering in your group’s particular style. You could be the Repairs on Wheels fix-it squad, the Jocks for Jesus group playing basketball, the Christian Motorcycle Riders just before a run into the hills, or a Mother’s Day Out on second Saturdays of the month.
Our goal is to give participants a chance to see what small group sharing is like in a fairly comfortable setting, and to encourage them in continuing with spiritual growth in this kind of group. Basic Bible skills, like where the Gospels are and how the stories in them parallel and reinforce each other, will also support continued study and involvement.
After these six sessions, whether over six months, six weeks, or whatever your meeting frequency, the group and the members should be ready to decide what kind of group they want to be (prayer & study, mission-focused, program support for the church, etc.) and look for material to support a continued pattern of group-building.
From "A Life With Purpose," a book about Rick Warren and the work that has come from "The Purpose-Driven Life," these words about fellowship and small group sharing:
"Traditionally, fellowship means "shared experience." Although for many it may stand for chit-chat and a cup of coffee, according to Rick (Warren) it should signify much more than being a church member and faithful attendee. True fellowship emerges out of the formation of small groups, no larger than ten, who open themselves up to honest, soul-baring discussions. . .true fellowship means trusting one another enough to risk hurt and humiliation by being completely open, but knowing that your brothers and sisters won’t judge you." (pp. 146-7)
Friday, October 28, 2005
Preservation and Parks: A Historical Perspective
The story of how Octagon State Memorial is occupied by a golf course is tied to the developing story of preservation in the United States. The idea of "state parks" or "national parks" whether for natural areas or historic sites is only about a century old, but the history of local preservation at Newark goes back even further. Leaders like Israel Dille and Isaac Smucker in the 1800’s began a discussion that traces all the way back to comments recorded from Sen. Daniel Webster, suggesting that the Newark Earthworks be preserved in some fashion.
With the National Park Service not formally established until after 1900, the model for preserving sites such as Yellowstone or Serpent Mound was a combination of mixed use and private group partnership, with military training grounds a common way to have personnel and resources used to maintain open land that was not farmed. Private groups bought Serpent Mound and Fort Ancient in the late 1800’s, but the urgent question was "how will we manage this property?"
Until the concept of a park service, interpretive guides, and civic support of budgeting for park management was developed, largely in the period immediately following World War I, a variety of concepts were tried to answer the question of parkland management. Leasing to a country club, like similar arrangements at the turn of the century for leasing public lands to amusement park operators or state militia groups, was one of a variety of approaches that made sense at the time.
The public debate over land management and access continues today, at the Octagon and other sites around the nation.
* * *
Preservation and Parks: A Historical Perspective (extended text)
The sight of a golf course occupying one of "The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" is odd and to many, upsetting. Octagon State Memorial, leased to Moundbuilders Country Club since 1911, has been called "playing miniature golf in St. Peter’s" and likened to "soccer practice in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity."
The future of this amazingly important piece of land is tied to its past, and solutions will necessarily take into account the entire story. That story is both more surprising and less thoughtless than a casual visitor to today’s Octagon might think, and shows the still developing course of preservation and public interest into our time, a story still unfinished.
We can go back to a tantalizing hint in records from a Kenyon College commencement, where Daniel Webster, famed Senator from pre-Civil War days, gave an address and was said to have expressed a wish to see the Newark Earthworks preserved by the federal government. While the Congressional Record shows no evidence that this possibly well-intended statement was ever acted on by Sen. Webster, the idea had clearly been heard discussed in public.
If such action had been taken, it would have been the first National Park, supplanting Yellowstone, which was set apart for "the public good" in March of 1872. Other lands and sites in subsequent years were "reserved" by states and private organizations (Mount Vernon and Monticello are still operated by associations much like the Ohio Historical Society, private organizations with public funds supporting their work).
But the National Park Service as we know it did not really come into existence until after World War I, with the Federal Antiquities Act and a number of other initiatives pressed by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt passing after his term in 1919. For most of Yellowstone’s first half-century, the Department of War (now Defense) had responsibility for protecting, managing, and to some degree interpreting the park. The distinctive uniforms of today’s "park rangers" dates in large part to the U.S. Army uniform of that time.
1890 saw a century ending, but the city of Newark’s growth just beginning to spill across Raccoon Creek toward the west. It was in this period, when public parks were only just becoming popular with the work of designers like Olmstead and Burnham, that the leadership of both Licking County and Newark saw the gathering threat to the earthworks. The Smithsonian Institution, under Cyrus Thomas, had surveyed the Octagon and Circle in that year, with erosion starting to take a toll on the northern half of the two enclosures where farming was ongoing. Most of the aboveground part of the structure was still in the same condition it had been when Charles Whittlesey had first surveyed in 1847, with only the Observatory Mound at the southwest point of the Circle severely damaged.
Possibly the interest taken by scientists from Washington D.C. spurred action, and the work of an early association of preservationists led by Isaac Smucker of Newark, inspired by the groundwork laid by former Mayor Israel Dille, meant that most officials with the city, county, and schools were aware of and interested in the mounds. However the effort began, what is clear is that a levy was placed on the ballot for a bond issue to purchase the Octagon and Circle (the Great Circle, or "Fairgrounds Circle" was considered safe as the Licking County Agricultural Society owned it for a county fairgrounds), and voters countywide passed it overwhelmingly.
Now that the public owned it, what to do with it? What seems obvious today – make it a park – was much less obvious in 1891. Effectively speaking, there was no National Park System, and in Ohio the original Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society (forerunner to OHS) was just started two years before, and was struggling to convince the state Legislature to purchase and preserve Fort Ancient. The question asked of the OAHS members by the state had to be in the minds of the local leaders with the Octagon: how will you manage this site?
The federal government used soldiers at Yellowstone, but the state had no standing body to detail onto such work. While OAHS debated how they could responsibly care for Fort Ancient, the proposal from Licking County’s elected officials in state government was admirably adroit: use the property for a State Militia Training Ground. This way, restoration work and management of the grounds could be done in the summer, local economic benefits from the visiting militiamen would help to balance the books, and everyone is happy.
At first, this situation did work to everyone’s advantage. Quickly named "Camp McKinley," the site was popular with visiting soldiers from around the sate, with a cool river to the north, shady woods to the south, and along the riverbanks down below the Octagon was a river bottom perfect for a firing range.
Unfortunately, what political power can grant, clout can take away. Other areas with influential politicians started to see the spin-off benefits of having the militia grounds in their district, and clamored to move it around. Finally, pitches made to the Adjutant-General that included cash inducements for equipment and other supplies shifted the weight of argument away from Licking County, and the militia departed.
They left behind a well-groomed property, where busy soldiers under scientifically minded officers had re-surveyed and stabilized areas of the geometric earthworks where ancient trees had fallen over and torn at the slopes. Uneven spots along the tops were leveled to the height first measured 50 years earlier. In fact, jumping to the present day, one wall of the Octagon was "extended" by a crew supervised by an officer who wanted to "straighten out" the otherwise geometric earthen walls; this was found by Hively and Horn in the 1980’s when they were trying to figure out why only one particular lunar alignment didn’t fit the right gateway, and realized later that it had been "fixed" by the militia.
But by 1900, the Octagon area was left open and empty, and comments in local newspapers referred to grass grown long and tree limbs littering the lanes around it. What to do? Even in that year, for the city and county leaders to allocate funds to staff and maintain a site simply for the purposes of preservation would have been remarkably visionary. We might wish that they had been, but it is hard to criticize them for not seeing a solution barely known to governments anywhere at that time.
In 1901, we read of a Newark High School teacher laying out a golf course on the "old militia grounds." This would have been an arrangement of stakes and holes that could be set up and taken down quickly, without sand-traps or other features we think of today; much more like a "Frisbee golf course" and serving the same purpose as Columbus Metro Parks does at Blendon Woods, encouraging walking around the park and experiencing nature while having little impact on the landscape.
By 1910, the Newark Board of Trade (a predecessor body to the Licking County Chamber of Commerce) had been given title to the Octagon property by the local governments, as they had given the board responsibility for promoting business, industry, and residential development. Their track record in these areas, following the serious downturn from 1893, was one of success and improvement except for one area: downtown Newark. Riots became a regular feature of the weekends, with closing time for countless bars around the south side of the Square a dangerous time for police and citizens alike. Brothels, pawnshops, and cheap lodging for industrial workers further intensified the concern that what had been good for industry was not good for the community.
So when a group of local leaders suggested the building of a "Licking County Country Club," they meant it literally: they wanted to establish a place in the country, out in fresh air and open landscape, away from the "miasmas" of the unhealthy air that was thought at the time to bring tuberculosis and other ailments, as well as to keep their children away from the fogs of industrial smoke and barroom atmosphere. This new game, golf, had made a hit with the young people in high school, so why not go . . .
Again, the idea that a group would "get" the mounds sounds odd in today’s context, but the officials in 1910 were sincerely perplexed by how the property could be both protected and maintained. A park system as we know it was still barely even a reality in places like New York and Boston, and an unimaginable luxury to a small city like Newark. Leasing to a group that would allow public access, but take on maintenance for health and safety was extremely attractive.
1911 saw the establishment of Moundbuilders Country Club’s first nine holes (today’s back nine) at the site known since 1933 as Octagon State Memorial, when the Board of Trade, then defunct, handed the property over to the Ohio Archaeological & Historical Society. The city and county expressed some concern over the turnover, noting in the press that this was land bought with taxpayer’s money, but assurances that public access would be maintained removed the final obstacles. By this date, OAHS owned and managed a number of properties, but then as now, their budget was tight, and sharing responsibilities with a local group to cover expenses was attractive, as is still done with sites in Zoar, Mt. Pleasant, and others around the state.
With an extension in 1997 making the effective term of the lease last until 2077, the relationship between preservation and access has grown more problematic. But like the Great Circle unit of the Newark Earthworks, with a history incorporating the State Fair, a Civil War encampment, the County Agricultural Society fairs, and Idlewilde Park, not to mention the WPA Camp Moundbuilders of the CCC in the 1930’s, all of these uses are now part of the living history of a site which still has a powerful influence on visitors and area residents.
The next chapters of the history of preservation at Octagon State memorial are still being drafted, with a "cultural resource management plan" (see www.ohiohistory.org for full text) assembled in 2003 by OHS, using a large advisory team from all over central Ohio. The Moonrise events will be a further page, with many more yet to be written.
The story of how Octagon State Memorial is occupied by a golf course is tied to the developing story of preservation in the United States. The idea of "state parks" or "national parks" whether for natural areas or historic sites is only about a century old, but the history of local preservation at Newark goes back even further. Leaders like Israel Dille and Isaac Smucker in the 1800’s began a discussion that traces all the way back to comments recorded from Sen. Daniel Webster, suggesting that the Newark Earthworks be preserved in some fashion.
With the National Park Service not formally established until after 1900, the model for preserving sites such as Yellowstone or Serpent Mound was a combination of mixed use and private group partnership, with military training grounds a common way to have personnel and resources used to maintain open land that was not farmed. Private groups bought Serpent Mound and Fort Ancient in the late 1800’s, but the urgent question was "how will we manage this property?"
Until the concept of a park service, interpretive guides, and civic support of budgeting for park management was developed, largely in the period immediately following World War I, a variety of concepts were tried to answer the question of parkland management. Leasing to a country club, like similar arrangements at the turn of the century for leasing public lands to amusement park operators or state militia groups, was one of a variety of approaches that made sense at the time.
The public debate over land management and access continues today, at the Octagon and other sites around the nation.
* * *
Preservation and Parks: A Historical Perspective (extended text)
The sight of a golf course occupying one of "The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" is odd and to many, upsetting. Octagon State Memorial, leased to Moundbuilders Country Club since 1911, has been called "playing miniature golf in St. Peter’s" and likened to "soccer practice in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity."
The future of this amazingly important piece of land is tied to its past, and solutions will necessarily take into account the entire story. That story is both more surprising and less thoughtless than a casual visitor to today’s Octagon might think, and shows the still developing course of preservation and public interest into our time, a story still unfinished.
We can go back to a tantalizing hint in records from a Kenyon College commencement, where Daniel Webster, famed Senator from pre-Civil War days, gave an address and was said to have expressed a wish to see the Newark Earthworks preserved by the federal government. While the Congressional Record shows no evidence that this possibly well-intended statement was ever acted on by Sen. Webster, the idea had clearly been heard discussed in public.
If such action had been taken, it would have been the first National Park, supplanting Yellowstone, which was set apart for "the public good" in March of 1872. Other lands and sites in subsequent years were "reserved" by states and private organizations (Mount Vernon and Monticello are still operated by associations much like the Ohio Historical Society, private organizations with public funds supporting their work).
But the National Park Service as we know it did not really come into existence until after World War I, with the Federal Antiquities Act and a number of other initiatives pressed by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt passing after his term in 1919. For most of Yellowstone’s first half-century, the Department of War (now Defense) had responsibility for protecting, managing, and to some degree interpreting the park. The distinctive uniforms of today’s "park rangers" dates in large part to the U.S. Army uniform of that time.
1890 saw a century ending, but the city of Newark’s growth just beginning to spill across Raccoon Creek toward the west. It was in this period, when public parks were only just becoming popular with the work of designers like Olmstead and Burnham, that the leadership of both Licking County and Newark saw the gathering threat to the earthworks. The Smithsonian Institution, under Cyrus Thomas, had surveyed the Octagon and Circle in that year, with erosion starting to take a toll on the northern half of the two enclosures where farming was ongoing. Most of the aboveground part of the structure was still in the same condition it had been when Charles Whittlesey had first surveyed in 1847, with only the Observatory Mound at the southwest point of the Circle severely damaged.
Possibly the interest taken by scientists from Washington D.C. spurred action, and the work of an early association of preservationists led by Isaac Smucker of Newark, inspired by the groundwork laid by former Mayor Israel Dille, meant that most officials with the city, county, and schools were aware of and interested in the mounds. However the effort began, what is clear is that a levy was placed on the ballot for a bond issue to purchase the Octagon and Circle (the Great Circle, or "Fairgrounds Circle" was considered safe as the Licking County Agricultural Society owned it for a county fairgrounds), and voters countywide passed it overwhelmingly.
Now that the public owned it, what to do with it? What seems obvious today – make it a park – was much less obvious in 1891. Effectively speaking, there was no National Park System, and in Ohio the original Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society (forerunner to OHS) was just started two years before, and was struggling to convince the state Legislature to purchase and preserve Fort Ancient. The question asked of the OAHS members by the state had to be in the minds of the local leaders with the Octagon: how will you manage this site?
The federal government used soldiers at Yellowstone, but the state had no standing body to detail onto such work. While OAHS debated how they could responsibly care for Fort Ancient, the proposal from Licking County’s elected officials in state government was admirably adroit: use the property for a State Militia Training Ground. This way, restoration work and management of the grounds could be done in the summer, local economic benefits from the visiting militiamen would help to balance the books, and everyone is happy.
At first, this situation did work to everyone’s advantage. Quickly named "Camp McKinley," the site was popular with visiting soldiers from around the sate, with a cool river to the north, shady woods to the south, and along the riverbanks down below the Octagon was a river bottom perfect for a firing range.
Unfortunately, what political power can grant, clout can take away. Other areas with influential politicians started to see the spin-off benefits of having the militia grounds in their district, and clamored to move it around. Finally, pitches made to the Adjutant-General that included cash inducements for equipment and other supplies shifted the weight of argument away from Licking County, and the militia departed.
They left behind a well-groomed property, where busy soldiers under scientifically minded officers had re-surveyed and stabilized areas of the geometric earthworks where ancient trees had fallen over and torn at the slopes. Uneven spots along the tops were leveled to the height first measured 50 years earlier. In fact, jumping to the present day, one wall of the Octagon was "extended" by a crew supervised by an officer who wanted to "straighten out" the otherwise geometric earthen walls; this was found by Hively and Horn in the 1980’s when they were trying to figure out why only one particular lunar alignment didn’t fit the right gateway, and realized later that it had been "fixed" by the militia.
But by 1900, the Octagon area was left open and empty, and comments in local newspapers referred to grass grown long and tree limbs littering the lanes around it. What to do? Even in that year, for the city and county leaders to allocate funds to staff and maintain a site simply for the purposes of preservation would have been remarkably visionary. We might wish that they had been, but it is hard to criticize them for not seeing a solution barely known to governments anywhere at that time.
In 1901, we read of a Newark High School teacher laying out a golf course on the "old militia grounds." This would have been an arrangement of stakes and holes that could be set up and taken down quickly, without sand-traps or other features we think of today; much more like a "Frisbee golf course" and serving the same purpose as Columbus Metro Parks does at Blendon Woods, encouraging walking around the park and experiencing nature while having little impact on the landscape.
By 1910, the Newark Board of Trade (a predecessor body to the Licking County Chamber of Commerce) had been given title to the Octagon property by the local governments, as they had given the board responsibility for promoting business, industry, and residential development. Their track record in these areas, following the serious downturn from 1893, was one of success and improvement except for one area: downtown Newark. Riots became a regular feature of the weekends, with closing time for countless bars around the south side of the Square a dangerous time for police and citizens alike. Brothels, pawnshops, and cheap lodging for industrial workers further intensified the concern that what had been good for industry was not good for the community.
So when a group of local leaders suggested the building of a "Licking County Country Club," they meant it literally: they wanted to establish a place in the country, out in fresh air and open landscape, away from the "miasmas" of the unhealthy air that was thought at the time to bring tuberculosis and other ailments, as well as to keep their children away from the fogs of industrial smoke and barroom atmosphere. This new game, golf, had made a hit with the young people in high school, so why not go . . .
Again, the idea that a group would "get" the mounds sounds odd in today’s context, but the officials in 1910 were sincerely perplexed by how the property could be both protected and maintained. A park system as we know it was still barely even a reality in places like New York and Boston, and an unimaginable luxury to a small city like Newark. Leasing to a group that would allow public access, but take on maintenance for health and safety was extremely attractive.
1911 saw the establishment of Moundbuilders Country Club’s first nine holes (today’s back nine) at the site known since 1933 as Octagon State Memorial, when the Board of Trade, then defunct, handed the property over to the Ohio Archaeological & Historical Society. The city and county expressed some concern over the turnover, noting in the press that this was land bought with taxpayer’s money, but assurances that public access would be maintained removed the final obstacles. By this date, OAHS owned and managed a number of properties, but then as now, their budget was tight, and sharing responsibilities with a local group to cover expenses was attractive, as is still done with sites in Zoar, Mt. Pleasant, and others around the state.
With an extension in 1997 making the effective term of the lease last until 2077, the relationship between preservation and access has grown more problematic. But like the Great Circle unit of the Newark Earthworks, with a history incorporating the State Fair, a Civil War encampment, the County Agricultural Society fairs, and Idlewilde Park, not to mention the WPA Camp Moundbuilders of the CCC in the 1930’s, all of these uses are now part of the living history of a site which still has a powerful influence on visitors and area residents.
The next chapters of the history of preservation at Octagon State memorial are still being drafted, with a "cultural resource management plan" (see www.ohiohistory.org for full text) assembled in 2003 by OHS, using a large advisory team from all over central Ohio. The Moonrise events will be a further page, with many more yet to be written.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Denison Magazine Summer 2005
“A Christian College of Liberal Arts”
Jeff Gill
From a distance, the first view of Denison an arriving student and family get is of the chapel spire rising above the trees on the top of the hill.
Closer up, their first sight of a piece of campus close enough to touch is the brick and stone entrance where Granville’s Main St. crosses College St. and becomes President’s Drive, more familiarly “the Drag.”
What you see to your right as you turn onto the steep road up to the main campus is a yards-wide carved panel in Vermont granite, looking as if its been there forever, is the name Denison University carved above the college seal, and the words beneath: “A Christian College of Liberal Arts.”
After passing through the four church corner just before seeing that entrance, and driving past it under the downward gaze of Swasey Chapel’s façade, those few words are relatively unremarkable in that context. But fairly regularly prospective students or their families ask in Admissions or call the President’s office to ask “Is this school really a Christian college?”
Their point is one of openness and acceptance for other faith perspectives, or none at all, and the answer to that at Denison for many years has been “all are welcome.” Yet the question still lingers: “Is this school a Christian college?”
One could turn the phrase around for a partial answer. Denison offers many classes well beyond any basic definition of “liberal arts,” and no one doubts that a school can be both/and. In the same sense, many other creeds than Christianity find a welcome place on the hill and around the village of Granville, which doesn’t mean it can’t be in some way a Christian college.
Part of the problem is that today, “Christian college” has a very specific meaning in modern society. That label is usually kept for schools with a narrow sectarian background, often with a “Statement of Faith” that both teachers and students must agree to and even sign, and tight limits on acceptable public behavior both in and between classes on campus, let alone mandatory attendance at worship services.
Of course, within living memory, all those things were true of Dension University.
Through the 1920’s and 1930’s, issues like dancing, non-Christian faculty, attendance at preaching services on campus, even whether female students could smoke off-campus, all occupied a great deal of time for the Board of Trustees and administration.
While protestations of “preserving the high moral character” of the student body were a common reaction to motions toward loosening restrictive rules on conduct and behavior, the fact that these initiatives came so often from the student organizations and staff indicates that interest in things like dancing, smoking (and possibly even drinking!), and not going to chapel services was not purely hypothetical. Memoirs of the period, even back to the 1890’s, show that inattention to the sermon during mandatory worship and inebriated students wreathed with tobacco smoke were already a common feature of campus (or at least near-campus) life.
When the Granville Literary and Theological Institution was founded in 1831 by Ohio Baptists, they were following in a long-standing tradition of church bodies starting schools to train both clergy and future leaders for their denominations. Harvard began with Puritan ministers in 1636 who wanted a school on their side of the Atlantic to train scholars in theology; Yale was started in 1701 by Congregationalists who wanted a place more in line with their differing views on church government. Brown University grew out of the dissenters from Massachusetts and Connecticut who were in many early cases expelled for their religious beliefs, and was founded by Baptists in 1764 (although, like Denison, the “College of the Colony of Rhode Island” did not pick up a benefactor’s name until 1804).
Brown was a source of both inspiration and practical design – as well as a number of early presidents and faculty – for much of Denison’s early history. While Baptists began Colgate in 1819 and Kalamazoo College in 1833, Brown was the touchstone for Denison’s formative years.
Yet even prototypical Brown had gone independent by the 1930’s, cutting the cord that bound it to Baptist polity and structures. The reasons for the general departure of higher education from religious connection were many, but a core issue was survival. Denominational bodies no longer provided prospective students in large numbers, and they certainly did not fulfill capital and annual fundraising support with meaningful numbers.
Denison’s experience with the Baptist “New World Campaign” in the 1920’s was all too typical: a broadbased fundraising campaign by the national and regional church body promised huge returns, and college efforts to raise capital funds were graciously deferred out of respect for their formal relationship. But the quality and professionalism of the effort were not what they could have been, and the results were as much as ten times less than what Denison administrators had hoped and planned for (and likely thought they could have successfully achieved on their own).
Failure at fundraising, and declining student referrals out of churches left board members concerned about tying the future of Denison as an institution too closely to the quality of outside religious administrators.
So as the centennial of Denison’s founding approached in 1931, the question of raising funds beyond the traditional Baptist base and interest in recruiting a larger number of board members from successful alumni rather than just Ohio Baptists, no matter how respected within that small orbit, reached fever pitch.
On one hand, promotional material like aerial photographs of the late 1920’s campus based on long-standing patterns of development work within historic supporters could include text that sounded like this: “Our Baptist Institution at Granville . . .Denison was founded by Baptists in 1831 . . .In order to secure funds . . . the Denison Centennial Movement is being conducted in the Baptist Churches . . . Every loyal Baptist will want to take this opportunity to aid our church school.”
That picture did not include the modern gateway. The other hand was an outstretched gesture to a wider, broader public in Ohio and beyond, claiming a set of ideals and aspirations less Baptist, and more generally Christian. At the dawn of Denison’s second century in 1930, Indiana limestone was employed to suggest that Denison had purposes and plans that went beyond the Baptist heritage, extending to all of Christendom. To say Denison was a Christian college was not to deny the Baptist heritage that had built the path to 1931 over a century, but it did clearly claim a wider scope for her work than the merely sectarian.
Today’s Denison looks even further afield, and as limestone gave way to granite in 1967, the current gateway may yet be revised and expanded in ways the founders could not have anticipated. A vision of education rooted in transcendent ideals with practical application is still at the heart of what the college on the hill is all about; how best to tie the deep sources of transcendence with practical realities of everyday faith, and current forms of religious expression, still challenges the board, students, and supporters of this almost 175 year old “Christian College of Liberal Arts.”
“A Christian College of Liberal Arts”
Jeff Gill
From a distance, the first view of Denison an arriving student and family get is of the chapel spire rising above the trees on the top of the hill.
Closer up, their first sight of a piece of campus close enough to touch is the brick and stone entrance where Granville’s Main St. crosses College St. and becomes President’s Drive, more familiarly “the Drag.”
What you see to your right as you turn onto the steep road up to the main campus is a yards-wide carved panel in Vermont granite, looking as if its been there forever, is the name Denison University carved above the college seal, and the words beneath: “A Christian College of Liberal Arts.”
After passing through the four church corner just before seeing that entrance, and driving past it under the downward gaze of Swasey Chapel’s façade, those few words are relatively unremarkable in that context. But fairly regularly prospective students or their families ask in Admissions or call the President’s office to ask “Is this school really a Christian college?”
Their point is one of openness and acceptance for other faith perspectives, or none at all, and the answer to that at Denison for many years has been “all are welcome.” Yet the question still lingers: “Is this school a Christian college?”
One could turn the phrase around for a partial answer. Denison offers many classes well beyond any basic definition of “liberal arts,” and no one doubts that a school can be both/and. In the same sense, many other creeds than Christianity find a welcome place on the hill and around the village of Granville, which doesn’t mean it can’t be in some way a Christian college.
Part of the problem is that today, “Christian college” has a very specific meaning in modern society. That label is usually kept for schools with a narrow sectarian background, often with a “Statement of Faith” that both teachers and students must agree to and even sign, and tight limits on acceptable public behavior both in and between classes on campus, let alone mandatory attendance at worship services.
Of course, within living memory, all those things were true of Dension University.
Through the 1920’s and 1930’s, issues like dancing, non-Christian faculty, attendance at preaching services on campus, even whether female students could smoke off-campus, all occupied a great deal of time for the Board of Trustees and administration.
While protestations of “preserving the high moral character” of the student body were a common reaction to motions toward loosening restrictive rules on conduct and behavior, the fact that these initiatives came so often from the student organizations and staff indicates that interest in things like dancing, smoking (and possibly even drinking!), and not going to chapel services was not purely hypothetical. Memoirs of the period, even back to the 1890’s, show that inattention to the sermon during mandatory worship and inebriated students wreathed with tobacco smoke were already a common feature of campus (or at least near-campus) life.
When the Granville Literary and Theological Institution was founded in 1831 by Ohio Baptists, they were following in a long-standing tradition of church bodies starting schools to train both clergy and future leaders for their denominations. Harvard began with Puritan ministers in 1636 who wanted a school on their side of the Atlantic to train scholars in theology; Yale was started in 1701 by Congregationalists who wanted a place more in line with their differing views on church government. Brown University grew out of the dissenters from Massachusetts and Connecticut who were in many early cases expelled for their religious beliefs, and was founded by Baptists in 1764 (although, like Denison, the “College of the Colony of Rhode Island” did not pick up a benefactor’s name until 1804).
Brown was a source of both inspiration and practical design – as well as a number of early presidents and faculty – for much of Denison’s early history. While Baptists began Colgate in 1819 and Kalamazoo College in 1833, Brown was the touchstone for Denison’s formative years.
Yet even prototypical Brown had gone independent by the 1930’s, cutting the cord that bound it to Baptist polity and structures. The reasons for the general departure of higher education from religious connection were many, but a core issue was survival. Denominational bodies no longer provided prospective students in large numbers, and they certainly did not fulfill capital and annual fundraising support with meaningful numbers.
Denison’s experience with the Baptist “New World Campaign” in the 1920’s was all too typical: a broadbased fundraising campaign by the national and regional church body promised huge returns, and college efforts to raise capital funds were graciously deferred out of respect for their formal relationship. But the quality and professionalism of the effort were not what they could have been, and the results were as much as ten times less than what Denison administrators had hoped and planned for (and likely thought they could have successfully achieved on their own).
Failure at fundraising, and declining student referrals out of churches left board members concerned about tying the future of Denison as an institution too closely to the quality of outside religious administrators.
So as the centennial of Denison’s founding approached in 1931, the question of raising funds beyond the traditional Baptist base and interest in recruiting a larger number of board members from successful alumni rather than just Ohio Baptists, no matter how respected within that small orbit, reached fever pitch.
On one hand, promotional material like aerial photographs of the late 1920’s campus based on long-standing patterns of development work within historic supporters could include text that sounded like this: “Our Baptist Institution at Granville . . .Denison was founded by Baptists in 1831 . . .In order to secure funds . . . the Denison Centennial Movement is being conducted in the Baptist Churches . . . Every loyal Baptist will want to take this opportunity to aid our church school.”
That picture did not include the modern gateway. The other hand was an outstretched gesture to a wider, broader public in Ohio and beyond, claiming a set of ideals and aspirations less Baptist, and more generally Christian. At the dawn of Denison’s second century in 1930, Indiana limestone was employed to suggest that Denison had purposes and plans that went beyond the Baptist heritage, extending to all of Christendom. To say Denison was a Christian college was not to deny the Baptist heritage that had built the path to 1931 over a century, but it did clearly claim a wider scope for her work than the merely sectarian.
Today’s Denison looks even further afield, and as limestone gave way to granite in 1967, the current gateway may yet be revised and expanded in ways the founders could not have anticipated. A vision of education rooted in transcendent ideals with practical application is still at the heart of what the college on the hill is all about; how best to tie the deep sources of transcendence with practical realities of everyday faith, and current forms of religious expression, still challenges the board, students, and supporters of this almost 175 year old “Christian College of Liberal Arts.”
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Events at Disciples Village, 14 Apr 2105
(Press Release courtesy Disciples Future Service, embargoed to 15 Apr 2105, Noon EST)
(DFS) Robin Run Cryofacility & Disciples Village Historic Site
Spring is always an exciting time for the costumed interpreters at Disciples Village, an interpretive site operated by the Indiana State Museum and Robin Run Cryonics.
With men in "neck-ties" and women in period "Laura Ashley" dresses, you will be greeted for an afternoon of singing 19th and early 20th century "hymnody" accompanied by antiquarian expert Luis Jones-Carfagna on a restored Hammond B-3 electronic organ. Lengthy readings from actual simulated paper sheets (made from fractal planar fungi, reconstituted as laminar material), which do not scroll up like modern electronic/reloadable wireless paper, but are actually read page by page. This creates an atmospheric effect in the worship space, with an audible rustling as the group turns their pages roughly in unison, while sharing the unique theological language and rhythms of this point in time. There is a vaguely hypnotic effect in the recite and respond pattern which no doubt was part of the popularity this quaint form had through the 1950's, supplanted by more general availability of psychotropic drugs in the decades following.
Along with an immersion experience in the particular ritual behavior of the socially dominant group of the day, you will also hear a sermon "preached," or read from an elevated, enclosed platform. The attention paid to this archaic form of exhortation and education will help you further sense and understand this bygone age.
After your "worship experience," the interpretive experience continues in our on-site restaurant, named appropriately enough, "Fellowship Hall" and placed in a semi-belowground structure, approximating the mystery and seclusion considered part of a church meal at that time. Most entrees include the key ingredient "cream of mushroom soup" as a binder, which was so ubiquitous as to possibly include sacred connotations. Deviled eggs (simulated with various soy proteins with vegetable dyes), green bean casserole, and something our historian/chef calls "bing cherry jello" are also on the menu.
Please join us for our Spring Festival at Disciples Village! All proceed go for the upkeep and maintenance of the Cryofacility at Robin Run. To register, key your homepad to Zone 12-6374, and credit 8 communals apiece to prepay and reserve your space at the meal. We hope to have actual restored "folding chairs" for each attendee to sit on at the meal; if you are in medical category 4 or above, a cushion may be helpful -- all other ability classes are provided for fully!
(Press Release courtesy Disciples Future Service, embargoed to 15 Apr 2105, Noon EST)
(DFS) Robin Run Cryofacility & Disciples Village Historic Site
Spring is always an exciting time for the costumed interpreters at Disciples Village, an interpretive site operated by the Indiana State Museum and Robin Run Cryonics.
With men in "neck-ties" and women in period "Laura Ashley" dresses, you will be greeted for an afternoon of singing 19th and early 20th century "hymnody" accompanied by antiquarian expert Luis Jones-Carfagna on a restored Hammond B-3 electronic organ. Lengthy readings from actual simulated paper sheets (made from fractal planar fungi, reconstituted as laminar material), which do not scroll up like modern electronic/reloadable wireless paper, but are actually read page by page. This creates an atmospheric effect in the worship space, with an audible rustling as the group turns their pages roughly in unison, while sharing the unique theological language and rhythms of this point in time. There is a vaguely hypnotic effect in the recite and respond pattern which no doubt was part of the popularity this quaint form had through the 1950's, supplanted by more general availability of psychotropic drugs in the decades following.
Along with an immersion experience in the particular ritual behavior of the socially dominant group of the day, you will also hear a sermon "preached," or read from an elevated, enclosed platform. The attention paid to this archaic form of exhortation and education will help you further sense and understand this bygone age.
After your "worship experience," the interpretive experience continues in our on-site restaurant, named appropriately enough, "Fellowship Hall" and placed in a semi-belowground structure, approximating the mystery and seclusion considered part of a church meal at that time. Most entrees include the key ingredient "cream of mushroom soup" as a binder, which was so ubiquitous as to possibly include sacred connotations. Deviled eggs (simulated with various soy proteins with vegetable dyes), green bean casserole, and something our historian/chef calls "bing cherry jello" are also on the menu.
Please join us for our Spring Festival at Disciples Village! All proceed go for the upkeep and maintenance of the Cryofacility at Robin Run. To register, key your homepad to Zone 12-6374, and credit 8 communals apiece to prepay and reserve your space at the meal. We hope to have actual restored "folding chairs" for each attendee to sit on at the meal; if you are in medical category 4 or above, a cushion may be helpful -- all other ability classes are provided for fully!
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
This is the *original* draft of the chapter that appeared in the Ohio Bicentennial "Religion in Ohio" volume from Ohio University Press in revised form under the heading "Jeff Gill and Dennis Sparks." When the fourth re-edit asked me to change Scots-Irish to "Scotch-Irish" as the print version reads, and retract that Garfield was the only ordained minister elected president of the United States (his ordination certificate is on file at the Garfield Presidential Library in Mentor, Ohio), I was, shall we say, less than co-operative. This version is the one I still prefer, oddly enough.
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
By Jeff Gill
Restoration of “the ancient order of things” and building Christian unity make up the core teaching, or “plea” of Restoration movement churches. Even in the division between Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ, and independent Christian Churches, all three branches of the Restoration Movement (sometimes called the “Stone-Campbell movement” by historians) still claim this essential plea, and look back to early leaders like Thomas Campbell with their affirmation that “the church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.”
How did a movement based on the need for Christian unity, and discarding creeds and doctrine for a re-emphasis on New Testament teaching as a model for church governance, end up becoming a denomination, let alone three? The Restoration Movement story is told in Ohio much as it might be for the United States and Canada as a whole.
From frontier areas of America as they were around 1800, the need for flexible church organization and the desire for leadership (whether ordained or not) sent ripples of change through existing denominational structures. Starting in the Ohio River valley and other margins of settlement, preachers found themselves inviting Christians together who had not worshiped in one place back in Europe, or even along the Atlantic shore. People asked to join in communion celebrations who had not seen clergy of their denomination for months or even years, as well as needing baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Communities used to doing everything from barn raising to militia drill together wanted to hold revival services together, too. Pastors started to wonder, “Why not?”
Barton Stone, a Presbyterian pastor in northern Kentucky, hosted a revival at Cane Ridge in 1801. Methodists and Baptists and scattered other Christian groups were represented in both the preaching and hearing at this celebrated event which drew in thousands from both sides of the Ohio. Presbyterian authorities were highly critical after reports of the eclectic nature of the services, and their attacks led to Stone and others leaving their presbytery, or local organization of churches, and forming their own.
But even that they shortly dissolved, expressing their desire in 1804 to “sink into union with the Body of Christ.” This group, calling themselves simply Christians, acknowledged no organization above that of congregation, and pointed to the scriptures as their single authoritative guide. As Duane Cummins has pointed out, “the formalized church of the time. . .became irrelevant to the frontier settlers.” Tradition and distant formal authority was not a factor in their social setting, and carried little weight in how the settlers turned towards their God.
Not long after, and equally near the waters of the Ohio, a Scots-Irish preacher came by invitation to western Pennsylvania. Thomas Campbell was admittedly weary of the divisions in the Presbyterian church of northern Ireland, but hoped as he left family behind in 1807 that a new start for Christ’s church could be found in this New World. Instead, the disputes over doctrine had come with the other baggage into the frontier settlements along Chartiers and Cross Creeks, and Thomas was quickly embroiled in the same controversies over open communion tables and who was “fit” to serve and receive at the Lord’s table.
Like Stone in Kentucky, Campbell in Pennsylvania withdrew from denominational structures before he could be rejected, and organized on the local, congregational level. He defended his actions in a publication called “Declaration and Address,” which closed with thirteen propositions for the restoration of the New Testament church and Christian unity, starting with his declaration about the nature of “the church of Christ upon earth” and continuing in words best summarized by the reforming motto that predates both Stone and Campbell, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
Almost immediately upon the publication of “Declaration and Address” in 1809, the rest of Thomas Campbell’s family came to Washington, PA. His 21 year old son Alexander had helped his mother Jane hold the family together through a shipwreck during their first attempt to reach America, and nearly a year in Glasgow, Scotland waiting for their next chance to seek passage aboard the “Hibernia.”
Alexander had used the unexpected delay well, attending college at the University of Glasgow, in part out of a commitment to Christian ministry made during the shipwreck that brought them there. He was exposed to Scotland reformers like Glas, Sandeman, and the Haldanes, whose ideas about congregational independence, weekly communion, and believer’s baptism by immersion (given at the “age of accountability” instead of baptizing infants) were to have a lasting impact on the Campbells.
Thomas was relieved to find, when he and Alexander were reunited, that just before departing Glasgow, Alexander too had broken with the Church of Scotland, primarily over the practice of “testing” church members to determine their fitness to receive communion at one of the few times a year the Lord’s Table was set. Both father and son had come to see that baptism and communion are freely given gifts of God through the church to help make souls ready for grace, and that requiring signs of grace before permitting access to those sacraments (or “ordinances” in the language of the reformers) was putting human-made barriers in the way of God’s renewing activity in the world.
During the next year, father and son joined with other families in their area in forming the Christian Association of Washington, PA; meeting in a variety of locations, they soon felt the need to build a place of worship convenient to fellow believers who were coming from all along the valleys and ridges draining into the Ohio. At Brush Run in 1811, right up against the northern panhandle of what was still Virginia (now West Virginia), they built their first church. A fateful trip to borrow precious books, rare on the frontier, took Alexander across the Virginia border to what is now Bethany, West Virginia, where he would meet his future wife Margaret and the place where – when home! – he would live out the rest of his life. He would be ordained by the Brush Run elders on New Year’s Day of 1812.
The newly married couple almost made it to Ohio, now a state, when they considered a move in 1814 to the Zanesville area with a number of younger families out of Brush Run. The plan to pioneer a reforming community, worshiping together and educating their children in the light of “clear teachings of the Bible,” was put on a back burner when Margaret’s father offered his Buffalo Creek home and acreage to the young Campbells for one dollar.
Farming, raising a family, and leading a local congregation could have easily been the rest of Alexander’s story, but the desire to be part of a larger fellowship and supportive Christian community led the Brush Run reformers into and out of Baptist associations, which seemed at first a congenial home for their particular religious beliefs and practices. The frontier respect for autonomy and independence continued to attract supporters, and also kept them in conflict with church structures and traditions. These conflicts led them to a firm objection to doctrinal confessions and creeds “as a test of fellowship,” even when they might have agreed with the substance of their content. The “Christian Baptist” was a publication begun by Campbell in 1823 to share more widely their belief that a simple “Good Confession” of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior was the only requirement for membership in a fellowship of “Disciples,” which was scripturally his preferred name for their churches.
The final break with the Mahoning (Baptist) Association in Austintown, OH in 1830 led to a change in the title of Campbell’s publication, and a new self-understanding as “a Restoration movement.” Named from Alexander’s belief that the work of the church was to teach and embody the future millennium of Christ’s reign over creation, “The Millennial Harbinger” would carry the Restorationist message not just all across the frontier but ultimately around the world. A compelling preacher from Pittsburgh named Walter Scott joined the growing movement, and began in the Western Reserve area of Ohio to preach in existing churches and begin new congregations. In years to come, many of these northeast Ohioans would follow the frontier to Indiana and Iowa, or south through Missouri to Oklahoma and Texas, repeating the process of church planting they experienced back in Ohio and spreading their model of congregationally governed churches with lay leadership empowered to serve communion and baptize upon hearing the simple words of Peter’s Good Confession.
When Scott moved the center of his ministry down to the Cincinnati area, more connections developed between the “Christians” of Barton Stone and the “Disciples” who had been influenced by the Campbells. New Year’s Day 1832 brought these two streams together in a formal greeting at a worship service in Lexington, KY. While these currents brought strength and power to the Restorationist movement, they also introduced strong forces that Alexander was only just able to hold together until his death in 1866.
As the 1800’s drew to a close, issues of slavery and the Civil War, modernism and “innovations” such as musical instruments in worship, and resistance to co-operative mission work as “unscriptural” led the Churches of Christ down a separate path. Independent Christian Churches have loosely organized around the North American Christian Convention as they parted from the congregations and state societies that came together as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the formal name and structure adopted in the late 1960’s. The Christian Church in Ohio, one of over 30 regional bodies for Disciples’ congregations, grew out of the state missionary and Sunday School societies whose co-operative work had grown out of the initial association started in Cincinnati in 1849, with Alexander Campbell as first president.
Memorable figures from our past still inspire us today, reminding Ohio Disciples of their traditions of honoring education and public service: embodied by names like James A. Garfield, the only ordained minister to serve as President of the United States, and earlier president of Hiram College, a Disciples’ foundation following in the example of Campbell’s Bethany College. During the last century, notable figures like Gaines Cook, Herald Monroe, and Howard Ratcliff have led the evolving institution that we now call the Christian Church in Ohio, made up of 200 congregations around the state. Today, Ohio Disciples look with pride to their camp and conference programs for youth and adults celebrating over 50 years of vital ministry at Camp Christian near Magnetic Springs, and honor the leadership role our denomination continues to play in ecumenical bodies like the Ohio Council of Churches and Churches Uniting in Christ. With Barton Stone, we still affirm that “Christian unity is our polar star.”
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
By Jeff Gill
Restoration of “the ancient order of things” and building Christian unity make up the core teaching, or “plea” of Restoration movement churches. Even in the division between Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ, and independent Christian Churches, all three branches of the Restoration Movement (sometimes called the “Stone-Campbell movement” by historians) still claim this essential plea, and look back to early leaders like Thomas Campbell with their affirmation that “the church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.”
How did a movement based on the need for Christian unity, and discarding creeds and doctrine for a re-emphasis on New Testament teaching as a model for church governance, end up becoming a denomination, let alone three? The Restoration Movement story is told in Ohio much as it might be for the United States and Canada as a whole.
From frontier areas of America as they were around 1800, the need for flexible church organization and the desire for leadership (whether ordained or not) sent ripples of change through existing denominational structures. Starting in the Ohio River valley and other margins of settlement, preachers found themselves inviting Christians together who had not worshiped in one place back in Europe, or even along the Atlantic shore. People asked to join in communion celebrations who had not seen clergy of their denomination for months or even years, as well as needing baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Communities used to doing everything from barn raising to militia drill together wanted to hold revival services together, too. Pastors started to wonder, “Why not?”
Barton Stone, a Presbyterian pastor in northern Kentucky, hosted a revival at Cane Ridge in 1801. Methodists and Baptists and scattered other Christian groups were represented in both the preaching and hearing at this celebrated event which drew in thousands from both sides of the Ohio. Presbyterian authorities were highly critical after reports of the eclectic nature of the services, and their attacks led to Stone and others leaving their presbytery, or local organization of churches, and forming their own.
But even that they shortly dissolved, expressing their desire in 1804 to “sink into union with the Body of Christ.” This group, calling themselves simply Christians, acknowledged no organization above that of congregation, and pointed to the scriptures as their single authoritative guide. As Duane Cummins has pointed out, “the formalized church of the time. . .became irrelevant to the frontier settlers.” Tradition and distant formal authority was not a factor in their social setting, and carried little weight in how the settlers turned towards their God.
Not long after, and equally near the waters of the Ohio, a Scots-Irish preacher came by invitation to western Pennsylvania. Thomas Campbell was admittedly weary of the divisions in the Presbyterian church of northern Ireland, but hoped as he left family behind in 1807 that a new start for Christ’s church could be found in this New World. Instead, the disputes over doctrine had come with the other baggage into the frontier settlements along Chartiers and Cross Creeks, and Thomas was quickly embroiled in the same controversies over open communion tables and who was “fit” to serve and receive at the Lord’s table.
Like Stone in Kentucky, Campbell in Pennsylvania withdrew from denominational structures before he could be rejected, and organized on the local, congregational level. He defended his actions in a publication called “Declaration and Address,” which closed with thirteen propositions for the restoration of the New Testament church and Christian unity, starting with his declaration about the nature of “the church of Christ upon earth” and continuing in words best summarized by the reforming motto that predates both Stone and Campbell, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
Almost immediately upon the publication of “Declaration and Address” in 1809, the rest of Thomas Campbell’s family came to Washington, PA. His 21 year old son Alexander had helped his mother Jane hold the family together through a shipwreck during their first attempt to reach America, and nearly a year in Glasgow, Scotland waiting for their next chance to seek passage aboard the “Hibernia.”
Alexander had used the unexpected delay well, attending college at the University of Glasgow, in part out of a commitment to Christian ministry made during the shipwreck that brought them there. He was exposed to Scotland reformers like Glas, Sandeman, and the Haldanes, whose ideas about congregational independence, weekly communion, and believer’s baptism by immersion (given at the “age of accountability” instead of baptizing infants) were to have a lasting impact on the Campbells.
Thomas was relieved to find, when he and Alexander were reunited, that just before departing Glasgow, Alexander too had broken with the Church of Scotland, primarily over the practice of “testing” church members to determine their fitness to receive communion at one of the few times a year the Lord’s Table was set. Both father and son had come to see that baptism and communion are freely given gifts of God through the church to help make souls ready for grace, and that requiring signs of grace before permitting access to those sacraments (or “ordinances” in the language of the reformers) was putting human-made barriers in the way of God’s renewing activity in the world.
During the next year, father and son joined with other families in their area in forming the Christian Association of Washington, PA; meeting in a variety of locations, they soon felt the need to build a place of worship convenient to fellow believers who were coming from all along the valleys and ridges draining into the Ohio. At Brush Run in 1811, right up against the northern panhandle of what was still Virginia (now West Virginia), they built their first church. A fateful trip to borrow precious books, rare on the frontier, took Alexander across the Virginia border to what is now Bethany, West Virginia, where he would meet his future wife Margaret and the place where – when home! – he would live out the rest of his life. He would be ordained by the Brush Run elders on New Year’s Day of 1812.
The newly married couple almost made it to Ohio, now a state, when they considered a move in 1814 to the Zanesville area with a number of younger families out of Brush Run. The plan to pioneer a reforming community, worshiping together and educating their children in the light of “clear teachings of the Bible,” was put on a back burner when Margaret’s father offered his Buffalo Creek home and acreage to the young Campbells for one dollar.
Farming, raising a family, and leading a local congregation could have easily been the rest of Alexander’s story, but the desire to be part of a larger fellowship and supportive Christian community led the Brush Run reformers into and out of Baptist associations, which seemed at first a congenial home for their particular religious beliefs and practices. The frontier respect for autonomy and independence continued to attract supporters, and also kept them in conflict with church structures and traditions. These conflicts led them to a firm objection to doctrinal confessions and creeds “as a test of fellowship,” even when they might have agreed with the substance of their content. The “Christian Baptist” was a publication begun by Campbell in 1823 to share more widely their belief that a simple “Good Confession” of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior was the only requirement for membership in a fellowship of “Disciples,” which was scripturally his preferred name for their churches.
The final break with the Mahoning (Baptist) Association in Austintown, OH in 1830 led to a change in the title of Campbell’s publication, and a new self-understanding as “a Restoration movement.” Named from Alexander’s belief that the work of the church was to teach and embody the future millennium of Christ’s reign over creation, “The Millennial Harbinger” would carry the Restorationist message not just all across the frontier but ultimately around the world. A compelling preacher from Pittsburgh named Walter Scott joined the growing movement, and began in the Western Reserve area of Ohio to preach in existing churches and begin new congregations. In years to come, many of these northeast Ohioans would follow the frontier to Indiana and Iowa, or south through Missouri to Oklahoma and Texas, repeating the process of church planting they experienced back in Ohio and spreading their model of congregationally governed churches with lay leadership empowered to serve communion and baptize upon hearing the simple words of Peter’s Good Confession.
When Scott moved the center of his ministry down to the Cincinnati area, more connections developed between the “Christians” of Barton Stone and the “Disciples” who had been influenced by the Campbells. New Year’s Day 1832 brought these two streams together in a formal greeting at a worship service in Lexington, KY. While these currents brought strength and power to the Restorationist movement, they also introduced strong forces that Alexander was only just able to hold together until his death in 1866.
As the 1800’s drew to a close, issues of slavery and the Civil War, modernism and “innovations” such as musical instruments in worship, and resistance to co-operative mission work as “unscriptural” led the Churches of Christ down a separate path. Independent Christian Churches have loosely organized around the North American Christian Convention as they parted from the congregations and state societies that came together as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the formal name and structure adopted in the late 1960’s. The Christian Church in Ohio, one of over 30 regional bodies for Disciples’ congregations, grew out of the state missionary and Sunday School societies whose co-operative work had grown out of the initial association started in Cincinnati in 1849, with Alexander Campbell as first president.
Memorable figures from our past still inspire us today, reminding Ohio Disciples of their traditions of honoring education and public service: embodied by names like James A. Garfield, the only ordained minister to serve as President of the United States, and earlier president of Hiram College, a Disciples’ foundation following in the example of Campbell’s Bethany College. During the last century, notable figures like Gaines Cook, Herald Monroe, and Howard Ratcliff have led the evolving institution that we now call the Christian Church in Ohio, made up of 200 congregations around the state. Today, Ohio Disciples look with pride to their camp and conference programs for youth and adults celebrating over 50 years of vital ministry at Camp Christian near Magnetic Springs, and honor the leadership role our denomination continues to play in ecumenical bodies like the Ohio Council of Churches and Churches Uniting in Christ. With Barton Stone, we still affirm that “Christian unity is our polar star.”
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