Blackburn Hill Church of Christ (The Stone-Campbell Movement Part III)

This was not merely a local phenomenon; Stone-Campbell churches throughout the country were experiencing their first large-scale divide around the turn of the nineteenth century. While the local Church of Christ continued to combat the introduction of instrumental worship long after the 1912 church split, to claim that this was simply over instruments would be missing the point. The split within the Stone-Campbell Movement was largely attributable to a growing divergence over the theological concept of “positive law,” the commands given for Christians to follow, as opposed to negative law’s prohibited actions. Emphasis on the positive law caused many to interpret Biblical statements as injunctions, for example, interpreting a statement to sing, as meaning only to sing, thus prohibiting the accompaniment of instruments. Besides instrumental worship, other controversies surfaced over missionary societies, ecumenism, and participation in human government. The divisions first became apparent in 1889 when church leaders at a gathering of nearly 6,000 brethren in Illinois declared non-fellowship with churches introducing “innovations.” Another sign occurred three years later when the Christian Missionary Convention met in Nashville, Tennessee, a stronghold of the Stone-Campbell Movement, and the majority of the churches in the state chose not to support it. Finally, in 1906, in the first of five stand-alone religious censuses, a leader of what became the Church of Christ instructed the federal government that there was a discernible division within the Stone-Campbell Movement. For the first time, the Stone-Campbell body was officially torn asunder. The 1906 Census of Religious Bodies consequently reported that the churches of Christ had 2,642 churches with 159,123 members, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had 7,799 congregations and 923,698 members.

Following the rift in the Stone-Campbell Movement, membership in the Church of Christ rapidly increased. However, much of this initial shift in membership was likely the result of individuals switching their identification from the Christian Church to Church of Christ. Census data indicates that between 1906 and 1916 churches of Christ doubled in membership to 317,937. In the following decade they grew another twenty-five percent to a total of 433,174. By 1946, the census indicated that churches of Christ had increased to over 680,000 members in more than 10,000 congregations in the United States. 

The Church of Christ in Athens appears to have experienced more modest gains between 1912 and 1946. In 1912, Athens conducted its own religious door-to-door census under the leadership of the First Christian Church. This census found that the top three churches were the Methodist Episcopal Church with 1,932 claiming affiliation, the Christian Church with 1,038, and the Presbyterian Church with 455. The nascent Church of Christ congregation was not even listed. Between 1910 and 1920 the population of Athens increased by nearly 1,000 to a total population of 6,418. Despite this growth, the Athens’s 1920 church census not only indicated a decline in church membership throughout each church, but it showed that the religious trends from 1912 remained constant. Again, the top three churches were Methodist Episcopal (1,283), Christian Church (656), and Presbyterian Church (397). Yet unlike the census of 1912, this one included the Church of Christ (Conservative), nearly at the bottom of the list, with a mere 27 people. This trend of stagnant growth is further indicated by their places of worship. Between 1915 and 1923 the Church of Christ’s numbers were so small that it was able to sufficiently utilize the YMCA Room at Ohio University’s Carnegie Library for its services free of charge. However, after Ohio University President Alson Ellis was replaced by E.B. Bryan, the congregation began meeting in a member’s home and continued to do so from March until July of 1923. On July 17, 1923 the congregation purchased a small house at 6 W Stimson Street, eventually removing interior partitions to have a twenty-six square foot space. The congregation remained at this location for nearly three decades during which growth was slow and the congregation was comprised mostly of women. It was only in 1946 that things began to change for this small congregation.

The culmination of two events dramatically altered the fortune of the Church of Christ making it nationally respectable: a shift in mainstream Church of Christ theology coupled with a change in US popular culture. The churches of Christ had long had three dominant traditions: Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas. While the Indiana Tradition never disappeared, its non-institutional focus ultimately relegated it to the margins. From the end of the nineteenth through the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Tennessee Tradition with its emphasis on, millennialism, the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit, nonparticipation in government, and pacifism dominated American churches of Christ. However, the Texas Tradition which slightly shifted the focus from godly action to prioritizing human action, made Church of Christ theology more amiable to American culture. Starting in the 1930s, but gaining hegemony after WWII, the Texas Tradition significantly supported participation in government and rejected pacifism. As one historian has stated, the shift from allegiance to the kingdom of God, peace, and opposition to participation in civil government; to patriotism, nationalism, and support of war moved the church of Christ from cultural isolation to cultural respectability in the American nation. Meanwhile this was not happening in a vacuum. This shift in the Church of Christ mainstream coincided with the tensions between the Soviet Union and United States during the period known as the Cold War. Since the Soviet Union, and communism in general, were explicitly antagonistic to organized religion, the United States government supported cultural and political efforts to bolster religion as a bulwark against domestic communism. It was during 1958 that the US government amended the pledge of allegiance from “one nation indivisible” to “one nation under God indivisible,” and put “In God We Trust” on all American currency. World-famous evangelist Billy Graham also rose to prominence during this era. This cultural shift was not lost on the local congregation. In 1952, a speaker from Munich, Germany visited the Athens Church of Christ to speak about religious persecutions in Germany. In that same year, a guest speaker also reported on the persecution of churches of Christ in Italy. 

Revived with national popularity, church attendance throughout the US experienced appreciable growth from the late 1940s into the early 1960s, before plummeting between 1965 and 1975. This national trend also affected the Church of Christ and throughout the 1950s the Church of Christ expanded its institutional infrastructure. In 1950, Pepperdine College was the only accredited educational institution among the brethren, but by 1956, Abilene Christian, Harding, Lipscomb, and Freed-Hardeman had gained college accreditation. Between the 1940s and 1950s there were also eight other schools founded in the US, including Ohio Valley College in Parkersburg, WV (1958). During the postwar years the children’s homes associated with the Church of Christ also increased from seven to forty. 

Despite being challenged by another Church of Christ in Athens who incorporated musical instruments and witnessed its own growth starting in the 1960s, the non-instrumental Church of Christ continuously expanded during the 1950s, 1960s, and even into the 1970s. In addition to national trends, the local Church of Christ had the added benefit of having its first full time minister in September of 1946. It was also in the late 1940s that the local congregation made an appeal to area congregations for assistance. The 6th & Washington Streets Church of Christ in Marietta, Ohio, answered the call, and oversaw the church until it was self-sustainable. One of the first actions under their guidance was to acquire a more suitable place for the church to meet. In 1948, two lots were purchase on at 18 N Lancaster Street and Charles Covey from the 6th & Washington congregation drew the plans for a small brick church. On January 1, 1950, the Church of Christ worshipped in its new building for the first time. Although the church grew, it was still slow. During the early 1950s membership never eclipsed fifty. On July 22, 1962 the church became officially organized according to Church of Christ theology when it appointed its first elders and deacons. During its time on Lancaster Street, the property underwent various acquisitions and building projects to make room for its burgeoning congregation. The church expanded, acquired a parsonage, and made room for a parking lot. Yet, even after all this growth the Lancaster Street property proved insufficient and by 1965 the congregation began discussing the construction of a new structure with ample parking. On one Sunday the small congregation, which averaged $240 in weekly contributions, raised $1,338 toward the new building. In April, 1970, a building committee was appointed, and with a $200,000 loan, ground broke on the project on October 21, 1973. At that time the membership had grown to around ninety with an average attendance of 122, and an average weekly contribution of $560. In January 1975, the congregation dedicated its new building, the Blackburn Hill Church of Christ, on land donated by Charles Jeffers.

The Jeffers Family was vital in sustaining the Stone-Campbell Movement in Athens County. Having moved to the area at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Jeffers family is one of the oldest Stone-Campbell families in the county. George Jeffers settled in Carthage Township in the 1810s and subsequently married Abigail Miller in 1818. The family expanded into neighboring Lodi Township and when George died in 1833, he bequeathed over 200 acres of land to his wife and children—Jeffers Cemetery remains on this land to this day. The earliest record of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Athens County is that of a Campbellite church in Carthage Township around 1835. It is unclear which Stone-Campbell Church this was and whether a church building is still in its original location, but it could be the Orange Christian Church on Lottridge Road. Regardless, the Jeffers family ascribed to the faith, and in an 1882 history of the Hocking Valley, half of the six Jeffers mentioned belonged to that faith, of the other three, one was Presbyterian, and the other two are mentioned without any reference to religion. One of the three Jeffers who was explicitly noted as a member of the Christian Church, was William, the great-grandfather of Charles Jeffers. Charles was not only one of the first elders at the Athens Church of Christ in 1962, but he and his wife Evelyn provided the land on Blackburn Hill for the church to be built in the 1970s. However, this Stone-Campbell line did not stop there. Charles’s daughter Joy, who later married Lee Jones at the Lancaster Street Church in 1962, has continued her family’s legacy of Christian service. Following in the footsteps of her uncle Edward White, the Athens’s congregation’s first full-time minister, who assisted with the creation of Ohio Valley University and then served as a professor at Harding University, Joy earned a PhD in Education from Ohio University and became a professor and administrator at OVU. Lee and Joy were also the first family to take part in fostering children at the Church of Christ affiliated Midwestern Children’s Home from 1967-1971. The couple continues their service to the church where Lee resides as one of two elders for the congregation, and where they often hospitably accommodate college students. 

The campus ministry has long been part of this congregation’s outreach. However, in 1991, it formally became an organization under the name L.I.G.H.T. (Living in God’s Holy Truth). The ministry has fallen under the guidance of several ministers, most recently Matthew Dunbar. It was under the ministers Matt Thomas serving Ohio University (starting 1997) and Jay D Smith at Hocking College (starting 2004) that the campus ministry experienced its largest numbers. In the mid-2000s it was not uncommon to have forty students at campus ministry Bible studies and between 1997 and 2009 over 100 students converted. At the beginning of Thomas’s tenure as campus minister, students met in family homes, but starting spring semester 2006 the campus ministry rented the basement at 42 1/2 Court Street. The campus ministry continued to meet there for a decade until the combination of maintenance issues and declining student attendance encouraged the campus minister and church leadership to cancel their lease in 2016. Between fall semester 2016 and fall semester 2018 the campus ministry met in rooms on campus, before renting Suite 310 at 8 North Court Street. Thomas and Smith both resigned in 2009, Thomas leaving for the Pickerington Church of Christ and Jay D Smith leaving to serve a congregation in Rockport, West Virginia. Following their tenure, the campus ministry was served by Mike Robinson, Joey Barrett, Michael Perry, Kyle Rhodes, and finally Matthew Dunbar (Starting in Fall, 2016). After their Thomas and Smith resigned, campus ministry attendance began to slowly decline, it now ranges between half a dozen and a dozen students.

While the campus ministry has experienced significant decline, attendance at the Blackburn Hill Church of Christ has also markedly waned. Although the congregation experienced growth during the ascendency of the Religious Right in the late 1970s and early 1980s and witnessed appreciable growth into the 2000s, the trend has not continued. During the first six months of 1975 attendance at weekly morning worship averaged 150. In 2020, Blackburn’s adult attendance on Sunday mornings typically numbers somewhere in the forties, occasionally eclipsing fifty, with about a dozen children. The decline in attendance has been exacerbated by a rift in the congregation with some of its younger families choosing to worship separately. One of the main reasons for this is the political tenor of the sermons and congregation, which still maintains many aspects of the Texas Tradition with its emphasis on nationalism, patriotism, and political action. 

In 1975, Blackburn Hill Church of Christ’s chronicler concluded its brief history by stating, “The opportunity for both spiritual and numerical growth is greater than it has ever been…and so is the challenge.” Today, it might be more accurate to focus on the latter half of this statement. The First Christian Church’s congregation, from which the Church of Christ originally split, no longer meets in its building, which now belongs to the Southeast Ohio History Center. Enrollment in the Church of Christ’s campus ministry at Ohio University has declined and Blackburn Hill Church of Christ’s attendance is at the same level it was in the early 1950s. Despite a dwindling membership, the leadership at Blackburn have also recently acquired an over $100,000 loan for a new roof. The opportunity for church growth will always be present, but with shifts in popular culture, declining membership, and a financial burden, it is now the challenge that is “greater than it has ever been” for Athens’s Church of Christ.

Books

A Brief History of the Blackburn Hill Church of Christ. Typescript, 1975.

Blowers, Paul M., Douglas A. Foster, and D. Newell Williams, eds. The Stone-Campbell Movement A Global History. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2013.

Brown, John. History of Hocking Valley, Ohio. Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co., 1883.

Daniel, Robert L. Athens, Ohio The Village Years. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.

Frum, David. How We Got Here: The 70’s: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Walden Deweese, Blanche. A Brief History of the First Christian Church of Athens, Ohio. Typescript, 1965-1967.

Walker, Charles. History of Athens County, Ohio. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1869.

Newspaper Articles

“Antiques.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), January 17, 1975. Newspaper Archive.

“Building Activity Down: 3 Home Permits Listed.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), October 12, 1962. Newspaper Archive.

“Building Permits Hit $1.4 Million Mark.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), June 1, 1964. Newspaper Archive.

“Church Asks Court Okay.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), May 24, 1964. Newspaper Archive.

“Former Athens Minister Will Lead Meeting.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), March 4, 1977. Newspaper Archive.

“Gospel Meeting.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), April 29, 1956. Newspaper Archive.

“Gottfried Reichel From Munich, Germany Will Speak on Religious Persecutions In That Country.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), July 11, 1952. Newspaper Archive.

“Interesting Report Made by Churches.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), April 21, 1920. Newspaper Archive.

“Legal Notice.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), October 17, 1973. Newspaper Archive.

“Miss Jeffers Bride Of Lee Owen Jones.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), July 15, 1962. Newspaper Archive.

“Permission Given.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), June 28, 1964. Newspaper Archive.

“Pulpit Topics.” The Athens Daily Messenger (Athens, Ohio), January 16, 1915. Newspaper Archive.

“Religious Census Completed Today.” The Athens Daily Messenger (Athens, Ohio), December 14, 1912. Newspaper Archive.

“Rome Police Ban U.S. Led Church Group.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), September 14, 1952. Newspaper Archive.

“Special Meeting Continue.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), December 1, 1935. Newspaper Archive.

“Special Service Announced.” The Sunday Messenger (Athens, Ohio), November 8, 1925. Newspaper Archive.

“Talks Slated By Evangelist.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), April 25, 1975. Newspaper Archive.

“Why We Sing.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), September 12, 1947. Newspaper Archive.

Other Sources

Ancestry. “Charles Lewis Jeffers in the Ohio, County Marriage Records, 1774-1993.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=61378&h=4216211&tid=&pid=&queryId=21b4f7d38759be0506e07cee4a9902fb&usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gfb634&_phstart=successSource.

Ancestry. “Lewis Jeffers in the 1860 United States Federal Census.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=7667&h=42624687&tid=&pid=&queryId=1e40ac88218cce2869b914e339da9b63&usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gfb644&_phstart=successSource.

Ancestry. “Ohio, Wills and Probate Records, 1786-1998, George Jeffers.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8801/images/005428854_00439?treeid=&personid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gfb653&_phstart=successSource&pId=13001205

Ancestry. “Rudolph Jeffers in the 1880 United States Federal Census.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=6742&h=44779619&tid=&pid=&queryId=1a6e307cafae5bb06eb79c631ee645ae&usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gfb642&_phstart=successSource.

Ancestry. “Rudolph Jeffers in the 1930 United States Federal Census.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=6224&h=70510621&tid=&pid=&queryId=1a6e307cafae5bb06eb79c631ee645ae&usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gfb642&_phstart=successSource.

Ancestry. “William Jeffers in the 1830 United States Federal Census.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=8058&h=1686246&tid=&pid=&queryId=1c74a9685db666674d083e52d034ea7e&usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gfb647&_phstart=successSource.

Athens County Parcel Viewer. Accessed August 14, 2020. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=79bad5b7f6754cc08cfa1d54cbaec8da.

Joy Jones, interview by author, August 1, 2020.

Matt Dunbar, interview by author, August 12, 2020.

Matt Thomas, telephone interview by author, August 12, 2020.