A generally clear-eyed exploration into the life of one of the great reformers in Christian history and a major driving force of the Restoration Movement, often known today as the Stone-Campbell Movement.

I am not sure there is any religious "group" that has a more fraught and complex relationship with one of their great leaders/visionaries as the S-C/RM has with Campbell. And this book does a good job to explain why and how.

The author describes Campbell's origins in Ireland and the religious heritage in which he developed. He sets forth Campbell's journey to America, out of Presbyterianism, among many of the Baptists in what was then the West, and then quite self-consciously the catalyst for his own reform movement which he preferred to go by Disciples of Christ. The author very much explores the various debates and controversies into which Campbell waded, both within the greater world of Christendom and within his own movement.

No one will consider this any kind of "hagiography," but we already have that for Campbell from the past. But that does not mean Foster is overly critical or harsh; he portrays Campbell with all of his strengths as a thinker and expositor and the faults that very easily came forth because of those strengths.

Ever since the movement has attempted to figure out what it is: whether full of dogmatic warriors against sectarianism, or those seeking an irenic way of being Christian only but not necessarily the only Christians. In Campbell we can find both impulses. In Campbell we see perhaps an over-reliance on the positivism of the Enlightenment and a naive postmillennial American apocalyptic hope. It is ironic that "Campbellite" has become the standard slur used against participants in the S-C/RM, for pretty much everyone in the movement has significant disagreements or qualms with Campbell on various issues and levels. But it was his force of personality and rhetorical skill that catalyzed the movement in many ways.

A very good resource to help understand Alexander Campbell. ( )