Customer Reviews

The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement

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I purchased this book and read it in 1982. It is a great source for the history of all three branches of the Restoration Movement. Mr Garrett has preached in all three branches of the Movement and is very familiar with all. He was also my American History teacher at Dallas Christian College.

Any way, the book is well documented (footnotes & bibliography). It is easy to read and very informative. It appears to me to be a fair treatment of all three branches of the Movement.

If you've ever been in a fundamentalist church, this is your book. It's detailed, well-written, and incredibly deep.

The history of the Stone-Campbell movement is an incredible read, whoever records and compiles it. The history by Earl West is equally inspiring. Garrett has done a fine job of compiling and organizing the material, and I learned much from his book. He takes a kind and considerate posture toward the failings of the many characters who make our history, whichever of the three major divisions they may be from.

Occasionally Garrett tips his hand to reveal his judgment on the relative success of the "unity movement" for which he serves as historian. His standard for judgment is the ideal of achieving unity of the Christian sects/denominations, and he sees the noble ideal as largely a practical failure because it not only failed to unite the sects, but divided itself many more times.

But this approach is not helpful. Jesus himself intended unity (John 12), and could be judged a failure for the same reasons. Garrett sees the ideal of unity at odds with "restoration". In other words, the minute an attempt is made to define the church a "limitation" on unity is thereby created. There are insiders and outsiders as a result.

In fact, these sometimes counter goals are the outworking of two others: truth and love. They are equally at play in nascent NT Christianity. They intend unity, but where division results it is not a negative (1 Cor. 11:19). It is the means for discerning true disciple from heretic, true gospel from false.

To be sure, some divisions in the Stone-Campbell movement were not strict applications of the truth-love dynamic. Yet many were. This would have been a better book if truth-love had been the standard the author applied to his evaluations. Unity achieved at the disdain of truth is not a success. Restoration is not a hindrance to this ideal, but its necessary complement.

This book uncovers the facts of the Church of Christ and lays out the many flaws within this group of people. The Church of Christ has only been around for about 200 years and yet they claim it is the true church from Pentecost. Many contradictions and divisions have troubled this denomination from within and this book will help clear the issues. Baptismal regeneration, musical instruments, and how they interpret Scripture are all brought up in this book. A must read if you or anyone you care about is involved with this denomination. I came out of the Church of Christ but it took years to detox from the doctrines that they adhere to and this book was a great help to get some solid historical facts apart from any bias position.