ANTI-ORDINANCE: A PROTO-PENTECOSTAL PHENOMENON?

by
Charles Edwin Jones

Both the Holiness and Pentecostal movements have roots in the popular romanticism1 of the late nineteenth century. In their brightest moments, the Spirit-directed impulse springing from it has impelled them to the heroic as they have spread the gospel "in the slums, and in the jungles," and throughout "all the world."2 In darker moments, the same impulse fueled by arrogance, ignorance, and manipulation of scriptural texts and church authority, has brought the cause into disrepute. Having died as an heretical Holiness ideology, did Anti-ordinance reappear as an attitudinal aberration in Pentecostalism?

Hereditary traits, in religious movements as in men, are difficult to trace with precision. In movements, inheritance from parent to child is obscured further by the fact that always there is a dominant parent, and one or more other, less dominant. Estrangement between mother and child, as in the case of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, and the interweaving of regressive and positive traits have caused historians of both movements largely to ignore a dark aspect of this inheritance the Anti-ordinance phenomenon.

At the outset, it must be made clear that although in the 1880s, dispute over the necessity of baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Sabbath gave it rise the eye of the storm darted toward other, cardinal issues: the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the nature and discipline of the church. Couched initially in sacramentarian terms, the debate only secondarily concerned church ordinances. The actual battle was joined over Spirit-guidance, upon which the insurgents came to rely to the exclusion of scripture, church, reason, and tradition. Although within a couple of decades excesses and anarchy dissipated the Missouri-centered coalition, an unflappable Spirit-attributed subjectivity remained, unconscious of history and indifferent either to sacraments or to church discipline.

Anti-ordinance and the setting, in order of the first independent Holiness churches in Missouri, Kansas, Texas, and elsewhere were practically coincident, giving credence to the popular Methodist-Holiness belief that comeoutism and Anti-ordinance were synonymous, when in fact they represented two, quite distinct emphases among independent Holiness radicals in, and influenced by, the Southwestern Holiness Association.

Formed in 1879 following the National Camp Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness at Bismarck Grove, near Lawrence, Kansas, the Southwestern Association drew together most Holiness workers in both branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church in north Missouri and eastern Kansas. Affiliation was limited to members in good standing of some Christian church. The Association was served by the Good Way begun that year and issued successively from Savannah, St. Joseph, College Mound, and Chillicothe, Missouri.3

By 1882, when its membership stood at 185, the activities of workers related to the Southwestern Association had brought many of them, particularly in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, into conflict with church officials. In March of that year in Macon, Missouri, A. M. Kiergan, A. L.

Brewer, P. D. Van Deventer, George R. Sneed, F. H. Sumter, all Southern Methodist preachers, and J. W. Blosser, Congregationalist preacher and physician, agreed to withdraw "at a convenient time" from their churches.4 The departure from their churches of these and a number of other Holiness preachers in north Missouri, either voluntarily or under threat of discipline, undermined their standing in the Southwestern Holiness Association as well. Although the Southwestern was already regarded by sister associations "as fostering comeoutism" and breeding "church . . . disintegration,"5 those affected were successful in convincing the Association, meeting in June of that year at Centralia, Missouri, to amend its bylaws to permit the setting, in order of independent Holiness churches.6

The next year, a joint stock company of members of the Association purchased the campus at College Mound, Missouri, of the former Cumberland Presbyterian McGee College from the church presbytery of that name, and opened there a classical academy of its own: the Pauline Holiness College, an institution apparently designed to inspire tent-making ministries like those of the Apostle Paul and of the holiness Methodist Episcopal bishop, William Taylor.7 In April 1883, the Good Way moved its office and equipment from St. Joseph to College Mound, where it occupied space rent-free in the college building.8

The decision of the Southwestern Holiness Association to endorse, when necessary, organization of independent Holiness churches gave the independents equal standing in its deliberations. Ironically, it also freed independents from need of the Association and from need to believe that the churches at whose hands they had so recently suffered were true churches.9 They wondered how many others "in the churches, so-called, lorded over by anti-holiness, secret oath-bound, tobacco-eating shepherds" could not "fellowship such pastors, much less receive the communion at their hands."10

The first of its affiliates to act on the Association provision was the forty-four member Holiness band of Centralia, Missouri, which on March 29,1883 resolved to be set-in-order and to incorporate under the laws of the state the Church at Centralia, "making a profession of repentance, justification, regeneration, and belief in sanctification" as a work of grace "subsequent to regeneration wrought instantaneously through consecration and faith, the condition of membership.''11 Among those identified with it, which within a few weeks increased to seventy-eight, were practically all the independent Holiness workers of north Missouri.

Autonomous and self-governing, the Church at Centralia and one soon after organized at Nevada, Iowa, had all the marks, admirers said, of the New Testament ecclesia. In their eyes, it was a true church as defined by the (sectarian) Methodist Episcopal Church, South (from which they had so recently had departed): "the visible Church of Christ," "a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance."12

Although the Holiness people at Centralia thought otherwise, the events surrounding the beginning of the church there had a distinctly Methodist flavor. The Holiness band there had been organized the previous December following meetings conducted by A. M. and Nina Kiergan and Dora Hunt. The band met in Brother Brown's carpenter shop while constructing "a neat, plain, commodious" chapel. They proposed on May 3, 1883, to dedicate the building debt-free as a "house for the Lord," and by the laying-on-of-hands of the presbytery, to set apart the first class of elders in the Church of God. The day before, the membership "recognized" the ordinations of former Methodist Episcopal Church, South elders A. M. Kiergan and A. L. Brewer, and former Baptist George W. Petty; and recommended nine, all or most of whom were former Southern Methodist local preachers, for ordination as elders the next day: J. F. Watkins,13 N. T. Sneed, H. A. Foster, George R. Sneed, F. H. Sumter (ordained later),14 J. B. Creighton,15 J. H. Allen,16 D. C. Brenneman, and W. T. Bean.l7

Though congregationalist, the proceedings on May 3 were as non-parochial in their immediate effect as those of a Methodist conference would have been. In addition to established independent Holiness workers, most of whom were "identified" with the Church at Centralia, the "blood-washed" crowded the house from "Monroe City, Long Branch, Santa Fe, Mount Zion, Sturgeon, Armstrong, Columbia, Callaway County, Mexico, Rush Hill," and other places in north central and northeast Missouri. At eleven o'clock Isaiah Reid of Nevada, Iowa, graduate of the Auburn Seminary who had been expelled from the Presbyterian ministry for preaching holiness,18 delivered the dedicatory sermon, and trustees were admonished never to permit "sprees or suppers" "to desecrate the sacred place." In the afternoon a presbytery, consisting of Reid, former Southern Methodists Kiergan and Brewer, former Baptist Petty, and former Northern Methodist T. B. Bratton, "solemnly ordained" the eight kneeling at the rail "to the office of an Elder in the Church of God."19 None was reordained.20

Over thirty years later, "the glory" which "crowned the mercy seat" in the prayers, singing (without instrumental accompaniment), testimonies, sermon, and altar service in the evening were still fresh in the memory of A.M. Kiergan, especially the inspiring a capella singing. He recalled Southern Methodist Bishop Holland McTyeire's advice to ordinands at Hannibal in 1876: "Young brethren, you will do well if you keep the organs and the devil out of the churches."21

Even as the comeouters of North Missouri took first steps toward recreation of the New Testament church, the first signs of a storm over Spirit-guidance appeared among the Free Methodists and Cumberland Presbyterians in northeast Texas. There, several men and women left their families and holed up in a farmhouse to await divine guidance by physical signs, such as sensations in their joints. One man refused even to return home to care for his wife, who had become seriously ill, until he had such a sign. Another, the Rev. Robert J. Haynes, a Cumberland Presbyterian holiness man, who had become convinced through revelation that he would be alive at the Second Coming, boasted that no gun in existence could kill him. To test his faith, one cold night a gang of ruffians dunked him in a cattle watering tank; then dumped him, unconscious and half-frozen, by the road.22

Then, in 1884 a pathetic incident occurred in Texas related to later developments in Missouri That year "a Mrs. Wheaton," self-proclaimed prison evangelist from the "North," came through Ennis spreading the gospel of comeoutism and anti-ordinance. She announced that all churches were "Babylon" and that the recording of one's name "on a church book was an absolute sin." Among the sizable number attracted by Mother Wheaton's plea to "Come out of her, my people," was the Rev. Philip Allen, the youthful local Free Methodist presiding elder, who was convinced by the Spirit to leave both his church and his wife, and directed, he said, to marry a woman in Kansas, whom he had never seen. Allen set out for Kansas posthaste, only to be informed on arrival that his intended had herself received no directive from the Lord to marry him.23 Not even this fiasco, however, could shake Allen's faith in Spirit-attributed impressions. For her part, Elizabeth Wheaton appeared two decades later at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles as a seeker after "Pentecost."24

In north Missouri, it was a respected teacher, not an itinerant evangelist, who was destined to formulate the Anti-ordinance ideology and to marshal its offense. Addison Lanius Brewer,25 namesake and son-in-law of the Missouri Methodist pioneer, Jacob Lanius,26 had trudged with Kiergan every step from Episcopal Methodism to what they believed to be reestablishment of the New Testament ecclesia: the Church at Centralia; the Free Church of Nevada, Iowa; and in other places in rapid succession.27 In the early 18709, both men had served in the Southern Methodist mission in Montana.28 From its opening in 1883 until 1887, Brewer, who was self-taught in Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee, served as theology teacher of the Pauline Holiness College at College Mound. While there, he developed his Anti-ordinance theory, conflict about which, together with coeducation of the races, led to the school's closing29 and a permanent rift with Kiergan and other orthodox Holiness brethren.

In April and July 1887, Brewer set fire to his ties to College Mound by issuing there the first two numbers of the Royal Priest, 30 journal of the Anti-ordinance cause. October saw issuance of the third number from Kirksville,31 forty miles to the north, site of the origin of the paper through 1898 and of its successor, the Theocrat, from December 1900 to September 1903. From beginning to end, Phil Allen was a subscriber and contributor to Brewer's papers.32

Inconsistencies in conservative sacramental practices became early forensic targets of the insurgents. "A Bit of History" incorporated in the February 25, 1888 letter of S. C. O'Byrne of Sullivan, Missouri, focused on J. H. Allen and George W. Petty, ordinand and member of the presbytery at Centralia. O'Byrne recalled:

When J. H. Allen came from Ill. to Mo., he came as a licensed M. E. preacher. The district conference at Louisiana, Mo., refused to renew his license. Reason, he preached holiness. Pretext, he would not submit to the preacher in charge: and he was excommunicated afterwards for passing the bread and wine at Centralia to men who had been justified and sanctified in his meeting after the elements had been consecrated by the preacher in charge of the circuit, who was willing to string the fish. But Bro. Allen went on preaching holiness all the same: and men got saved all the same: of which I am one. Bless the Lord! And in the same meeting with me there was an ordained Baptist preacher [George W. Petty] sanctified. About this time Bro. Allen was struck with a streak of new lightning, that he must be ordained, and this Baptist preacher laid his hands on him (I presume along with some others [at Centralia]) and ordained him.

Three years later, O'Byrne reported, yet another sacramental role reversal occurred, which illustrated the Methodist (and to the Anti-Ordinance insurgents sectarian) traditionalism of the independent church movements.

And this last summer Bro. Allen had another stroke of new lightning, and he discovered this Baptist preacher's baptism [by immersion] was not valid and he (Bro. Allen) baptized the preacher over again [by effusion]. O Lucifer, Son of the morning, how hast the mighty fallen.33

Attacks on the sacraments sounded the battle cry. It was the insurgents' theology of Spirit-guidance and of the church, however, which posed the most intolerable threat to orthodox independents because the spirituality and rhetoric of Anti-ordinance, in the beginning, so closely resembled their own. Brewer's own spiritual pilgrimage, long before he arrived in College Mound, is a case in point.

From childhood, A. L. Brewer had regarded instances of yielding to impressions as milestones of spiritual progress. Being "prostrated" during a prayer meeting, he saw as a sign of forgiveness of sins. A dream in which "heavenly messengers" cast "a great stone" "into the bottomless pit . . . exclaiming, Babylon is fallen, is fallen," indicated that he should give up "all worldly pursuits," such as becoming a merchant, to preach. As a condition of entire sanctification, he believed that God required him to give the proceeds from the sale of a hundred acres of land to missions in China. Yielding to such impressions, he stopped pressing for monetary compensation due him from the church and ceased taking medicine should even his own life be threatened. He pointed to such as the basis for a decision to burn his sermon notes and preach only the "naked" Bible. When, on occasion, Brewer sought to check impulse with scripture, the application appears inappropriate. One instance of such was his use of "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. . .,"34 in answer to a question of his official board about his preaching on holiness to the exclusion of other cardinal doctrines. Another, his test of an impression that he should preach holiness, even if his wife left him because of it, by resort to the passage concerning forsaking father, mother, wife, or children for the gospel.35 Brewer found validation for an impression that he sever his Methodist conference tie by suggestions volunteered by his wife, who at the time did not profess entire sanctification, that he go and preach for the Holiness independents. In like manner her interpreted non-receipt of the written notice of location, which the Methodist presiding elder had sent, as evidence of divine approval of his decision to withdraw from the "sect."

Brewer's method of discernment, held in common with other independents, nudged other preachers prominent in earliest days of the independent church movement in north Missouri into Anti-ordinance beliefs. These included P. D. Van Deventer, who committed suicide during the fracas,36 and H. A. Foster, D. C. Brenneman,37 and N. T. Sneed, who had been among the eight ordained at Centralia. Awareness that the same method of discernment prevailed among them as well, proved threatening, to the extreme, to their orthodox brethren.

The footings for the Anti-ordinance structure were laid at the very beginning of A. L. Brewer's stay at College Mound. In September 1883, as he was breaking bread for the communion service during a camp meeting in Chariton County, Brewer claimed he heard an inner voice say, "This is to be done away," and countered with scripture about showing forth "the Lord's death until he come." The voice countered: "He has already come." Although he continued the service, Brewer recalled that the incident induced him to "investigate the matter further," leading him finally to conclude that Old Testament "types were to be entirely removed." When asked a month later during a meeting at Knox City to pray for a young woman who had been an invalid for eleven years, he concluded that if the types of bread and wine in the communion and water in baptism had been done away, surely oil for the anointing of the sick had gone with them.

By mid1887, his work as teacher ended and his work as editor begun, Brewer had constructed, for himself and his readers, an entirely new history of redemption. In doing so, he carefully retained the facade of familiar terminology and accepted piety.38 Brewer himself apparently never abandoned Wesleyan taboos. His grandson, Given, remembered that in 1925 at age eleven he heard his Grandfather Brewer chastise his father for having danced with his mother, albeit in their own home to the accompaniment of a player piano.39

Although Brewer controlled the tone and content of the Royal Priest, the paper can be said to be at best a clouded mirror of his views. He faced criticism in print, by word of mouth, and even in the prayers of his brethren. Brother Phelphs, a particularly anti-intellectual coworker, asked to be delivered from the likes of Brewer himself:

Oh God almighty, let thy spirit come down and fill thy people. Give us more people led of thy spirit and less of those preaching by Greek and Hebrew. We need more love of God and less Greek and Hebrew. You made the way so plain the wayfaring man tho a fool cannot err therein. We do not need the college education to bring the truth to erring man.40

After his death, the Anti-ordinance P. D. Van Deventer was quoted as having characterized the editor of the Royal Priest as "the wildest fanatic he ever knew."41 Yet it was around him, more than any other, that the Anti-ordinance forces rallied. And it was his exit from the Christian pavilion which caused his following finally to disperse.

Brewer's schema derived from the belief that Christ had come the second time in A. D. 70, and had established the Kingdom of God on earth. At His first coming, Christ Himself had become the last animal sacrifice of the Jewish church. Since His return, a royal priesthood (the entirely sanctified) minister to His spiritual body, the church. The ceremonies and sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood and the New Testament ordinances which they fore shadowed and typified have been replaced by the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving of a royal priesthood chosen and directed by the Holy Spirit alone. The church as an organized body, then, is a sect. Composed of all the saved of earth, the General Church or mystical body of Christ alone is the true church, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, its sole authority.

The Anti-ordinance teaching opened many new vistas. As a royal priesthood, Anti-ordinance teachers opposed all church authority. They said: "We still believe that the Holy Spirit is fully competent to guide control, and lead his people." "We do not believe in man made or man ordained elders," who presume "to control and lord it over God's heritage."42 "The Lord calls, qualifies, ordains, and sends the ministry." Hence, in ordaining workers the organized church usurps the Lord's prerogative. They were fond of saying that the Lord alone could take one into the church, and He alone could put one out.43

Sectarianism, whether holiness or not, was the real culprit, D. H. Faires believed, when he wrote Brewer, February 15, 1888.

But in dealing with the errors and inconsistencies of sectarianism, I see no reason why the holiness sect (which being the youngest in the family is, as is usually the case, the most selfish and overbearing of all the children) has any better claims to respect than any other. Doubtless most of them are as honest as Paul was when he "verily thought he was doing God's service."

And perhaps some of these days as they go down to Damascus with their license from the chief priest they will get "new light." Well God bless you and your family and all the dear saints, either bond or free, and keep the R. P. free and unsectarian. I have no more use for a holiness sect or an anti-sect sect, or an anti-ordinance sect, than I have for any other sect.44

The unsectarian came in many varieties. In 1907, the orthodox W. A. Cole said the Anti-ordinance teaching which had been promulgated in the vicinity of Bennington, Indian Territory, included marital purity: that, except for procreation, it was a sin to cohabit as husband and wife.45 In Texas, C. B. Jernigan said that they did not observe Sunday as the Lord's Day because they were not "sun worshipers";46 and that they worked at menial jobs, gave up "neat and respectable clothing,"47 and upon occasion" became servants to the Negroes" to show humility.48 In their own minds, however, they were working within the Spirit's own design. In November 1889, Phil Allen reported:

The Lord is giving me plenty of wood to saw and split, and occasionally a well to clean out, and, in his own way, feeding and caring for us. My soul fills with holy desire to see the kingdom coming in God's own way. Allelujah!49

The individual, not the group,50 took initiative and accepted responsibility. From Trenton, Missouri, Sister Snyder wrote: "The glory of God goes bounding up and down through my soul like the waves in the sea. I am a traveling agent for the Holy Ghost, to walk, ride, sit, stand, preach, or not preach, as he may direct."51 Although in 1892, Joseph Hughes, Sr., of Wellsville, Kansas, built and paid for a meeting-house and horse shed for group use,52 more often the meeting place was a rented hall, someone's kitchen,53 a borrowed church building, a tent, or the street. On March 24, 1889, Phil Allen wrote from Ennis, Texas:

On Monday last, brother A. L. Kenney and wife, and brother A. Panis, came to this town and we went on the streets and preached there. On Tuesday night I was arrested by the city authorities and on Thursday I was tried in the city court and the Lord anointed me to preach in court. Some wept and the Lord put conviction on many, but as usual with the followers of Jesus, I was fined ten dollars and costs. Being poor I have to work my fine out on the streets. The town is ashamed of their work and proposed to buy me out by paying my fine if I would quit preaching on the streets. Not being a hireling, I preach without money and without price. Glory to God in the highest.54

A few months earlier, the jailing of Annie Monroe in Missouri had been described in even more graphic terms. She wrote:

I went as directed of the Lord to Chillicothe, some 14 miles from our place [Avalon]. Was staying all night with two ladies, a Baptist and [a] cadet in the Salvation Army. I got to shouting in the night, or about three in the morning. A professor [of holiness], so I am told, went and had me arrested on the charge of being drunk, to which charge I plead guilty, and when asked what I had been drinking, I told them it was new wine fresh from my Father's kingdom. The marshals, who were both sanctified men, understood me in part. O glory! My husband thinks it is a disgrace to have his wife in the lock up, but I have never had any better time in all my life. I asked the officer if I must keep still, and he said, no. While I was in there, there were two drunken men in another cell, so the first thing I did was to kneel down and pray and ask God to take the whiskey out of these men.... They would not let me pay the fine: asked me what denomination I belonged to. I answered none, thank God. What church do you belong to? The church of the first born. What is the matter with you? Well I will tell you. My tongue is anointed with full and free salvation, and God has seen fit to set it a going for his name's honor and glory, and all the men this side of the Mississippi could not stop it, for God was ruling my tongue and, praise his name, when I bite my lips again to keep back an amen or glory to God it will be when I am insane or drunk. O glory! Hallelujah! I am just trusting this evening, and believing and receiving. God has made me dare to be a Daniel.55

Throughout its existence the Royal Priest remained the property and responsibility of Brewer. Issued as frequently as the Holy Spirit by means of free-will-offerings and annual subscriptions of from 40 cents to $1.00 indicated, the paper was sent "to the poor" free-upon-request. The convener of an Anti-ordinance convention confessed failure to discern the Spirit's leading when no one showed up.

Albeit inadvertently, at the beginning the Royal Priest 's principal circulation was the Good Way, published in College Mound, whose attacks on Anti-ordinance teachings brought Brewer's new paper to its own readers' attention. A period of quite lively debate was muffled by new developments.

From the conservative side came the declaration of "essential and fundamental truths" by the General Holiness Convention, meeting in Fort Scott, Kansas, June 27, 1888, which sought to ward off the "reproach" to "the cause of true holiness" "that untruthful and unscriptural teachers (many of whom are mere novices in years and in experiences) have brought upon it by a reckless advocacy of offensive heresies."56 The convention turned a deaf ear to the Anti-ordinance charge that the framers themselves were sectarians57 who had committed the unpardonable sin of making a creed.58 The "true" holiness people put an end to the insurgents' habit of assuming that the Lord had appointed them as "pastors wherever they chanced to be,"59 by requiring every worker to be amenable to some local church.

That November, A. R. Haughawout, who had been tried for heresy, reported disdainfully:

About three months ago, through the instigation of J. F. Corn, a convention of "true" holiness people was called to try me for heresy. Geo. R. Sneed presided and F. H. Sumter acted as pope.

Long before the evidence was in and the case submitted to the consideration of the saints, the pope in a little fifteen minute speech condemned, passed sentence and excommunicated me from the fellowship and communion of HIS church, telling the people they must not have anything to do with me in any respect for I was a dangerous man, a heretic, and fanatic.60

Gradually, such expedients shut freelance teachers out of the regularly set-in-order churches. The crowning blow to Anti-ordinance, however, was struck by John P. Brooks, the independent movement's most distinguished preacher and editor, who in 1891 issued The Divine Church in defense of the theology, ministry, ordinances, and government of the New Testament ecclesia.61

From within the Anti-ordinance ranks came ever more extreme pronouncements and actions. Regeneration, some said, was the resurrection; sanctification, the second coming; and glorification, a third 62 heaven-on-earth experience, the millennium.63 In Avalon, Missouri, a woman so blessed exulted that "she was resurrected, glorified and walking the golden streets of New Jerusalem." One, unconvinced, meeting her said, "I have hold of your hand and I am standing on the street of Avalon." Another, it was reported, declared that he could write a Bible superior to the one we have.64 Some scoffed at the idea of heaven and hell, and referred to Christ as a "little black Jew."65

As the Royal Priest gave way to the Theocrat, such excesses and Brewer's own advancing views alienated his more traditional and orthodox followers. Especially upsetting to them was his late hypothesis that Jesus was just another great moral teacher like Buddha. In 1903, the Spirit as manifested in plummeting circulation figures, caused him to give up as publisher. Anti-ordinance as such had long since lost its drawing power. In March that year, Phil Allen wrote from Denver: "I am simply worshiping the God in me, and being filled with the fullness."66

Among those ultimately drawn into Pentecostalism was the unrepentant A. R. Haughawout, who in 1914 described a meeting of followers of Charles Fox Parham 67 in Webb City, Missouri, in terms of the kingdom-already-come.

He exulted:

[Most members of] the old time choir, that added so much to the success of the meeting last Spring, were . . . present, with their harps attuned to the heavenly melodies. At times it seemed impossible to distinguish between the earthly and the heavenly anthems, for no one could doubt the presence of the blood-washed throng as they joined with us to sing the songs of the redeemed.

. . . The celestial glory not only illuminated the faces of the singers, but it absolutely filled the room with a halo of glory.... Some present . . . could scarcely endure the "weight of glory" that rested upon them during these exercises.68

In 1918, A. L. Brewer left Kirksville for Pasadena, California. By his own admission a "fanatic,"69 he on February 21, 1940, died there.70

Notes

1 L. Paul Gresham pointed out the romantic impulse which pervaded the founding of these movements.

2 See Art. 2, par. 3 of Constitution of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League [1897], in Paul Westphal Thomas and Paul William Thomas. The Days of Our Pilgrimage: the History of the Pilgrim Holiness Church. Marion, In., Wesley Press, 1976, p. 14.

3 Clarence Eugene Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness). Overland Park, Ks., Herald and Banner Press, 1949, p. 141, 142151. The paper moved to Chillicothe in 1894.

4 A. M. Kiergan. Historical Sketches of the Revival of True Holiness and Local Church Polity from 1865-1916. Fort Scott, Ks., Board of Publication of the Church Advocate and Good Way, 1972, pp. 3839.

5 Ibid, p. 42.

6 Ibid, p. 39.

7 See David Bundy. "Bishop William Taylor and Methodist mission: a study in nineteenth century social history," in Methodist History, 27 (July 1989), 197210; and, 28 (Oct. 1989), 321; and biography by Marvin H. Harper in N. B. Harmon, ed. Encyclopedia of World Methodism. 2 vols., Nashville, TN.., United Methodist Publishing House, 1974, p. 23172318.

8 Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness), pp. 3335, 143. "With the organization of independent Holiness churches, fraternity of independents with those remaining in the older churches cooled. The last meeting of the Southwestern Holiness Association was held at College Mound on June 2, 1885. The independent secretary Kiergan, rather than the Methodist president J. W. Caughlan, called it. Caughlan did not attend. See Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness), p. 25. The College Association continued until June 1888. In early 1887, John P. Brooks became editor of the Good Way. Both he and his successors advocated independency.

10 A. M. Kiergan, "The present need [1882]." In Kiergan. Historical Sketches, pp. 4142.

11 Ibid, p. 45.

12 Number 13 ~Of the Church) of the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

13 Longtime pastor at College Mound and Reform, and father of A. C. Watkins, my childhood pastor in Kansas City. See Memorial Number, Church Herald (College Mound, Mo.), 19 (Mar. 15, 1918).

14 Obituary in Church Herald and Holiness Banner (Fort Scott, Ks.), 45 (Nov. 26. 1924). 6.

15 In February and March 1896, a series of articles by Creighton in the Church Advocate and Holiness Banner entitled, "Supremacy of the elders in the Church of God," unleashed a stormy controversy about church polity, which the next year resulted in a twenty-five-year long division of the orthodox movement into two factions. Moving for health reasons to Washington state, he in 1905 joined the Church of the Nazarene, which that year (whether by his agency or not) placed in its discipline statements on "The General Church" and "The Churches Severally" rhetorically congruent to those of the restorationists from whom he had come. With slight abridgment these statements remain in place and unchanged at present. Compare 1905 ed. of Church of the Nazarene Manual with 1989 ed. See obituary by F. R. McConnell in Herald of Holiness (Kansas City, Mo.),27 (Feb.18,1939),28; also Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness), pp. 4647; and Timothy L. Smith. Called unto Holiness; the Story of the Nazarenes: the Formative Years. Kansas City, Mo., Nazarene Publishing House, 1962, pp. 122, 143.

16 Later Allen became a proponent of British Israelism, and his book, Judah's Scepter and Joseph's Birthright (1902), a key text in propagation of the theory in America J. Gordon Melton said Herbert W. Armstrong, the Church of God adventist, paraphrased it for use in his ministry. See his Encyclopedia of American Religions. 3d ed. Detroit, Gale Research, 1989, pp. 84,86. The 1967 edition of Armstrong's The United States and Britain in Prophecy (xii, 226 p., Pasadena Ca, Ambassador College Press) did not acknowledge Allen as a source, even of his paraphrase (p. 82) of what Melton called Allen's "famous quote." In 1953 Ralph Lord Roy, commenting on the racist overtones of the theory, cited Allen's "principle source book of the entire movement" as proof that British Israelites were not intrinsically anti-Semitic See his Apostles of Discord a Study of Organized Bigotry and Disruption on the Fringes of Protestantism. Boston, Beacon Press, c1953, p.98. By 1917 J. H. Allen was publishing the Stone Kingdom Herald, "stone" in this case apparently referring to the Stone of Scone under the British coronation chair, which British Israelites say the Prophet Jeremiah brought to Ireland. See Kiergan. Historical Sketches, p. 44; and Armstrong. The United States and Britain in Prophecy, pp. 120122. Allen was the source of the Anglo-Israel teaching of Charles Fox Parham, founder of American Pentecostalism. In a letter of condolence to Parham's widow in 1929, "Bishop" Allen recalled that Parham had been present when he preached on "our Anglo-Saxon identity" at the Blue Mound (Kansas) Holiness Camp Meeting. "The theme was new to him." At that time 11893 or 1894], Parham was pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Eudora Kansas. Allen himself died May 14, 1930, in Pasadena California See Sarah E. Parham. The Life of Charles F Parham, Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement. Joplin, Mo., Tri-State Printing Co., 1930, pp. 421422.

17 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, pp. 4546.

18 See obituary, account of the funeral, and tributes in Christian Witness and Advocate of Bible Holiness (Chicago), (Oct. 26, 1911), 89. Reid was a principal in 1879 in founding the Iowa Holiness Association. The Highway, a paper he established in 1875, became its official organ. Neither the obituary nor the tributes made mention of his connection with the independent church movement.

19 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, pp. 4647.

20 See footnote 54.

21 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, p. 48.

22 See George McCulloch. History of the Holiness Movement in Texas and the Fanaticism Which Followed. Aquilla, Tx., J. H. Padgett, 1886, pp. 1340. Cover has The Holiness Movement in Texas, as title, and Ennis, Tx., as place of publication; and C. B. Jernigan. Pioneer Days of the Holiness Movement in the Southwest. Kansas City, Mo., Pentecostal Nazarene Publishing House, 1919, pp. 150151. McCulloch appears to be Jernigan's source.

23 Jernigan. Pioneer Days, pp. 151152.

24 In December 1906, a report from Los Angeles said Mother Wheaton had visited the Azusa Street Mission and was "tarrying for her Pentecost." A month later, word came from Clearwater, California, that she had gone there to continue seeking, had been "baptized with the Holy Ghost," and had spoken "in two languages." See Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), 1 (Dec 1906), 2:4; and, 1 (Jan. 1907), 1:5. During her last 28 years, she worked out of the Tabor, Iowa, headquarters of the Hephzibah Faith Missionary Association, a holiness group committed to "social and marital purity." She died, July 28, 1923, at the Faith Home there. See biography by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., in S. M. Burgess and G. B. McGee, eds. Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Grand Rapids, Mi., Zondervan Publishing House, 1988, pp.882883; reminiscence and picture of "leaders and missionaries" at 1914 Bellevue, Nebraska, camp meeting in Paul. W. Worcester. The Master Key. Kansas City, Mo., Printed by the Nazarene Publishing House, 1966, pp. 1617, 27; and obituary and tribute by L. B. Worcester in Good Tidings (Tabor, Ia.),33 (Aug.16,1923),45,7. In 1901, the (by then) far less radical Wheaton attended the General Holiness Assembly in Chicago

25 Brewer was born June 15,1848, near Colony in Knox County, Missouri. His spiritual autobiography: "Sketches of travels in the land of Canaan," was published in two undated supplements to the Royal Priest, and in the Dec. 30, 1891 (vol. 3, no. 10) issue of the journal.

26 See biography by Albea Godbold in Harmon. Encyclopedia of World Methodism, pp. 13821383.

27 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, p. 50.

28 E. J. Stanley. Life of L. B. Stateler: a Story of Life on the Old Frontier. Rev. ed. Nashville, Tn.., Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1916, pp. 212, 213214, 216, 217, 238.

29 Pauline Holiness College closed in June 1888. Agitation of the two issues, Anti-ordinance and coeducation of the races, was practically coincident. See Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness), pp. 3539.

30 Title taken from 1 Peter 2:9 (AV): "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." In the inaugural issue, Brewer explained the theme: "The people, the priesthood, shall be our key note. We understand that all who are wholly sanctified, are initiated into God's priesthood." See Royal Priest, 1 (Apr. 1887), 2.

31 On hearing that Brewer had moved, P. D. Van Deventer wrote: "Was glad to know you had left College Mound. May God bless you with more congenial surroundings than that." See Royal Priest, 1 (Jan. 18, 1888), 3.

32 The editorial files of both papers, and the personal papers of A. L. Brewer remained in the possession of his family until the 1970's. At that time, through the agency of Theodore H. Wolff, a retired Methodist minister of Gerald, Missouri, they were placed in the joint custody of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, and the Western Historical Manuscript Collection of the University of Missouri, Columbia Publication histories: The Royal Priest, 1, no. 12, Apr.July 1887 [College Mound, Mo]; 1, no 38, no 12, Oct. 1887 Dec. 1898 [Kirksville, MO.]; and The Theocrat, 13, no 9, Dec.1900Sept. 1903 [Kirksville, Mo].

33 Royal Priest, 1 (Mar. 21, 1888), 3. O'Byrne then added: "Now, if this is not true, let Bro. Petty, the Baptist preacher, or any one else correct it and I will say amen."

34 James 1:5 (AV)

35 Matthew 19:29 (AV)

36 See article in Royal Priest, 5 (Dec.1894),23, by N. T. Sneed; and reply, 5 (Feb. 1895), 1, 4, by J. B. Creighton, the recent business manager of the Good Way, in which Creighton answered the accusation of Sneed that Vandeventer's suicide had been, in part, a response to his rejection by the orthodox.

37 After Brenneman died, August 7, 1897, at Stillwater, Oklahoma Territory, his wife, Nannie, continued as an active worker in the Anti-ordinance cause and as a frequent correspondent of Brewer's.

38 How well Brewer succeeded in conveying this approach to his followers is illustrated in Dewane D. Babcock's "An open letter to Sanford Baker" in the Royal Priest, 2 (Oct. 30, 1889), 1. Note the zeal and earnestness of the admonition: "It requires much faith to throw off at once all the bandages of 'orthodoxy,' legalism, the decalogue, Sunday schools, &c., be not deceived by the names of goodness; but explore whether it be goodness."

39 See Theodore H. Wolff. The Tin Box. Gerald, Mo., 1976, p. ld..

40 As recalled by Brewer's daughter, Jessie, in the draft of an undated letter to her brother, Basil sometime after their father's death. In Brewer Papers, Joint Collection: University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, and State Historical Society of Missouri Manuscripts.

41 J. B. Creighton. "A plain statement of facts," Royal Priest, 5 (Feb. 1895), 1, 4.

42 D. H. Faires in Royal Priest, 1 (Sept. 5, 1888), 1.

43 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, p. 53.

44 Personal letter to Brewer postmarked Fruita, Col., Feb. 15th, 1888 in Royal Priest, 1 (Mar. 7, 1888), 4.

45 See "Reports from the field" in Holiness Evangel (Pilot Point, Tx.), 1 (Apr. 1,1907). For the wider parameters of the purity ideology see D. J. Pivar. Purity Crusade: Social Morality and Social Control, 18681900. Westport, Ct., Greenwood Press, 1973.

46 Jernigan. Pioneer Days, p. 152. Anti-ordinance excesses in Texas and Missouri were similar.

47 Note the warning against pride in dress as a pitfall to the entirely sanctified: "I am often grieved to see those . . . being led off by pride. Yes a love of finery, the Babylonish garments. Yes the costly apparel had better be clean rags, or very cheap clothing, and the shine be in our hearts for the best and nicest clothes will not last always, and the beauty of the soul is eternal." See Mrs. A. M. Shinn in Royal Priest, 2 (June 4, 1890), 2. Seven years later, a secular reporter in Oklahoma Territory said neighbors of a colony of "holiness people" on Hell Roaring Creek, forty miles east of Perry, were asking that it be quarantined because of refusal of members to use "water" in personal hygiene or doctors and medicine in caring for the sick. Rather than bathing in water, they anointed themselves with oil. The writer made no mention of use of oil to anoint the sick. See "They anoint with oil," in Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), Aug. 17, 1897, 5:3.

48 Jernigan. Pioneer Days, p. 152. See comments on marital purity, p.154.

49 Letter in Royal Priest, 2 (Nov. 20, 1889), 4.

50 Anti-ordinance was, in fact, anti-institutional. From Raleigh, North Carolina, one correspondent declared that the truly redeemed were undefiled "with any earthly organization. They were in no way connected with any of the so-called churches of today. They were completely separated from all the systems that man has built: political, ecclesiastical and secret orders. If there are any of the Lord's people in any of these worldly societies, such as the daughters of Rebecca and Martha Washington societies, and the Free Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Labor, Knight Templars, Knights of Pythias, Farmer's Allianced, Temperance societies, and W.C.T.U. societies, tell them the cry is now going forth 'come out of her my people' and be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." See Royal Priest, 1 (Sept.5,1888),4.

51 See Royal Priest, 1 (May 15, 1889), 3.

52 The shed was necessary, Joseph Hughs said, because "no man could worship and let his horses stand in the cold." See his biography and a brief history of the church in Donna Bosworth Romstedt, ed. Wellsville, Kansas Bicentennial, 17761976. Wellsville, Ks., 1976, pp. 92, 125. The builder was father of Milton A. Hughs, an Anti-ordinance itinerant evangelist. In later years M. A. Hughs, like Brewer, adopted views far removed from Wesleyan holiness. See Milton A. Hughs. The Crucified Lamb; or, The Origin of the Christian Religion and How It Came Down to Us. 94 pp., Wellsville, Ks., c1922.

53 At Lamasco, Texas, Sisters Snyder and Moore reported having held a two-week meeting "in a kitchen, after the removing of furniture, &c., being well seated, with a porch enclosed with canvass." See letter in Royal Priest, 1 (Feb. 29, 1888), 2.

54 Royal Priest, 1 (Apr. 5, 1889), 4.

55 Letter from Avalon, Missouri, May 27, 1888 in Royal Priest, 1 (Nov. 11, 1888), 4.

56 "Address to the Holiness People, from the General Holiness Convention in Ft. Scott, Kansas, June 27th, 1888." Reprinted in Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness), pp. 219222.

57 A few months later, the Anti-ordinance D. H. Faires, himself the secretary of the Church at Centralia at the time of its setting-in-order, asked: Will "Bro. Brooks" "please explain." "If the Methodist conference, the Baptist association, and the Presbyterian synod, are of God, why did you withdraw from them? If they are not of God, please explain why it was that at the Centralia convocation where the first elders were manufactured by the holiness people, that only those who had been previously ordained by said ungodly conference, association, and synod, could lay hands on the candidates for eldership. Well do the brethren know that unless they can establish the apostolic succession through the long line of 'cut offs,' each one taking a graft out of the old to propagate the new, until it comes down to 'The Church at Centralia,' that they have no more authority to manufacture elders than any one who has ever received ordination at the hands of men." Letter from Fruita, Colorado in Royal Priest, 1 (Sept. 5, 1888), 1.

58 Cowen. A History of the Church of God (Holiness), p. 32.

59 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, p. 54.

60 Letter from Carl Junction, Missouri in Royal Priest, 1 (Nov. 11, 1888), 23.

61 John P. Brooks. The Divine Church: a Treatise on the Origin, Constitution, Order, and Ordinances of the Church, Being a Vindication of the New Testament Ecclesia, and an Exposure of the Modern Church of Sect. 283 pp., Columbia, Mo, Herald Publishing House, Printers and Binders, 1891; reprinted: El Dorado Springs, Mo., Witt Printing Co., 1960; and New York, Garland Publishing, 1984. In 1888 David B. Updegraff, holiness Quaker editor who favored adoption of the sacraments by the Friends, reprinted an article by Brooks, in which he argued that abandonment of the ordinances inevitably led to fanaticism and unbelief See Thomas D. Hamm. The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 18001907. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 135.

62 Individual explanations of Anti-ordinance teachings were neither uniform nor hermeneutically consistent one with another. In response to an Hastings, Nebraska reader, Brewer himself said that demonstration from scripture of three (rather than four or five) essential experiences, one had to start at the right place: "The third experience in this age (world or heaven) means the entrance into the Father's dispensation. In order to enter the Father's dispensation and have only three experiences, we must start at Pentecost, that is to be born of the Spirit (not of the water and the Spirit, for the water birth belonged under the law). Then we may receive Christ the second time without sin unto salvation as our sanctifier. This brings us to Gethesmane. Then we must be crucified with Christ. This brings us to Golgotha. Now we enter the Father's experience which is preeminently an experience of love. 1 Cor. 13." See Royal Priest, 2 (Nov. 19, 1890), 2. To follow Brewer in this instance, one must jumble Biblical chronology. The extreme individualism of Anti-ordinance prevents either systematization or syncretization of explanations.

63 In 1910, an independent Holiness church spokesman (probably Kiergan) said: "About one-fourth of the Holiness people in Missouri followed this fanaticism, but it was shortlived." The same observer said that at the beginning the leader (Brewer) had been "an extremely pious man." See General History of Macon County, Missouri Chicago, Henry Taylor & Co., 1910, p. 169.

64 Kiergan. Historical Sketches, p. 55.

65 See J. B. Creighton's summation of P. D. Van Deventer's confession in Royal Priest, 5 (Feb. 1895), 4.

66 Phil Allen in Theocrat, 3 (Mar. 1903). In November 1911, R. A. Thompson, a Free Methodist preacher in Texas, reported that Phil Allen was at that time selling newspapers on the corner of 9th and Olive in St. Louis. See Free Methodist Advocate (Campbell, Tx.), 1 (Nov. 1, 1911), 1.

67 In 1897, Parham had categorized "Anti-Ordinance" as an evidence of "fanaticism." He said its adherents had given themselves to "a delusion": "Some deny the divinity of Jesus, refuse and ridicule the ordinances, claim to experience the baptism of a death, a third experience, which to my mind gives them the privilege to do as they please and blame the Lord. They nearly always ruin the true ones whom they deceive, they are given over to believe a delusion, following as many spirits as there are members." See C. F. Parham, "Fanaticism," Christian Witness and Advocate of Bible Holiness, ns 16 (Jan. 14. 1897). 8.

68 Apostolic Faith (Baxter Springs, Ks.), (June 1914),3. For Haughawout's assessment of a camp meeting at Baxter Springs, Kansas, starting July 25, 1913, and of Parham himself see Sarah E. Parham. The Life of Charles F Parham, Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement, 245246.

69 Recollection of Brewer's daughter, Jessie, in the draft of an undated letter to her brother, Basil sometime after their father's death, in the Brewer Papers, Joint Collection: University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, and State Historical Society of Missouri Manuscripts.

70 See obituary in Pasadena Star-News, Feb. 22, 1940, p. 11; and biography by Given A. Brewer in Theodore H. Wolff. The Tin Box, p. lAlF.

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