Alexander Campbell v. 1: Adventurer in Freedom - A Literary Biography

Eva Jean Wrather devoted seventy years to writing an 800,000-word biography of Alexander Campbell, the Scots-born founder of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the only Protestant denomination to originate in the United States. Her work, which she was still revising when she died, is a literary biography, without scholarly documentation. Ms. Wrather was periodically drawn from work on the manuscript by the needs of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society, of which she was the only female founder. Work was also delayed when publishers at first interested in the project turned it down, at least once because of its enormous length. Believing in the importance and integrity of what she had written, Eva Jean Wrather refused to shorten the work or incorporate modern scholarship, including punctuation and spelling. In the early 1990s, historian and author D. Duane Cummins was asked by the Disciples of Christ Historical Society to assist Ms. Wrather in revising her manuscript. Together, they revised the first seven chapters before the author’s health failed. These chapters comprise Volume One. Publication of future volumes is tentatively scheduled. Volume One traces Campbell’s physical journey from Scotland to America and his spiritual journey, as he left behind the stern Calvinism of his youth and developed his own theology of a loving and kind God. A project of TCU Press and the Disciples of Christ Historical Society.