Explorer In Search of Zion

Christians in the 21st century can feel like the "camel going through the eye of the needle" (Matthew 19:24) as they increase in both wealth that is often the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10) and education that might be a wisdom foolish to God (1 Cor 1:20). This is the story of the spiritual challenges of affluence and upward social mobility told by the world-renowned religious scholar, Dr. David Edwin Harrell, Jr. (1930-2021). His numerous pioneering histories of lower-class and marginalized Christian movements in American history - from the Disciples of Christ to the Assemblies of God - demonstrated society's gradual pull of members of these churches away from their original Bible-based and countercultural sects and into more worldly denominations. Harrell's life also traveled this road of increasing influence and acceptance into the highest levels of cultural standing as a dean among historians of American church history and as a Fulbright Scholar and State Department envoy to India. But Harrell resisted the domestication of his own personal faith, converting to discipleship to Jesus within the most countercultural wing of the American Restoration Movement, the congregational (non-institutional) churches of Christ. This biography is the heretofore untold story of Harrell's lifelong spiritual pilgrimage through 70 years of religious publishing, itinerant preaching, doctrinal discussion, and global missionary efforts. It is a journey leading to a uniquely informed advocacy for restoring primitive Christianity in the present day and seeking to follow the New Testament pattern for individual faith and congregational practice in independent local churches around the world. Throughout his life, Harrell would guide younger Christians into better understanding of restoration movements seeking to follow both Jesus and his apostles in their self-emptying love and revelation of God's will. This was, Harrell observed, a long and honorable history of ostracized sects seeking to escape the corruptions of history to be simply Christian. The history of humble spiritual journey toward God amid societal affluence and worldly attainment is also his story.