Herbert L. Willett -- Disciples of Christ Bible Scholar

I received as an email this brief essay on the life of Herbert Willett, one of the most important early Liberal Disciples of Christ leaders. Ted Parks notes the controversy that surrounded his appearance a century ago at a gathering of Disciples in Pittsburgh. Disciples will gather again this summer, but the cracks already present a century ago have long since led to division in the ranks of a movement of unity. But was there any other course of action?

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The Dean Of Liberal Disciples
The theme of the Centennial Convention where Disciples scholar Herbert L. Willett (1864-1944) addressed a packed crowd in October 1909 was "The Union of All Believers." But some at the historic gathering may have been happier if "All Believers" had not included Willett.
Herbert L. WillettThe 1909 convention drew more than 50,000 Disciples to Pittsburgh to celebrate the one hundred year anniversary of Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address, the 'Magna Carta' of the Stone-Campbell movement. Willett was among those who sought to move Disciples into the mainstream of culture and theology and thus became, as Eugene Boring described him, the "first liberal Disciples Bible scholar."
After graduating from Bethany College, Willett entered the pastorate in Ohio. He reached a turning point in 1891, however, when he decided to enter Yale Divinity School. There he came under the influence of renowned biblical scholar William Rainey Harper, who encouraged Willett to serve his fellow Disciples through a more intensive and more academic study of scripture. In 1896 Willett became the first Disciple to earn a Ph.D. in biblical studies. From Yale, Willett entered the University of Berlin to study with Adolph Harnack and Hermann Gunkel. Eventually he was called to the University of Chicago where he taught and served as the first Dean of the Disciples Divinity House.
Facing a time of dramatic social and intellectual change, Willett refocused the Disciples plea from restoring a 'normative past' to working for a progressive future. When he began to write the weekly Sunday School lesson for The Christian Evangelist, Willett drew heavy criticism, especially from J.W. McGarvey, author of a regular column in the Christian Standard. Issues like whether or not scripture should be interpreted literally and how exactly to achieve unity in God's kingdom separated Willett from McGarvey and many like him. Efforts to disinvite Willett from speaking at the 1909 convention failed.
An important voice in the top tier of American biblical scholarship in the early twentieth century, Willett served as an intellectual pioneer for Disciples. Brite Divinity School's Leo Perdue called him "a prophet of transformation shaping the Disciples of Christ into a modern expression of mainline Protestantism." Now at our two-hundredth anniversary, perhaps we can take inspiration from one of our own prophets and once again strive for a progressive future that calls all people to the oneness dreamed of by Christ and championed by Thomas Campbell.
Written by: Ted Parks
Associate Professor of Spanish
Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN
Celebrate Our Bicentennial. Learn more at http://www.greatcommunion.org/
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Christ Historical Society's web site at: http://www.discipleshistory.org/
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