David Lipscomb feared that wealth had perverted the mission and work of the church in late nineteenth-century America. A ruralist ethos reigned among his contemporaries, resulting in prejudice against the urban poor. Yet, Lipscomb believed the gospel was fundamentally good news to the poor—including the urban poor. He called prophetically for churches to preach the gospel as Jesus did, by identifying with the poor and communicating the message to them in understandable ways.

In 1967 David Edwin Harrell, Jr., published a significant, though relatively unknown, article entitled “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.”1 The article demonstrated that the Stone-Campbell Movement, a thoroughly western religious body, was birthed in the midst of agrarian mythology (that is, a particular way of looking at the world). Specifically, this myth envisioned the newly founded United States with its seemingly boundless western expansion as the “garden of the world.” It was rooted in “the conviction that rural life was superior to urban life” and that the “foremost hero of the garden myth was the yeoman farmer.”2 This figure was the typical small, industrious, and independent farm of the Midwest, which became the dominant model in the South after the demise of “plantation mythology” due to the abolition of slavery.

The Stone-Campbell Movement, ultimately including the distinctive Churches of Christ, was nurtured in this agrarian mythology. As a consequence, urbanity was viewed with pity and sometimes suspicion. Alexander Campbell, for example, wrote, “American cities, like all other cities” were “neither so intelligent in the scriptures, nor so pious as the people of the country.”3 Most everyone assumed that people in the cities, as the future President of David Lipscomb College put it, “would be better off physically, financially, and spirituality in the country.”4 In fact, it was generally believed that the cities were the “great corrupters of the morals of mankind, like lewd women to whom they are compared by the sacred writers of both Testaments.”5 “The cities are moral and spiritual deserts,” wrote the Ohio preacher B. A. Hinsdale. “They contain the dangerous classes.”6

“Dangerous classes” reflects not only the prejudices of the times but also the threat that the cities posed to another “myth” that gave birth to the Stone-Campbell Movement. As Harrell demonstrates, Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, and others believed that “America was the land prepared for the introduction of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant millennium.” Immigration threatened this as Roman Catholics and non-Anglo-Saxons populated the cities, where there seemed to be simultaneous rise of immorality and poverty. The cities were the power base of the Catholic Church and the epicenter of immorality within the nation.

Many feared that the cities fomented the development of an impoverished working class whose lives were characterized by immorality and irreligiosity. A St. Louis editor warned that “the laboring classes of the great cities are largely irreligious” and “have loose ideas of the rights of property, openly preach the right to take whatever is wanted, and to burn, blow up and destroy.”7 Consequently, many members of the Stone-Campbell Movement, especially conservative ones, believed, according to Harrell, that the “church should ignore these centers of sin and concentrate on farmers.”8 The illiterate, non-Anglo-Saxon, impoverished immigrant was a threat to law, order, and religion.

In this milieu David Lipscomb (1831-1917), the longtime editor of the Gospel Advocate and co-founder of what is now Lipscomb University, appeared as a dissenting voice.9 Though deeply enmeshed within the Agrarian Myth—Lipscomb’s stated preference was that the “best community in the world is that every man own his own land, small farms with industrious owners”10—he nevertheless advocated for the urban poor and working classes (including Labor Unions).11

The Gospel for the Urban Poor

The year 1873 was a significant economic year within United States history. This period was known as the “Great Depression” until the new “Great Depression” arrived in the 1930s. Reconstruction in the South tended to place power and money in the hands of an elite few. The rise of the “robber barons” such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts gave a few excessive wealth. As Lipscomb put it in 1892, “money is more and more becoming concentrated in the hands of the wealthy” and is becoming a “controlling element in all the affairs of society.”12 The chasm between the rich and poor grew in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This, linked with the explosive growth of cities, nurtured deep suspicions that were part of the Agrarian Myth.

This was evidenced in an 1873 editorial in the Apostolic Times (1869-1885), a conservative paper based in Lexington, Kentucky. In the April 24, 1873 Gospel Advocate, Lipscomb reprinted the editorial. Lipscomb was appalled by what he read. The article, in part, said:

The only poor in this broad land that have not equal access with the rich to the blessings of the gospel, are the poor in the great cities. It is also true, that they are about the only class of poor people among whom the gospel does but little good when it does reach them. The great mass of them are besotted by vices of all the baser kinds, that they turn a deaf ear to all the messages of truth and virtue. It was not to this class of the poor that Jesus referred in his celebrated reply to John; it was the poor peasantry of Galilee and Judea, who, though ignorant and often reduced to extreme want, were an industrious, sober, and comparatively poor people. Let us not confound things that greatly differ, and draw unfavorable comparisons between ancient and modern Christianity without sufficient cause.13

Lipscomb’s response was brief but illuminating.14 Lipscomb found the editorial alarming at two levels. The first was the writer’s disdain for the “pre-emptive rights” of the poor, and the second the writer’s apparent tendency to cater to the rich. I will address Lipscomb’s first concern in this section and address the second in the next.

At the heart of Lipscomb’s response was his belief that “the poor possess pre-emptive rights in the kingdom of God.”15 Indeed, the poor, “as a class, constitute [God’s] elect. They are the chosen objects of his tender regard and true and faithful love.”16 Contrary to the “general disposition among [many] to despise a state of poverty, or even moderate competence, and regard it as a disgrace,” God has “honored the poor as a class in all ages.”17

What drives this theological assessment? Fundamentally, it is Lipscomb’s christology. Lipscomb tended, in his various articles, to emphasize three points above all others. First, the incarnation testified to a divine kenosis (emptying) whereby the Son of God, who is rich, becomes poor for our sakes. “The Savior himself declared his sympathy with the poor when he came as the poorest of the poor.”18

His Son was born of a humble handmaid of the Lord, who was espoused to a carpenter. The reputed Father of our Lord, Joseph, was a carpenter. The laboring, toiling classes were the associates chosen of God for his Son during his childhood and youth.19

Jesus was born of a poor woman who married a working class “day laborer.” They were so impoverished that they offered “two turtle doves,” the offering “provided for the poor.” Jesus lived as a “homeless wanderer” who “mingled with the poor in their homes, ate of their coarse barley loaves, and shared their frugal face.”20 In other words, the incarnation serves as a missional model for how to minister among the poor. Jesus ministered among the poor as one of the poor.

Second, in his own ministry—and in the ministry of the Apostles as well—Jesus modeled how the poor have priority. This was modeled in two ways. On the one hand, it was modeled by whom God chose as leaders in this new community. “The more prominent of his Apostles were from the laboring classes,” including fishermen.21

On the other hand, the priority of the poor is modeled in how Jesus himself conducted his ministry. The preaching of the gospel was truly evidenced, according to Lipscomb, when the gospel was preached to the poor. Indeed, this was the “crowning characteristic of the Christian religion.”22 Moreover, it was the “perfect evidence of [Jesus’] Messiahship” that “the poor have the gospel preached” to them.23 According to Lipscomb, both “Christ and his apostles preached to the poor of the cities,” including “servants, slaves, poorer classes” in Rome and “widows” in Jerusalem.24 These, for the most part, composed the churches of the New Testament era. “The chief success of the Christian religion was in the cities, and among the poor of those cities.”25

Third, Jesus is himself “personified” in the poor. Jesus is present in the poor. Rooting his theology in the judgment scene of Matthew 25, Lipscomb wrote:

Jesus Christ personified himself in his poor brethren. He stands to-day personified in the gaunt and hollow face, sunken eye, and half-clad emaciated form of widowed mothers and hungry, starving children in the South. If Christians fail to relieve their wants, no matter whether we or they believe in societies or not, and no matter whether their sympathies were Northern or Southern, the stern truth will one day meet them, “Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.”26

This ethical imagery was near to the heart of Lipscomb as he used it on several occasions. To minister to the poor is to minister to Jesus.

What incensed Lipscomb about the Apostolic Times article was that “to teach that certain classes are so degraded that the Gospel of God’s love cannot reach the poor, is certainly to despise them, and is nigh akin to oppressing them.”27 Lipscomb thought that neglecting, shaming, or snubbing the poor was equivalent to oppressing them. To oppress the poor was to mistreat Jesus himself, dishonor God’s elect, and assume a prideful arrogance that puts the rich in the privileged place of the poor.

The problem, according to Lipscomb, was not that the urban poor are disinterested in the gospel or that they—as a class—are unreachable. In fact, “the extreme poor of the cities in the days of Christ and the apostles were not the class difficult to reach.”28 It was the despised, weak, and ignoble that responded to the gospel in Rome, Corinth, and the ministry of Jesus. The problem, according to Lipscomb, was that the gospel is not really preached to the poor. They may be told the truth of the gospel but they are told in such a way that it is injurious to the gospel itself. The poor, Lipscomb believed, “are not approached in the true Spirit of Christ.”29 This was a second theme that Lipscomb applied to the topic, to which I now turn.

The Cities, Wealth, and the Poor

Lipscomb opposed the expenditure of large sums of money on “fine houses” in the cities. His rationale, though influenced by the Agrarian Myth, is deeply theological. Like his advocacy for small farms, Lipscomb’s consistent counsel throughout the years was small, modest buildings rather than “fine houses.” Smaller and more modest is better than large and lavish. This is how he thought about congregations as well—relatively small, modest, every member involved, marked by mutual edification and shared leadership. Wealth, power, and “fine houses” were corrupting influences that diverted the church from its mission to the poor and the lost. The large church with a “fine house” fostered, according to Lipscomb, a faith in success, wealth, and power; while the small church tended to foster community, service, and relationships with the poor.

The urban poor did not participate in urban church life because the urban churches catered to the wealthy and rich. They built “fine houses” whose surroundings were unsuited to the working class, employed articulate and educated ministers whom the poor did not understand, and sought monied classes because money was the life-blood of their grand buildings and educated ministers. While the poor would receive Jesus gladly, they did not flock to urban churches whose edifices were geared toward the cultured, educated, and wealthy. The reason was obvious to Lipscomb: they did not reject the “religion of Christ,” but they rejected the power, wealth, and pride of Christianity’s teachers. Even when these churches set up parachurch organizations that reached out to the poor, the distance between rich and poor was maintained, as church folk were not in the homes of the poor sharing their meals and trials.

Theologically, Lipscomb argued, “the church is the especial legacy of God to the poor of the earth.” Consequently, “the poor then should, above all others, feel at home in the church”—with “special privileges there above all others.”30 God “never intended” that Christianity would be “costly to the poor” or “make the poor feel that they are pensioners upon the bounty of the rich.” Rather than money, it was self-denying service that was the hallmark of the Christian faith. But Lipscomb feared that wealth had perverted the mission and work of the church and particularly the “demands for the expenditure of money” had tended to “oppress [the poor] or make them feel that they are pensioners upon the bounty of others.”31 In other words, the poor have no church. Rather, they are at the mercy of the rich who rule the church and dictate the “fashionable” standards that represent the status of the church in the community.

Lipscomb was concerned that churches (and preachers) sought out the rich rather than the poor because they valued their status in the community (“world”), thereby forsaking their mission to embody the gospel among the poor. Anyone who “seeks the rich and the learned and the fashionable . . . instead of the poor and simple-hearted and unpretending, by that course nullifies the power of the great truth” of the gospel.32 They perverted the very nature of the church that “God ordained . . . for the common people.”33

The church that fails to exhibit that its first, most important work is to preach the gospel to the poor, has utterly failed to appreciate the true spirit of its mission, and the character of work it was established to perform. The congregation of true worshippers of Jesus Christ always exhibits the greatest anxiety to have the poor preached to. In all of its provisions for worship, the comfort and accommodation of the poor must be its first object.34

It is no surprise that when the poor are approached in a “patronizing, self-righteous style, by those so delicate and refined that they cannot eat a morsel of hard bread with them, or sympathize with their trials, they reject the approach. Had the Son of God approached them in such a style, he would have failed too.”35 But this was exactly what was happening in the cities, according to Lipscomb. “We believe,” he wrote, “the tendency of the age is to adapt religion to the rich and drive off the poor.”36

How do the rich drive off the poor in urban settings? Lipscomb has several examples, but his most significant and most constant was his critique of the church’s cultural adaptation to the “worldly” expectations in the design of their buildings. One of the most celebrated examples of this is the building of the Central Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Completed in 1872, the French Gothic edifice could seat 2,000 people. The nave itself was 103 feet high and 125 feet long with what was reputed to be the largest stained glass window in the nation. The building cost $140,000. This was more than the total sum Lipscomb was able to raise among Stone-Campbell members in the post-war years for the poor in the South.37

Lipscomb, among others, was not amused by this development. Indeed, he was outraged. But by 1892, only twenty years later, the Central Church was putting out feelers to sell the building because not only was it “too expensive to keep up,” but “many of the wealthy members [had] moved out to the suburbs” and united with other congregations. While Lipscomb did not rejoice in the lack of growth in the church, he did rejoice over the prospect that the building would be sold. He had believed at the time that it was “a sin against God and his people to put such large sums of money in a building, when so many thousands and millions of our fellow creatures are suffering want and going down to hell for lack of the truth.” Such an “expenditure” was more about ministering to “human pride” than it was honoring God.38

The episode reminded Lipscomb of 1850s Nashville. When the $30,000 “fine house” that seated twelve hundred people mysteriously burned in 1857, Lipscomb “publicly” expressed his joy. Even in 1892 he regarded the fire as a “blessing from God.” His rationale is that such extravagant houses “hinder instead of forward the cause of true religion.” What Nashville should have done—and later did do—was build a “half dozen modest” buildings for small churches rather than one edifice for a large congregation.39 This had been effective for Nashville since the fire. While in 1865 Nashville only had two congregations with a total of 500 members, by 1889 it had over 2,500 members with several additional congregations. Cincinnati, Lipscomb reported, only claimed 1,000 members.40 Lipscomb suggested that Atlanta follow the example of Nashville. Instead of building a $30,000 edifice, it should build “a few modest houses, as needed.”41

Now that the Central Christian Church was open to selling its property, he hoped that they would “build a dozen simple, modest houses for worship, that correspond to the principles and aims of the Christian religion.”42 Like small farms that suit the common people, so small churches are well suited to the poor. The urban poor, Lipscomb argued, would only hear the gospel when they heard it in an incarnational way.

Lipscomb’s rationale was more than pragmatic. It reflected what he believed to be the heart of the gospel. Christ is our example. “Christ came to the poor and adapted himself to the surroundings and wants of the poor.” Consequently, “all the surroundings of his religion were simple, plain and unostentatious.”43 The “fine houses” of the wealthy in which the poor are invited to worship is the exact opposite of Christ’s incarnational model. Instead of approaching the poor with sympathy and dignity, they repelled the poor with their ostentatious wealth and rhetoric.

The whole effort to gratify the culture of the world in artistic speaking, music and surroundings that indicate wealth and luxury, attract the idle and curious, those anxious to be entertained, for a time, but as these efforts clog, as they sooner or later will, they drive these very persons from whom heart melody, heart service, heart worship were sacrificed away from the church. It substitutes a barren, empty formality for loving, hearty, worshipful service to God. The efforts to accommodate the religion of Christ to these luxurious and artistic surroundings destroy spiritual power and spiritual earnestness.44

When Christianity assumes power and sides with the wealthy, the poor are oppressed. They are driven away by the wealthy. Jesus, according to Lipscomb, walked with the poor, became poor for their sake, and ministered to the poor. Churches ought, following the model of Jesus, to situate themselves so that the poor feel at home in their communities. “As Jesus, in his own life and teaching, presented his religion to the world, it commended itself to the common people, the working people, rather than to the high, the rich, the rulers, and the learned.” Though some from the wealthier classes accepted the gospel, “the pride of learning and of riches and ambition for place and power unfitted the hearts that cherished them for the reception of that religion.” Lipscomb, then, drew the conclusion that “riches, ambition, love of power, and pride of intellect do not create an atmosphere suited for the growth of the religion of Jesus Christ.”45

Conclusion

Lipscomb believed that the “masses in the cities” today would hear the gospel with joyful hearts if the church approached them in the “spirit of Christ.” When they are approached, however, with the trappings of the “tastes of the rich and cultured,” they infer that “none save the rich and cultured are desired in the church.” Even the preaching, with its educated rhetoric and cultured erudition, “suits the wealthy” and is “illy adapted to the understanding of the poor.”46 When churches require a vast amount of money, “the spirit of the gospel is lost in these churches in the anxiety to attract the rich and cultured.” The poor are neglected and the rich are courted.47 The poor do not thereby reject the religion of Jesus but the religion of the wealthy.

God ordained the church for the working people; the gospel is for the poor. It is through them that God will inaugurate his kingdom and transform the world. “God chose the common people as effective agents through whom he would root out the wickedness and rectify wrongs and re-establish right and justice among men.”48 Lipscomb hoped that one day he would see many efforts in the cities “to establish and operate a church among the common people in fidelity to the principles” of the gospel.49

Our church buildings, our dress, and our attitudes should be shaped by an incarnational posture that welcomes the poor. Do we create spaces, relationships, and opportunities where the poor feel welcome? Given our upper middle class buildings, fashionable dress, and expensive toys, it is little wonder that the poor are generally uncomfortable. Lipscomb’s statement reminds us that while our American churches—for the most part—are oriented toward the middle class and rich, this is not the fundamental orientation of the kingdom of God within the narrative of Scripture.

To conclude this article, I offer this brief note by Lipscomb that epitomizes his perspective. This theological orientation functioned at the heart of his understanding of the gospel for over fifty years—from the beginning of his editorship of the Gospel Advocate in 1866 until his death in 1917. We would do well to hear these words in our own context.

The crowning characteristic of the Christian religion in the esteem of its founder, is that the “poor have the gospel preached to them.” The church that fails to exhibit that its first, most important work is to preach the gospel to the poor, has utterly failed to appreciate the true spirit of its mission, and the character of work it was established to perform. The congregation of true worshippers of Jesus Christ always exhibits the greatest anxiety to have the poor preached to. In all of its provisions for worship, the comfort and accommodation of the poor must be its first object. The congregation that erects the costly and elegant edifice, that furnishes the floor, the seats, the altar, the communion table, in such a manner, that makes the poor feel that they are not for them, cannot be the Church of Christ. The congregation whose members dress in the “fine linen and purple” of wealth, whose equipages and bearing are of a character to prevent a home-feeling in the plainly dressed, humble poor, in their midst, is not a congregation in which the spirit of the Redeemer dwells. The individual, man or woman, who attends meeting in such style of dress, that the poor, plainly clad laborer is made to feel the unpleasant contrast in their equipages, is an enemy of the religion of Jesus Christ. The poor of the land are driven from the religious services of the so-called Church of Christ, because the whole surroundings at those services, plainly say by their costly and gilded equipments that they are for the rich, not for the poor. The profession of Christianity has well nigh run into the sheerest mockery of the religion of primitive times upon this very point. Where is the house for worship in the city or the country, that is now builded with a view of its adaptation to the wants and customs of the poor, and not rather to exhibit the tastes and minster to the pride of the rich? The poor fail to attend religious worship, especially in the cities, not because they are less disposed to be religious than the rich, but because the pomp, dress, parade, equipages and style of these services declare plainly to them, they are not for you. The spirit of the church must be changed—radically changed in this respect, before it can be truly the Church of Christ. The thousands of the poor in the cities and in the country, must be sought out —preached to—must have congregations whose dress, style, manners and associations will draw them to them, rather than repel them from them, and these congregations so conforming themselves to the true spirit of the Gospel, and adapting their habits to the necessities of the poor, will alone constitute THE CHURCH OF CHRIST.50

John Mark Hicks is Professor of Theology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN. He has published numerous articles, both popular and scholarly, contributed to thirteen books, and authored or co-authored an additional nine, including Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding (Abilene: Leafwood Publishers, 2006). He can be contacted at hicksjm@yahoo.com.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Alexander. “Notes of an Excursion to the Eastern Cities, No. II.” Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 7 (February 1843): 58-65.

Dunnavant, Anthony L. “David Lipscomb and the ‘Preferential Option for the Poor’ among Postbellum Churches of Christ.” In The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, edited by Michael W. Casey and Douglas A. Foster, 435-454. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002.

Elam, E. A. “Going to Town.” Gospel Advocate 37 (25 April 1895): 262.

“Great Cities.” Christian Pioneer 7 (1 August 1867): 42. As quoted in Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History 41, no. 2 (April 1967): 185.

Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History 41 (April 1967): 181-92.

Hicks, John Mark, and Bobby Valentine. Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding. Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2006.

Hinsdale, B. A. “The Poor and the Gospel.” Christian Standard 1 (10 November 1866): 254.

Hooper, Robert E. Crying in the Wilderness: A Biography of David Lipscomb. Nashville: David Lipscomb College, 1979.

Lipscomb, David. “Christ and the Working People.” Gospel Advocate 38 (4 June 1896): 356-57.

________. “Christ the Savior of the World.” Gospel Advocate 8 (20 February 1866): 124.

________. “Church Pews.” Gospel Advocate 20 (5 December 1878): 762.

________. “Destitution, Its Cause.” Gospel Advocate 17 (25 March 1875): 300-1.

________. “Dispensing Christian Fellowship.” Gospel Advocate 8 (24 July 1866): 478-79.

________. “Fine Houses for Worship.” Gospel Advocate 34 (28 January 1892): 52-53.

________. “Mob Law.” Gospel Advocate 34 (2 June 1892): 340.

________. “[Notice].” Gospel Advocate 8 (27 February 1866): 107-108.

________. “Preaching to the Poor.” Gospel Advocate 15 (24 April 1873): 390-91.

________. “Preaching to the Poor.” Gospel Advocate 15 (19 May 1873): 508-11.

________. “The Church as God Ordained It—The Church for the Working People.” Gospel Advocate 38 (9 July 1896): 436-37.

________. “The Spirit of the Church.” Gospel Advocate 8 (13 February 1866): 107-108.

________. “Thirty Years Work.” Gospel Advocate 38 (2 January 1896): 4.

________. “Who are to Blame?” Gospel Advocate 11 (6 May 1869): 422-25.

“Why Does Crime Increase?” Christian Evangelist 22 (28 May 1885): 339. As quoted in Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History 41, no. 2 (April 1967): 190.