The son of Thomas, Alexander’s date of birth is unrecorded, but is assumed to be June, 1786, in northern Ireland. He studied Greek, Logic and other liberal arts studies at the Glasgow University.

He followed his father to America in 1809. As we noted before, strikingly enough, Alexander had come to the same conclusions in Ireland as his father had reached in America. By 1809, the Campbells were beginning to take steps which were to have profound effects upon the Restoration Movement. As we mentioned, Alexander arrived here in America in November of 1809. He and his father would share their beliefs, the changes that they had arrived at in their own thinking about Bible topics, and so on, and they were quite amazed that each one of them had more or less come to the same conclusions without having corroborated in that prior to that time.

Alexander preached his first sermon on September 16, 1810, at a place called Brush Run. His father, Thomas, had settled in a place called Washington, Pennsylvania, which was in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania, and Brush Run was somewhere between Washington, Pennsylvania, and Bethany, Virginia, which would eventually become Bethany, West Virginia. On March 12, 1811, Alexander married Margaret Brown. Their first child, a daughter, was born March 13, 1812. The reason that I mention this, and the reason that is important is because at the birth of his daughter, when it came time for this daughter to be sprinkled, which was, of course, the custom, the tradition, of the Presbyterian Church, this began a theological discussion on the part of Alexander, as well as Thomas, and they both concluded from their study of the matter that baptism was to be by immersion, and not by sprinkling, and that baptism was to be an immersion by believers. This, of course, would disqualify the infant daughter.

A little more discussion on the above: Previously, we talked about the fact that Thomas Campbell had come for health reasons to America from his native Ireland and had left his family behind. While he was here in America, even though it was relatively a brief period of time, he had already begun to question, to be concerned, about some of the doctrinal stands that the Presbyterian Church had on various matters, none the least of which was some of the Calvinistic doctrine that they taught. As we mentioned, he would eventually become a part of the Chartiers Presbytery in western Pennsylvania. Because of his teaching counter to Presbyterian doctrine, he got into trouble with the Presbytery.

But, one of the other issues that got him crossways with the leadership of the Presbyterian Church here was that he would not refuse communion to anybody. The practice of the Presbyterian Church was a closed communion. You recall that we noted that Thomas Campbell was a Seceeder Presbyterian, and if you weren’t a faithful, acknowledged member of the Seceeder branch of the Presbyterian Church, then you couldn’t take communion. Being on sort of the western edge of frontier, Thomas was preaching in various Presbyterian congregations where many people were coming together; and some of them weren’t even necessarily Presbyterians. But they didn’t have a lot of choices in that time and in that frontier condition. Again, he got in trouble with the leadership of the Presbyterian Church—that Presbytery—over the issue of communion.

You remember that we talked about the fact that it was during this period of time, from about 1807 to 1809, from the time Thomas came to America to the time that Alexander and the rest of the family arrived in 1809, that both of them had really had a change of heart, had a change of thinking. Both of them, in effect, had left the Presbyterian Church. It was during the time that Alexander was in Glasgow, Scotland—you recall that their first attempt to come to America resulted in a shipwreck, and the family was saved, but they went back to Glasgow where they could raise more funds and make another attempt to come to America; and during that time Alexander was in the University of Glasgow where he was undertaking various studies including Logic and Greek and so on—and it was during that time that he wrote several papers.

He did a considerable amount of study on the matter of the eldership. Now, the practice, the belief, of the Presbyterian Church was that an elder, or a group of elders, could oversee a number of churches. Well, Alexander did a Biblical study (and, by the way, this would be very much a benefit to him in latter years, as he would be involved in the implementing of the Scriptural, the doctrinal, organization of the church). But, nevertheless, he ended up in a discussion with some leaders of the Presbyterian Church there in Glasgow over this issue of the closed communion, because in his study of the Bible on the matter of both communion, as well as the work of elders, of presbyters [another word for elders], that really, this was something that they had wrong. And, as a matter of fact, the practice of the Presbyterian Church was, as I understand it, that the elders, the presbyters, would interview each person desiring to have communion, and they would determine from that interview whether you were worthy to have communion.

Well, the bottom line was that this, along with a few other things, caused Alexander, on the other side of the ocean from his father, Thomas, to denounce the Presbyterian Church, to leave the Presbyterian Church. So, not only were Thomas in America and Alexander in Scotland having these changes take place while they were separated by such a distance, but isn’t it interesting that one of the very issues that cause them both to eventually leave the Presbyterian Church was virtually the same issue—the matter of this closed communion? I found that to be quite interesting that these two good men, father and son, would have such a similar experience.