Isaac Errett

Isaac Errett, founder of the Christian Standard Magazine, is a critical figure in the American Restoration Movement. In the Mid 1860’s, as founder, publisher, editor of the Christian Standard, he sits at the center of the great hymnbook controversy that represents the first unofficial split in restoration movement churches in North America. Debate over whether or not music should be included, whether or not a preponderance of new Gospel Songs should be included or even sung at all as they were deemed to be inappropriate by many of Errett’s contemporaries and movement leaders such as Alexander Campbell is what led to this first monumental division that was officially recognized in 1906 by the US Census where Churches of Christ (A Cappella), Churches of Christ-Instrumental/Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ became three separate denominational entities.

Isaac Errett was born in the city of New York, January 2, 1820. His father was a native of Arklaw, county of Wicklow, Ireland, and his mother was a native of Portsmouth, England. His immediate parents were both of Protestant families, and became identified with the Disciples in New York City as early as 1811—the father being an elder in the original Church in that place.

He commenced preaching in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1840. He enjoyed the advantages of frequent and intimate association with Walter Scott, Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell, and most of the early advocates of primitive Christianity in the West; and his association with these men was of incalculable advantage to him, for they not only gave him valuable instruction in the principles of the Reformation, but he was enabled, by coming in frequent contact with them, to draw inspiration from their lives and characters for the great work upon which he had entered.

His ministerial labors have been divided between the work of an evangelist and pastor. He was pastor of a church in Pittsburgh three years; New Lisbon, Ohio, five years; North Bloomfield, Ohio, two years; Warren, Ohio, five years; Muir and Ionia, Michigan, eight years; and Detroit, Michigan, two years. At all these points he was eminently successful, and, besides his regular pastoral labors, did considerable work in the general field. He removed to Warren, Ohio, in 1851, and, while there, was Corresponding Secretary of the Ohio Missionary Society three years; and it was he who first put that society into systematic and active operation. In 1856, he removed his family to Ionia County, Michigan, and, while laboring to build up a congregation at that point, he was prevailed upon to take the Corresponding Secretaryship of the American Christian Missionary Society, which position he held three years, and succeeded in bringing the society to a degree of prosperity which it had never before reached. When he resigned the Secretaryship, he was appointed first Vice-President and afterward presided at the annual meetings of the Society until 1866, when he was elected President. This, however, he at once declined. In the spring of 1866 he removed to Cleveland, Ohio, where he now resides, and edits the "Christian Standard," a religious weekly published in that city.

D. J. Bulls, (edited), from "Biographies and sermons from pioneer preachers" by B. C. Goodpasture and W. T. Moore