Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America

Having grown up in the coC tradition, this was a really insightful book. I still have not digested all the content and I did not particularly like how vast concepts were suitcased in neat words like "premillenial", "eschatology", etc., but this book to me is like sitting down with my great great great grandfather and having him explain how the family came to be. At the risk of sacrilege, it's like how the Jews would view the Pentateuch. Very fundamental, highly recommended.

It's about time someone in the Church of Christ wrote a history without all the propaganda. For years, we've been told this silly story about the "First Century Church" that went underground after Catholicism rose to power but resurfaced in early 19th century America. Now I have a better historical understanding of the CofC ideology. I now know the real reasons why there is a "plan of salvation" and no instrumental music. These reasons are historical and not scriptural. The CofC is so ashistorical that this book has and will continue to upset more people. After leaving the CofC, I had so many feelings of guilt. This book has helped me cope with a lot of issues. It has humanized this institution and not preserved it as part of a newfound deity - God, Son, the Holy Spirit and the Church of Christ.

Reviving the Ancient Faith is by far one of the three best histories of the Stone-Campbell Reformation in print, the others being Leroy Garrett's Stone Campbell Movement, Revised Edition, and Robert Hooper's A Distinct People. Anyone interested in the origins and history of the Church of Christ, and what makes those "peculiar people" so peculiar will find Hughes' book most enlightening. Hughes traces the two main streams of our tradition, exemplified by "founders" Barton Warren Stone and Alexander Campbell and how Stone's apocalyptic, countercultural worldview and Campbell's "progressive primitivism" and focus on restoring the ancient gospel merged in second and third generation leaders like Tolbert Fanning, David Lipscomb and James A. Harding. As one who grew up in the church of Christ, I was intrigued to learn from Hughes in the book, that our tradition had several pre-millennial evangelists (actually a pre-millennial "wing" of our brotherhood), which I had never realized before (most traces of it were "stamped out" by conservatives such as Foy Wallace, Jr., until memory of this branch of our tradition was lost by the mainline churches). Those sections of the book alone make it worth reading.Hughes continues by examining in detail the triumphs and controversies of the twentieth century, through the insitutional wranglings of the fifties and sixties, the Crossroads movement of the seventies and on into modern times. Some readers may be suprised at much of the material presented, as much of it has been consciously or unconsciously "swept under the rug," as it were, by the church as a whole. For this reason, many have inaccurately accused Hughes of "revisionist history." My one problem with the book is the absence of any substantive material on Alexander Campbell's father Thomas, and the latter's pivotal 1809 "Declaration and Address," which greatly influenced the thinking of his son Alexander and, at least in the early years served as the movement's Magna Carta. But all in all, Reviving the Ancient Faith is a great primer on the Churches of Christ and what makes us tick.

The author provides a well-balanced, readable and compelling overview of the people and issues that have influenced the modern history of the churches of Christ. The book was fourteen years in the making and is extremely well-researched and well-documented. It includes dozens of historic photographs and drawings of people who figure prominently in the text.The book covers the standard history starting with Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, continuing through the various controversies that divided and subdivided the body in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century: missionary societies, instrumental music, premillennialism, moderization and institutionalism. It then provides excellent sections on more recent trends and controversies, including racial issues, campus ministries, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Crossroads and Boston movements, the emphasis on grace, the "new hermeneutic" crisis, and the role of women in the church.I would highly recommend this book for every member of the church of Christ and for anyone who wants an excellent overview of the church's modern history.

In my teens, I bought the Church of Christ doctrine of the 40s and 50s. When I discovered, also in my teens, that the doctrine of exclusivity could not stand under serious scrutiny, I became a minority in the church and eventually a member of a rebel group: still Christian but not Church of Christ. The relatives were not pleased. Forty years later, this book! Believing something so strongly and then rejecting it is frightening. If loved ones doubt your sanity or your salvation or your sincerity, communication changes; certain subjects are studiously avoided. Talking about God becomes impossible. I became interested in the whole subject of mind-control, of freedom, of cults, of Christianity in general. This book tied up so many loose ends, expressing so much that had puzzled me about the doctrinal mind-set of the Church of Christ. The people of the Church that I knew/know are model citizens, kind and friendly, honest and hard-working, keepers of the best of Christian law --- this book explained with fascinating historical scenes and in beautiful, clear prose the reasons for their almost apologetic, but cultish pride. It also gave me great respect for the honorable, thoughtful lives of my grandparents, the founders of our colleges, the preachers who fought to keep the cultishness out of the church, and the men and women of faith who strove for the essential right in a system which turned dangerously wrong when my parents were young. It is a book of instruction for anyone interested in the ongoing dynamics of a group with a specific, we-are-right mission. Highly recommended.