RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION: Religion and the Populist Revolution

SECTION 1: EVANGELICAL ESTABLISHMENT

section 1 Evangelical Establishment “We Are Not the Free Men Our Fathers Were” Hebron Christian Church, founded in Lenoir County in the eastern part of North Carolina in 1878, was typical of most Disciples of Christ congregations . Although the restorationist Disciples of Christ exaggerated many of the liberal and egalitarian tendencies of evangelicalism—rejecting all creeds; discarding, to varying degrees, denominational apparati; and relying almost solely on lay leadership for churches’ week-to-week activities— they conducted those activities in ways similar to those practiced by many rural southern congregations. Hebron had no paid pastor; this congregation of thirty-three men and thirty-one women was led by two brothers, J. M. and Levi Mewborne.While both Levi and J. M. farmed all of their lives, J. M., or “Brother Jimmy,” as they liked to call him at Hebron, gained fame in the 1880s and 1890s as the premier Farmers’ Alliance lecturer in the eastern part of the state. In 1890 J. M. ran for Congress as an Alliance Democrat and in 1893 and again in 1894 was elected president of the state Alliance. He also became a Populist, serving as a state senator in 1895, as elected commissioner of agriculture in 1896 and 1897, and as superintendent of the state penitentiary in 1898. All the while he, along with Levi, led Sunday morning worship and Sunday evening prayer services at Hebron.1 The Sunday services consisted primarily of hymn singing and scriptural exhortation.Insisting on“exhortations”or“lessons”rather than on prepared sermons, the members at Hebron expected leaders to read a portion of Scripture and then comment on that passage extemporaneously while other members, both women and men, chimed in with their interpretations. This 010 s1c1 (1-21) 2/7/06 9:17 AM Page 1 way, they believed, Scripture did not merely provide“pegs”on which to hang “doctrines of men”; rather, such a participatory, egalitarian approach enabled “the life-giving thoughts of God” found in the “Holy Book” to penetrate “every man’s intellect, conscience and heart.”2 Topics covered in these lessons included calls for holy living, moral courage, winning the lost, trusting in God,the need for Christian education,and,on the eve of the 1888 election , Brother Levi covered “the duty which we owe our country.”3 Even though there was little variation in the week-to-week activities of the church unless there was inclement weather or a member passed away, on 4 October 1891, after Brother Levi had finished his exhortation on “the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead,” the church secretary recorded that “after regular services the assessment plan adopted by the [North Carolina Christian Missionary Convention] was discussed for some time but final action was put off until next Sunday.”Obviously causing some ill feelings at Hebron, this assessment plan demanded a six-year congregational pledge to give money to the Disciples’ overarching convention on pain of forfeiting membership.4 Debate over such ecclesiastical matters was not new to Hebron or to most other southern evangelical congregations; in fact, evangelicals during the period spent far more time wrangling over ecclesiology than just about anything else. At Hebron, for example, just a year earlier both Brother Levi 2 evangelical establishment J. M. Mewborne. Private Collection, Courtesy of Martha Marble. 010 s1c1 (1-21) 2/7/06 9:17 AM Page 2 and “Brother Jimmy” exhorted the church on “the right way of raising funds for the Missionary Convention,” and the congregation now opposed this particular proposal because it was an affront to its ideals of ecclesiastical autonomy. Even though such assessment plans were common in the more centralized denominations like the Methodists or Presbyterians, to these Disciples, who fifty years earlier had left the Baptist denomination because they believed it had become too centralized, such a measure reeked of “denominationalism.” Thus, the following week, the secretary recorded: “The assessment plan was voted on and rejected, and our delegates [to the Convention the following week] were directed to introduce resolutions . . . providing for its discontinuance, and should the Convention decide against us, to ask that our name be stricken from the roll.”5 Despite its stand, Hebron apparently acquiesced, or, at least, the Convention accepted its protest, since a year later the church pledged to give half of its annual treasury to foreign missions; nevertheless, the members’ opposition to such denominational centralization, especially where money was concerned, reflected a critical...