Written by Alan Howell
What if rediscovering forgotten memories could help us create a new future?
That’s an idea at the heart of Leonard Allen’s “Distant Voices: Discovering a Forgotten Past for a Changing Church.” I first found and read this book decades ago, but as I keep coming back to it, I find that it still speaks. The author is a Harding University Bible Alumni of the Year (2019) award recipient and currently serves as dean of Lipscomb University’s College of Bible.
Allen begins the book by talking about memories, noting that “the way we ‘remember’ our Christian past or traditions parallels somewhat the way we remember our personal pasts. Our ‘memories’ of our Christian heritage are also selective (p. 3). The book’s purpose is to create “an exercise in remembering,” “to recover some of the forgotten or ‘distant voices’ from the modern history of Churches of Christ” (p. 4). Recapturing those forgotten stories can deepen our memory bank, help keep us honest about the past and prepare us for the future.
Besides recounting stories of familiar influential characters (like James A. Harding) and inspirational figures (like T. B. Larimore), this book also highlights other heroes of the faith whose stories may have been forgotten or marginalized for a variety of reasons. For example, in the early 1800s, our church fellowship included women preachers like Abigail Roberts and Nancy Towle, who were itinerant ministers. They traveled to different congregations preaching, teaching and converting hundreds of people as well as planting churches in different places (p. 23-28). In the late 1800s and early 1900s, writer Silena Moore Holman used her communication skills in widely read pieces to encourage churches to empower women and include their gifts as important resources for the flourishing of the church (p. 126-34). And there were even other male church leaders (Campbell, Pendleton, Milligan, Lard, Lipscomb, Sewell and others) who made the case, in a variety of ways, for appointing deaconesses in the churches (p. 140). C.R. Nichol, for example, an influential Texas preacher, highlighted women in scripture like Priscilla, Dorcas and Phoebe, stating: “As there was need for the deaconess in the early days of the church, so there is now” (p. 141).
Allen believes that “these distant voices invite us to pull up a chair and join the lively conversations out of which” this church “tradition took shape” (p. 175). And other voices should be included at this table, too, like those from among the African American Churches of Christ. Annie Tuggle, for example, used her voice and influence to encourage others to follow God’s call to ministry and missions as well as mentoring leaders like Fred Gray (see Robinson, “I was Under a Heavy Burden,” p. 80-81).
What would it be like to hear Nancy Towle or Annie Tuggle speak from the Benson stage at Lectureship? How could we have been inspired by Silena Moore Holman and C.R. Nichol speaking in chapel? I think we could find a lot of wisdom from our sisters and brothers from the past that could help us navigate both the present and the future.
