Journey to the CRA: The General Convention and The American Christian Missionary Society

Over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays of 1831 and 1832, representatives of the Christian reform movements of Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) and Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) met in central Kentucky to discuss the possibility of uniting their groups into a single fellowship. The unity that ensued had a seismic influence on America religion, especially on the American frontier. What had previously been two nominally significant groups developed into a growing and advancing American religious community. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, the combined efforts of the Stone and Campbell union emerged to become one of the fastest growing religious movements in the United States. 

As the fledgling movement’s numbers advanced and the message of Christian reform gained a wider audience, the leading voices in the fellowship began to recognize the need for cooperation among the churches to expand the movement further. Writing some forty years after the first national convention for the fellowship that was widely becoming recognized as the Disciples of Christ, Charles L. Loos observed that “As the spring and summer months of the year 1849 were passing, the conviction of the necessity of a general national meeting was deepening and extending in the churches, and the call for it became stronger every month and every week in our press.”i Moreover, Alexander Campbell, who had migrated from a position of opposition to missionary societies to one of support for such societies,ii became a strong advocate for the national convention. “No one took a stronger or an earlier interest in this matter than A. Campbell,” wrote Loos, “and no one had clearer or more decided convictions of the propriety of such an assembly than he.”iii  

In an 1848 response to a letter from Jesse B Ferguson (1819-1870) about the publication of a hymn book, Campbell made it clear that he could “never … consent to a few brethren in any city, or town, or county, or State, erecting themselves into a Christian Bible Society, or Christian Missionary Society, or a Christian Tract Society, for the whole community extending over thirty States,” but he desired a general convention to more effectively promote the movement’s plea as the entire church rather than merely a few.iv “In the multitude of counselors there is safety,” he later wrote, yet he made it clear that the convention was not to have authority over the local congregations. “Such meetings have no special control over individual churches,” Campbell insisted, “nor any deputed or Divine right to exercise jurisdiction over particular communities.” Their focus, he further stated, “is to be devoted to general objects, such as cannot be so well dispensed or attended to by particular congregations.”v 

After much discussion, it was agreed that the general convention would be held at the Christian Church at Eighth and Walnut Streets in Cincinnati, Ohio, in late October 1849. At a preliminary meeting for the convention, on Tuesday, October 23, Alexander Campbell was elected president though his personal representative, W.K. Pendleton (1817-1899), reported that a last-minute illness would prevent Campbell from attending. David S. Burnet (1808-1867), one of several vice presidents for the convention, served as the acting presider in Campbell’s absence.vi There were 156 delegates and numerous others who attended the convention, representing over 100 churches from eleven states.vii While there were numerous topics of discussion, James DeForest Murch correctly asserts, “As the sessions of the 1849 convention progressed, it became evident that the real reason the delegates had come together was to discover ways and means of developing a missionary enterprise.”viii  

On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 24, following some preliminary discussions at the assembly’s opening earlier that day, evangelist John T. Johnson (1788-1856), who Loos described as an “ardent and faithful advocate of primitive Christianity,” offered the following resolution: 

Resolved, That a missionary society, as a means to concentrate and dispense the wealth and benevolence of the brethren of this reformation in an effort to convert the world, is both scriptural and expedient. 

Resolved, That a committee of seven be appointed to prepare a constitution for said society. 

The formation of such a society, Loos wrote, was “the one thought uppermost in the minds of all” at the convention. While other issues continued to be discussed, W.K. Pendleton advanced the cause of missions further by proposing an additional resolution: 

Resolved, That the missionary society contemplated by this action, be presented to the brethren as the chief object of importance among our benevolent enterprises.ix 

A hastily assembled committee of highly respected leaders in the movement hammered out a constitution of twelve articles for governance of the proposed missionary society. Each aspect of the constitution was discussed during the following day’s meeting, and during the evening session of Thursday, October 25, the constitution, “with immaterial changes, often chiefly verbal, was adopted with remarkable unanimity.”x The name initially chosen for the missionary society was “The Christian Home and Foreign Missionary Society,” but “for the sake of simplicity,” it was changed to “The American Christian Missionary Society.”xi 

Once the ACMS was established, an appeal for financial support was presented to the participants in the convention. Within minutes, fifty-two people accepted the call to become life members of the ACMS at a cost of $20 each, and eleven people stepped up to serve as life directors for a fee of $100 each. As additional monetary support and pledges of support were received throughout the remainder of the convention,xii it seemed certain the society was off to a strong start. While Alexander Campbell was selected to serve as the president of the new missionary society, which was headquartered in Cincinnati, the primary responsibilities for running the organization were left in the capable hands of David S. Burnet, who became the Corresponding Secretary of the ACMS. 

Within weeks of the ACMS’s founding, the society’s board of directors received a letter from James Turner Barclay (1807-1874) offering to serve as the society’s first missionary (and the Restoration Movement’s first missionary). Barclay, a medical doctor who had left the Presbyterian Church in response to the Restoration Plea some ten years earlier, was convinced that the conversion of the Jews would eventuate in the second coming of Christ. With such strongly held millennial convictions, he volunteered to relocate his family to Jerusalem and establish the Jerusalem Mission. In October 1850, just before the ACMS’s first anniversary, the Barclay family set sail for Jerusalem, arriving in early 1851. 

The missionary work in Jerusalem was far less productive than Barclay or the ACMS leadership had hoped it would be. Barclay’s first tour of duty (1851-1854) resulted in few converts, though Barclay was in constant demand as a physician amid an outbreak of malaria. The Barclay family returned to the United States in 1854 as a result of the ACMS’s financial instability and the outbreak of the Crimean War. As ACMS finances stabilized, the Barclays returned to Jerusalem in the summer of 1858 for a second tour of duty. Once again, the results were less than favorable, and the family was again forced to return home in 1862 when the onset of the American Civil War in 1861 depleted the funding of the ACMS.xiii 

A second effort by the ACMS arose when Burnet received news about a slave in Christian County, Kentucky, who had affiliated with the Hopkinsville Christian Church and may be interested in going to the newly formed nation of Liberia (a colony for former slaves) as a missionary. Burnet encouraged the Hopkinsville Church to purchase the freedom of Alexander Cross (c.1810-1854) at a cost of $530 and provide additional preparations for him to serve as a missionary in Africa. By November 1853, Cross, along with his wife and young son, set sail for Liberia aboard the ship Banshee. 

Though repeatedly warned against over-exerting himself in the jungle climate of Africa, Cross poled his family in a large canoe up the St. Paul River. Almost immediately, he came down with a fever and died in February 1854, less than two months after arriving in Africa. He became the first missionary of the Restoration Movement to die in service on foreign soil. His seven-year-old son also contracted a fever and died in Liberia. Like the Jerusalem Mission, the Liberia missionary effort of the ACMS also failed to bring about any meaningful accomplishments.xiv 

The ACMS would send out additional missionaries in the years that followed, but the society seemed to get bogged down in issues aside from their primary purpose and the failures of their initial missionary efforts cast something of a shadow across their work. Nevertheless, the Restoration Movement’s concern for missions did not lose momentum. By the 1870s, there were calls for additional missionary societies within the movement that would be more effective in taking the message of Christ to the world.