Daniel Sommer (1850–1940) was a leading evangelist, editor, and debater among the Churches of Christ outside the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the chief author of the Sand Creek "Address and Declaration" of 1889.
Sommer was one of the first to call publicly for separation — not merely disagreement — from churches that used instrumental music, supported missionary societies, employed located preachers, and raised funds beyond the Sunday contribution. He took over Benjamin Franklin's American Christian Review in 1886 and turned it into the organ of that position.
He represents the urban, Northern and Midwestern wing of the Churches of Christ, distinct from the largely rural Southern stream around David Lipscomb — a distinction worth holding onto, because the division of 1906 is usually told as a simple North–South story and was not one. Sommer's insistence that mutual edification was the only biblical model kept the argument over the located preacher alive into the 1950s.
Relationships
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Was shaped by: Benjamin Franklin
Sommer took over Franklin's American Christian Review in 1886 and pressed his objections toward formal separation. -
Led the Northern wing alongside: David Lipscomb
Two distinct streams of conservative Churches of Christ — Sommer urban and Midwestern, Lipscomb rural and Southern — reaching similar conclusions by different routes.