In the previous post, I mentioned that the scattered nature of the Brethren family from the east coast to the west coast by the 1840s and 50s led to a sense that greater unity was needed to hold the family together.  Another effort, besides Annual Meeting, that was made to foster a greater sense of harmony within the brotherhood was the beginning of periodical literature.  The pioneer of this effort was Henry Kurtz, whom we met in an earlier post.  Kurtz (1796-1874) had tried to establish a religious periodical twice during the 1830s but discontinued both ventures due to lack of support.  For him, the third time was the charm.  In April 1851 he published the first issue of his monthly paper, the Gospel Visitor in the interest of the German Baptist Brethren.  It met with mixed reviews by the cautious Brethren.  Annual Meeting in 1851 decided to place the paper on a one-year trial period to allow the church to review the paper and share their evaluations with the 1852 Annual Meeting.  In 1852, Annual Meeting gave cautious support to the venture by recognizing the paper as a “private undertaking” that should meet with no further church interference.  The photos accompanying this post are the title page for the first issue of volume four of this paper, and a plaque near Poland, Ohio, at the site of the springhouse where Kurtz printed the paper.

Kurtz felt that the paper could promote unity with the scattered church and solve doctrinal and practical problems by providing a sounding board for insights and conclusions.  He also saw the paper as a means to advocate those values and ideals distinctive to the Brethren.  What he didn’t necessarily anticipate, however, was the significant opening that his as well as other Brethren papers would create for major change within the church and, eventually, discord leading to division in the early 1880s.

His younger assistant editor, James Quinter (1816-1888), lent support to several controversial issues, such as higher education, Sunday Schools, and evangelism.  It was Henry Holsinger (1833-1905), however, who pushed the door wide open for significant change in the church.  Holsinger viewed the Gospel Visitor as the harbinger of a new era in the brotherhood: “With the appearance of the Visitor was ushered in the progressive era in the Tunker Church.  It was so prophesied by its opposers, and we must do them the honor of stating that they were true prophets . . .”  With his two papers, the Christian Family Companion and The Progressive Christian, Holsinger was at the forefront of pushing and dragging, at times, the church into the progressive era.

Holsinger was of an entirely different temperament from Kurtz and Quinter.  Holsinger showed little of their tact in dealing with the church leadership and was quite impatient with the slowness of the traditional channels for change in the church.  Characteristically, he pushed on an issue of reform so forcefully that opposition from the Conservative forces was all but inevitable.  Only when the reactionary forces in the church drew up against him did he back off.

While Holsinger was the most vocal progressive voice among the papers that proliferated among the Brethren in the 1870s, Quinter, who took over Kurtz’s publishing mantle, maintained a moderately progressive approach in his papers.  But the Old Order Brethren joined the fray with their own paper in 1870, The Vindicator, published by Peter Nead’s son-in-law, Samuel Kinsey.  These and other papers kept the controversial issues before the church, each with their own editorial slant, much as today’s news outlets.  Though significant changes would be made to the tone of these papers after the division of the early 1880s, they all added fuel to the divisive fire that led up to the division.