The argument is not that instruments are ugly or worldly but that they are unauthorized. The New Testament letters tell congregations to sing, in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, and never mention an instrument in Christian assembly; the earliest centuries of eastern and western practice were vocal; therefore, on this reading, the church that adds an organ has legislated where its charter is silent. The reading turns on a prior question the Restoration Movement never settled: whether silence forbids or permits. The noninstrumental churches hold that a positive command excludes whatever it does not name, so that singing commanded is instruments excluded. The Disciples of Christ hold that silence leaves a matter to the judgement of the church as an expedient, in the same class as the shape of a building or the hour of a meeting. Because both sides claimed the same authority, scripture alone, the disagreement had nowhere to go but division, and instrumental music, along with the missionary societies, was the practical line along which the movement separated. The position remains the most immediately audible marker of a Churches of Christ congregation.
Facts
Structure
StructureA positive command is held to exclude whatever it does not name, so that singing commanded is instruments excluded. The New Testament letters tell congregations to sing and never mention an instrument in Christian assembly. 1 Position Profile
Opposing PositionThat silence leaves a matter to the judgement of the church as an expedient, in the same class as the shape of a building or the hour of a meeting, which is the position of the Disciples of Christ. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionBinding, without a formal definition 1 Doctrinal Category Learn More
Whether Silence Forbids or Permits
Everything in this dispute rests on a question of method that both sides inherited and neither invented. Given a text that commands one thing and says nothing about another, is the unmentioned thing forbidden or left free? The Churches of Christ answer that a specific command excludes its alternatives: when the New Testament letters tell congregations to sing, in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, the command specifies the music the church is authorized to make, and adding an instrument is not obedience plus something extra but a different act than the one commanded. Supporting arguments are marshalled from history rather than from taste.
The Greek and Latin churches sang without instruments for centuries; the organ entered western worship late; and Reformed writers including Calvin argued against instruments on grounds close to these, which is why the position is not an American frontier eccentricity but a recognizable descendant of the older regulative principle of worship.
The opposing reading, held by the Disciples of Christ and by most of Protestantism, treats matters on which scripture is silent as expedients committed to the church's judgement, in the same class as the hour of the service, the language of the sermon, or the existence of a building. On that reading an instrument is no more an addition to worship than a hymnal or an electric light. Neither side can settle the matter by appeal to scripture, because the disagreement is about how to read scripture, and both sides recognize only that authority.
The Census of 1906 and the Line of Division
Instrumental music was not the only question at issue but it was the audible one, and it became the practical test of which side a congregation was on. The other question was organizational: whether the churches might form a missionary society to send and support preachers, since the New Testament shows congregations sending money but no society standing between them. Both questions were argued in the movement's periodicals from the 1860s onward, and both split along the same fault.
The Gospel Advocate in Nashville, revived after the Civil War under David Lipscomb, argued the noninstrumental and anti-society position for a Southern readership impoverished by the war and suspicious of northern institutional religion; the Christian Standard argued the other way for a northern one. By the 1890s many congregations had ceased fellowship with each other in fact.
In 1906 the United States religious census listed the Churches of Christ as a separate body from the Disciples of Christ, and that administrative act is the date usually given for a division that no council declared and no document records. The Churches of Christ remain congregational to the point of having no headquarters, no convention and no officer able to speak for them, which makes the persistence of the a cappella position across thousands of independent congregations a striking piece of evidence about how strongly the underlying reading of silence is held.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
A doctrine held within Christianity.
Churches of Christ congregations sing without instrumental accompaniment, holding that where the New Testament commands singing and is silent about instruments the church has no warrant to add them.
Critiqued By
The Disciples of Christ read the same silence as leaving instrumental music to the church's judgement as an expedient, and it was on this reading, with the missionary societies, that the movement divided.
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