Austin McGary

Austin McGary (February 6, 1846 - June 15, 1928) was an American Restoration Movement evangelist and publisher of a periodical entitled "Firm Foundation", which was first published on September 1, 1884.

Born in Huntsville, Texas, to Isaac and Elizabeth (Visier) McGary, McGary's father was said to have fought at the Battle of San Jacinto and to have guarded the recently-captured Antonio López de Santa Anna. McGary's mother died while McGary was a child.

Texas lawman

Before becoming an evangelist, McGary was elected sheriff of Madison County, Texas, a post he held for two years before resigning to work for the state of Texas in transporting prisoners to penitentiaries. This work took place near the United States-Mexico border.

Personal life

McGary was married three times—to Narcissus Jenkins in 1866 (two children) until her death in 1872, Lucie Kitrell in 1875 (nine children) until her death in 1897, and finally to Lillian Otey.

Evangelist, publisher, debater

McGary became interested in religion and studied the Alexander Campbell - Robert Owen debate of 1829. [ [http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/acampbell/cod/COD00A.HTM Campbell-Owen Debate at the Restoration Movement pages at Memorial University of Newfoundland] .] He was said to have been educated in part by Church of Christ ministers including Benton, Thomas, and Basil Sweeney. [ [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmccg.html Handbook of Texas Online: MCGARY, AUSTIN] ]

McGary was converted to the Church of Christ and baptised by Harry Hamilton after hearing sermons by the latter in Madisonville, Texas. The baptism took place on December 24, 1881.

He began publication of the "Firm Foundation" in 1884, in his own words:

:"to oppose everything in the work and worship of the church, for which there was not a command or an apostolic example or a necessary scriptural inference."

Rebaptism controversy

In debates with David Lipscomb, editor of the rival publication "Gospel Advocate", McGary advanced positions regarding the relationship between baptism and salvation, some of which were already seminal [See, "e.g.", Dr. John Thomas (1805–1871), whose insistence on so-called rebaptism and whose promulgation of that and certain other beliefs formed a wedge between him and Alexander Campbell. Thomas went on to found the Christadelphians.] in the formation of the group of Christian churches known as the Churches of Christ, others of which would become the basis for continuing disagreement among members of that body.

The substance of McGary's argument was based on the notion, generally accepted by members of the Churches of Christ, that the state of human salvation begins at the moment of that individual's submersive baptism. McGary, however, further asserted that another condition of salvation lay in the believer's knowledge and acceptance of this idea (of baptism securing the remission of sins) at the moment of baptism, concluding that baptisms occurring outside of this condition were invalid, and did not bring about the salvation of those baptised in the absence of that state of belief. Lipscomb took the opposite position: that baptism for any scriptural reason qualified as scriptural baptism, independent of the candidate's full knowledge and acceptance of that concept. McGary's position, often dubbed "The Texas Heresy," was much later reborn in the Boston Movement of the International Churches of Christ. [See Jimmy Allen, "Re-baptism: What one must know to be born again" (West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing, 1991), ISBN 0-878990-18-7. Allen felt prompted to write the book because of the re-baptism doctrine of the International Churches of Christ, their practice including re-baptism even of people who had earlier been baptized by traditional Churches of Christ.]

The extent of the re-baptism controversy and McGary's role in it are evident in various essays in David W. Fletcher's edited 432-page collection of essays "Baptism and the remission of sins: An historical perspective" published in 1990. [(Joplin, MO: College Press, 1990), ISBN 0-89900-422-9.] In their 2006 study "Kingdom come: Embracing the spiritual legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding", [(Abilene, TX: Leafwood Publishers), ISBN 0-9767790-6-4.] John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine aver that by the late 1930s the McGary position came to dominate American Churches of Christ in all but Middle Tennessee (the area most under Lipscomb's continued influence) but has since receded as the Lipscomb view has become more pervasive in the fellowship nationally.

Later life

After resigning the editorship of the "Firm Foundation" in 1902, [Terry J. Gardner, "McGary, Austin (1846-1928)," in "The encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell movement", ed. Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, D. Newell Williams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), ISBN 0-8028-3898-7, pp. 507-508.] McGary lived in California and then in Oregon before returning to live in Texas.

Other later periodicals published by McGary included "The Lookout" and "The Open Arena".

References

External links

* [http://www.therestorationmovement.com/mcgary,austin.htm Biography at TheRestorationMovement.com]