Slogans of a Movement: “Where the Scriptures Speaks, We Speak; And Where the Scriptures Are Silent, We Are Silent”

Seventeen ninety-eight was a significant year in the life of Thomas Campbell (1763-1854). In that year, the Earl of Gosford offered Campbell a lucrative, live-in position to serve as the family’s private tutor. Campbell turned down the position, however, because he didn’t want his children to presume their lives would resemble the extravagant lives of the European nobility. That year also saw Campbell associating with the Evangelical Society of Ulster, an evangelical group of several denominations that were working cooperatively to advance the cause of Christ. Finally, Campbell was ordained and installed as the minister for the Ahorey Presbyterian Church in 1798. Unfortunately, Campbell’s ordination went unapproved for a year because the Associate Synod of Ireland failed to assemble amid the Irish Rebellion of 1798. 

When the Associate Synod convened in 1799, Campbell’s ordination came into question because of his interactions with other denominations through the Evangelical Society of Ulster. Only when he agreed to withdraw from the Evangelical Society was his ordination finally accepted and recorded by the Associate Synod. While Campbell agreed to leave the Evangelical Society, his sentiment for seeking a common ground of cooperation with those in other denominations never diminished. In fact, the Evangelical Society became the model for what he would develop a decade later as the Christian Association of Washington. 

Campbell’s theological training at Archibald Bruce’s (1746-1816) seminary in Whitburn, Scotland, placed him squarely in the camp of the Anti-Burgher faction of the Seceder Presbyterians. Between 1804 and 1805, however, Campbell led a group of Presbyterian ministers in an effort to end the schism between the Burgher and Anti-Burgher factions of the Irish Presbyterian Church. The division between the Burgher and Anti-Burgher groups occurred in 1747 over whether a town burgess (a representative in the House of Commons) in Scotland had to take an oath to protect the state religion (Presbyterianism). Because Presbyterianism was not the established religion of Ireland and no oaths were taken, Campbell contended that there did not need to be a division between the Burghers and Anti-Burghers. Much to his dismay, Campbell’s efforts to reunite the two parties in Ireland failed in 1805 (though the General Synod of Scotland eventually united the two factions in 1820). Moreover, in 1806, when the Anti-Burghers (led by Campbell’s former theology instructor, Archibald Bruce) followed the lead of the earlier division of the Burghers (in 1795) over a question of the civil magistrate’s power in religious matters, Campbell found himself in the camp of the Old-Light, Anti-Burgher, Seceder Presbyterians.i 

Amid failing health from a strenuous workload and disappointment with the sectarian wranglings of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Campbell boarded the sailing-vessel Brutus and journeyed to America in early 1807. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia in May 1807, Campbell found the North American Synod of the Seceder Presbyterian Church in session. He was quickly accepted by the synod and assigned to preach in the Chartiers Presbytery centered in the community of Washington in western Pennsylvania. Though many friends who had immigrated from Ireland welcomed Campbell to Washington, his warm welcome (at least from some) did not last long. 

After roughly three months of ministry in the Chartiers Presbytery, Campbell angered some of his ministry associates by offering communion to an assembly in Cannamaugh, Pennsylvania, without properly questioning the partakers. In late October 1807, the Chartiers Presbytery charged Campbell with departing from Seceder orthodoxy and by January 1808, a list of seven charges were made against him. Although he answered each of the seven charges, Campbell was still censured and suspended from his ministry duties. Robert Richardson (1806-1876), a friend of both Campbells and the biographer of Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), contended that the charges against the elder Campbell arose from professional jealousy due to his “greater abilities and popularity.”ii 

In May 1808, Campbell appealed the decision of the Chartiers Presbytery to the Associate Synod of North America, which met in Philadelphia. After much discussion, he was “rebuked and admonished” by the synod but cleared to resume his ministerial duties. Nevertheless, he found himself ostracized by the leadership of the Chartier Presbytery and ultimately withdrew from the jurisdiction of the body in September 1808. At the next convening of the Associate Synod of North America, in May 1809, Campbell presented a document to the synod entitled “Declaration and Address to the Associate Synod,” and formally severed his relationship with the Seceder Presbyterian Church in North America.iii 

Though no longer a minister within the Presbyterian ranks, Campbell continued his ministry in the regions around Washington, Pennsylvania. His plea for “Christian liberality [freedom] and Christian union upon the basis of the Bible,” Richardson noted, attracted large numbers to gather for his preaching and teaching under a grove of trees or in “the houses of his old Irish neighbors, who had settled in Washington county.” Upon finding that many of his regular listeners—some being Presbyterians, some belonging to other denominations, and a few belonging to no churches at all—were sympathetic to the ideas he advocated, Campbell proposed that a meeting be held to “confer freely upon the existing state of things, and to give, if possible, more definiteness to the movement in which they had thus far been co-operating without any formal organization or determinate arrangement.” Although the exact date of the meeting is unknown, they agreed to gather in the home of Abraham Altars in the summer of 1809.iv 

As this group gathered in Altars’ home, there was not “the slightest intention of forming a new religious party.” Rather, wrote Richardson, “the whole design of the effort was, if possible, to put an end to partyism, and to induce different religious denominations to unite together upon the Bible as the only authorized rule of faith and practice, and to desist from their controversies about matters of mere opinion and expediency.”v Campbell opened the meeting with a prayer in which he earnestly sought God’s guidance in their plans. He went on to contend “partyism … was one of the greatest evils, and one among the chief hinderances to the spread of the gospel.”vi Moreover, he argued, God’s “sacred Word” is “an infallible standard, which was all-sufficient and alone-sufficient, as a basis of union and Christian co-operation.”vii Finally, after insisting upon “a return to the simple teachings of the Scriptures, and the abandonment of everything in religion not found in the Bible,” Campbell concluded by stating a general rule that he hoped the body would accept and act upon: “That where the Scriptures speak, we speak; and where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.”viii 

With the utterance of these words, according to Richardson, “a solemn silence pervaded the assembly.” To many in this gathering, Richardson continued, it was “a new revelation, and those simple words … were for ever engraven upon their hearts.” This unpretentious phrase, Richardson went on to write, was “a clear and well-defined basis of action, and the hearts of all who were truly interested re-echoed the resolve: ‘Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.’”ix With these words as something of a guiding principle, many of those who had gathered at the Altars’ farm assembled once again at “the head-waters of Buffalo [River],” on August 17, 1809, to designate themselves “The Christian Association of Washington.” As an “association” (not a church), Richardson reported that “the members felt themselves cordially united in the great object of promoting Christian union and peace in religious world.”

In setting forth this motto, Thomas Campbell established it as the “foundational principle” or “guiding star” upon which the fundamental concepts of the Restoration Movement would be established. Leroy Garrett correctly described Campbell’s motto as “one of the most often quoted non-biblical sayings in the history of the Movement,” and an idea that “is generally viewed as the essence of its plea.” “It was from the moment when these significant words were uttered and accepted,” Richardson further explained, “that the more intelligent ever afterward dated the formal and actual commencement of the Reformation which was subsequently carried on with so much success, and which has already produced such important changes in religious society over a large portion of the world.”xii 

Those who still embrace the principles of the Restoration Movement will continue to both respect and repeat Thomas Campbell’s grand motto, “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; and where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent,” as a pivotal guideline for the advancement of the Movement.