Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:27:20.812Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theology as Entertainment: Oral Debate in American Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

E. Brooks Holifield
E. Brooks Holifield
Affiliation:
E. Brooks Holifield is C. H. Candler professor of American church history in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a 1959 survey of 2,706 ministers of the Churches of Christ, an American denomination that grew out of the nineteenth-century reform movement of Alexander Campbell, the rhetorician James Swinney discovered 215 preachers who said that they had conducted public oral debates as a way of attracting converts and defending their tradition. During the previous half-century, they had held around 4,400 debates, each lasting from one to fourteen days, mainly in the rural areas and small towns of the South and lower Midwest. Another student of Campbell's movement has compiled a list of more than 9,000 such debates, around 500 in the nineteenth century and more than 8,500 in the twentieth. The forensic superstars included regional celebrities like J. D. Tant of Texas, who held more than 350 such contests between 1885 and 1941 and who argued that four people would attend a debate for every one who attended a worship service. His assertion calls for qualification, but it reminds us of a practice that once attracted widespread attention and that has continued to flourish in parts of American Protestantism.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 499 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Swinney, James P., “A Survey of Religious Debate Attitudes Among Ministers of the Churches of Christ,” Restoration Quarterly 6 (1962): 85;Google Scholaridem, “A Survey of Religious Debate Attitudes,” Restoration Quarterly 9 (1966): 91–95; Haymes, Don, “Debates, Interdenominational,” in Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, ed. Hill, Samuel S. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 196;Google ScholarSullivan, L. B., “Tant, J(efferson) D(avis),” in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Reid, Daniel G. et al. (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter Varsity, 1990), 1158. Thrasher, Thomas, a teacher in Decatur, Alabama, has collected the longest extant list of debates and made it available on the World Wide Web at http: / /www.ptc.dcs.edu /teacherpages/tthrasher/thomas.html.Google Scholar

2. Smith, James D. III, “Frontier Ecumenism: The Olmsted-Smith Debate on Christian Evidences,” Journal of Mississippi History 51 (1989): 133–39.Google Scholar

3. Cited in Coulter, E. Merton, William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937), 82.Google Scholar

4. Potter, David, Debating in the Colonial Chartered Colleges (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1944), 3, 64.Google Scholar

5. Hooker, Richard J., ed., The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953), 103;Google Scholarsee Woodhouse, A. S. P., ed., Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1939).Google Scholar

6. Thwaites, R. G., ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1897), 6: 177–81;Google ScholarRonda, James P., ‘“We are Well as We Are’: An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions,” William and Mary Quarterly ser., 34 (1977): 66–82.;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcLoughlin, William G., Soul Liberty: The Baptists' Struggle in New England, 1630–1833. (Hanover, N.H.: Brown University Press, 1991), 37.Google Scholar

7. See Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989);Google ScholarBillington, Ray Allan, The Protestant Crusade (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1964), 65.Google Scholar

8. Lee, Luther, The Autobiography of the Rev. Luther Lee, (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1882), 56, 61Google Scholar; Smyth, Thomas, Autobiographical Notes, Letters, and Reflections (Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Evans, and Cogswell, 1914), 530.Google Scholar

9. Armistead, W. S., Baptizmos: Bible View of the Subject (Athens, Ga.: Foote and Davies, 1893), v;Google ScholarRamsey, Gene, A History of North Mississippi Methodism (Nashville: Parthenon, 1966), 100;Google ScholarRiley, B. F., History of the Baptists of Alabama (Birmingham, Ala.: Roberts and Son, 1895), 230.Google Scholar

10. Finley, James, Sketches of Western Methodism (Cincinnati: for the author, 1857), 54;Google ScholarWest, Anson, A History of Methodism in Alabama (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House, 1893), 278;Google ScholarVernon, Walter N. et al. , The Methodist Excitement in Texas (Dallas: Texas United Methodist Historical Society, 1984), 141;Google ScholarBurnett, J. J., Sketches of Tennessee's Pioneer Baptist Preachers (Nashville: Marshall and Bruce, 1919), 463;Google ScholarWilburn, James R., The Hazard of the Die: Tolbert Fanning and the Restoration Movement (Austin, Tex.: Sweet, 1969), 118.Google Scholar

11. Thigpen, Thomas Paul, “Aristocracy of the Heart: Catholic Ideals and Lay Leadership in Savannah, 1820–1870. ” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1995), 6;Google ScholarStevenson, Edward, Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Valentine Cook (Nashville: for the author, 1858), 86.Google Scholar

12. Taylor, William, Story of My Life (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1896), 234;Google ScholarPritchett, J. H. and Sweeney, John S., A Religious Discussion Between Rev. J. H. Pritchett and Elder Jno. S. Sweeney (St. Louis: Southwest, 1869), 3–22.;Google ScholarDitzler, Jacob, Baptism (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1880), 8;Google ScholarStevenson, , Biographical Sketch, 90.Google Scholar

13. Pritchett, and Sweeney, , Religious Discussion, 3, 17.Google Scholar

14. Smith, Benjamin Lyon, Alexander Campbell (St. Louis: Bethany, 1930), 226;Google ScholarFinley, , Western Methodism, 54.Google Scholar

15. Hedge, Levi, Elements of Logick (Buffalo: Phinney, 1860), 162–67.Google Scholar

16. Marvin, E. M., The Life of Rev. William GoffCaples (St. Louis: Southwest, 1871), 90–91.Google Scholar

17. Foster, B. F. and Lozier, J. H., Theological Discussion on Universalism and Endless Punishment (Indianapolis: B. E Foster, 1867), 39, 41, 66.Google Scholar

18. Foster, and Lozier, , Theological Discussion, 47, 95, 159.Google Scholar

19. Foster, and Lozier, , Theological Discussion, 65, 69, 72, 75, 112.Google Scholar

20. Foster, and Lozier, , Theological Discussion, 118–40, 153–62Google Scholar

21. Foster, and Lozier, , Theological Discussion, 202, 210, 218–30Google Scholar

22. Moore, William T., The Living Pulpit of the Christian Church (Cincinnati: R. W. Carroll, 1869), 145–46;Google ScholarDuBose, Horace M., A History of Methodism (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1916), 11, 422;Google ScholarMelton, J. Gordon, Log Cabins to Steeples (Nashville: Parthenon, 1974), 134;Google ScholarDitzler, Jacob, The Philosophy of the History of the Church (St. Louis: P. M. Orickard, 1866), 257.Google Scholar

23. Ditzler, Jacob and Wilkes, L. B., The Louisville Debate (Lexington: J. D. Trapp, 1871), xiii.Google Scholar

24. Ditzler, and Wilkes, , Louisville Debate, 42–43, 52, 96, 111.Google Scholar

25. Ditzler, and Wilkes, , Louisville Debate, 26, 62, 73, 103.Google Scholar

26. Ditzler, and Wilkes, , Louisville Debate, 123, 128, 134, 142, 144, 285, 292.Google Scholar

27. Ditzler, and Wilkes, , Louisville Debate, 129, 151, 154, 160, 177, 191, 199–204.Google Scholar

28. Ditzler, and Wilkes, , Louisville Debate, 399, 400–647.Google Scholar

29. Lee, Luther, Universalism Examined and Refuted (Watertown, N.Y.: Knowlton and Rice, 1836), 7;Google ScholarHall, A. Wilford, Universalism against Itself (New York: Hall, 1883), 6.Google Scholar

30. Foster, and Lozier, , Theological Discussion, 20, 118;Google ScholarDitzler, and Wilkes, , Louisville Debate, 683;Google ScholarAnon., “Kentucky Intelligence,” Nashville Christian Advocate, 14 01 1871, 1; for example, Courier-Journal, 14 December 1870, 4; and 15 December 1870, 4.Google Scholar

31. Billington, , Protestant Crusade, 59;Google ScholarRichardson, Robert, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Cincinnati: Standard, 1890), 2:268;Google ScholarFord, Henry A. and Ford, Kate B., History of Cincinnati, Ohio (Cincinnati: L. A. Williams, 1881), 168;Google ScholarRamsey, , North Mississippi Methodism, 100;Google ScholarPickett, L. L. and Smith, M. A., The Pickett-Smith Debate (Louisville: Pickett, 1897), 255;Google ScholarBurnett, , Pioneer Baptist Preachers, 434;Google ScholarWilburn, , Hazard of the Die, 256.Google Scholar

32. Brunson, Alfred, A Western Pioneer (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1872), 22.Google Scholar

33. Foster, and Lozier, , Theological Discussion, iii–iv, xviii, 20, 118, 231, 256. Lozier's publication was a small pamphlet called The Opera House Debate.Google Scholar

34. Ditzler, , Louisville Debate, vii, 259, 322, 326, 411, 519;Google ScholarAnon., “Kentucky Intelligence,” 1; see also Courier-Journal stories cited in note 30 above.Google Scholar

35. Norton, Walter A., Comparative Images (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991), 149.Google Scholar

36. Hibbard, Billy, An Address to the Quakers (New York: J. C. Totten, 1811), 76;Google ScholarCarroll, Andrew, Moral and Religious Sketches and Collections (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, 1857), 1:141;Google ScholarBillington, , Protestant Crusade, 60;Google ScholarPickett, and Smith, , Pickett-Smith Debate, 52.Google Scholar

37. Norton, , Comparative Images, 149;Google ScholarBillington, , Protestant Crusade, 65–68;Google ScholarAnon., “Henderson,” Nashville Christian Advocate, 14 January 1871, 1.Google Scholar

38. Anon., “Henderson,” 3;Google ScholarAnon., “Kentucky Intelligence,” 1.Google Scholar

39. Harrison, William, Theophilus Walton: Or, The Majesty of Truth (Nashville: Stevenson and Owen, 1858), 79–91, 239–46.Google Scholar

40. Finley, , Western Methodism, 55;Google ScholarRedford, A. H., Life and Times of H. H. Kavanaugh (Nashville: Redford, 1884), 251.Google Scholar

41. Garrison, Winfred E. and DeGroot, Alfred T., The Disciples of Christ: A History (St. Louis: Christian Board of Publication, 1948), 302.Google Scholar

42. Conkling, J. Christopher, A Joseph Smith Chronology (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1979), 81;Google ScholarJesse, Dean C., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1984), 66, 102;Google ScholarSmith, , Alexander Campbell, 133;Google ScholarThompson, G. M. and Burgess, O. A., A Debate on Total Depravity, the Polity or Church Government of the Regular Baptist Church, Free Moral Agency (Indianapolis: Levi Pennington, 1868), 1;Google ScholarRivers, R. H., The Life of Robert Paine (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing, 1884), 177;Google ScholarRiley, , Baptists of Alabama, 230.Google Scholar

43. Bolster, Arthur S. Jr, James Freeman Clarke (Boston: Beacon, 1954), 311;Google ScholarStone, Irving, Clarence Darrow for the Defense (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1941), 489–91.;Google ScholarTierney, Kevin, Darrow: A Biography (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979), 395;Google ScholarJenson, Richard B., Clarence Darrow (New York: Greenwood, 1992), 149;Google ScholarSayer, James Edward, Clarence Darrow (Dayton: Wright State University Press, 1978), 3, 44;Google ScholarMarsden, George M., Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 176.Google Scholar

44. See note 1.