CHRISTIAN BAPTISM AND THE EARLY NAZARENES:
THE SOURCES THAT SHAPED A PLURALISTIC BAPTISMAL TRADITION

by
Stan Ingersol

"Unity in essentials; liberty in nonessentials." Around the principle embedded in an old aphorism, the founders of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene merged three separate denominations into one. These churches had originated in different sections of the nation:

The Association of Pentecostal Churches of America in the Eastern United States, the Holiness Church of Christ in the South and Southwest, and the Church of the Nazarene on the Pacific coast. In spite of their diverse and independent points of origin, much already united the three groups prior to their merger. Each held to the Wesleyan way of salvation and Christian life as modified by the American holiness movement. Each embraced pietism as its dominant spiritual mede, each also accepting the modifications made to the pietist tradition by American revivalism. All three churches ordained women, had female pastors, and did so on a commonly held theological basis. Likewise, each was a believers' church, exhibiting the traits of a distinctive style of churchmanship whose classical characteristics are enumerated by Donald F. Durnbaugh in The Believers' Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism (1968). Durnbaugh argues that the believers' church is a voluntary fellowship based on the idea of separation from the world and the gathering together of converted believers, rejecting any notion of the visible church as a mixed assembly. The believers' church emphasizes the necessity of all members to be active in Christian work; it practices church discipline; its members care for the poor and especially for Christian sisters and brothers in need; it follows a simple pattern of worship; and its common life is centered on "the Word, prayer, and love."1 With varying degrees of emphasis, the uniting groups of 19071908 reflected the characteristics of the believers' church tradition, and each did so with specific reference over-and-against Episcopal Methodism, then the largest Protestant church in the land and fast developing into the quintessential American denomination.

Differences between and within the regional denominations remained, and these were reconciled by the principle of "liberty in nonessentials." The 1898 Manual of Phineas Bresee's Church of the Nazarene in the West makes clear that "essentials" were beliefs necessary to salvation.2 Particular eschatologies and baptismal views were nonessentials and required liberty of conscience. Were these doctrines then deemed unimportant? Hardly so. If educator A. M. Hills held staunchly to postmillennialism, Southern churchman J. B. Chapman and others were pre-millennialists with equal conviction. Did general superintendents Bresee and H. F. Reynolds affirm the importance of infant baptism? Rescue worker J. T. Upchurch disdained that doctrine and practice.3 In the newly organized Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, liberty of conscience was required precisely because particular baptismal and eschatological views were affirmed strongly so strongly, in fact, that it was pointless for those of one school of thought on these issues to seek prevalence in church councils over those who held contrary views. Pluralism was not indifference to these doctrines but the very opposite, though rooted in the belief that the focus of Pentecostal Nazarene unity should lie elsewhere on the Wesleyan way of salvation in particular.

Two questions bear examination within this context: what were the actual baptismal traditions of the uniting churches, and what did the very fact of pluralism in baptismal theology bring to the Pentecostal Nazarene synthesis?

I. BAPTISMAL THEOLOGY IN THE HOLINESS CHURCH OF CHRIST

The Holiness Church of Christ was the Southern root of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, and the largest of the three uniting denominations. Itself the product of merger, the Holiness Church of Christ had two parent bodies, and in each a different baptismal tradition emerged. One baptismal tradition was broad and inclusive, while the other was focused and exclusive. These two views were reconciled in 1904 at Rising Star, Texas, when the two Southern churches united, committing themselves in the process to the principle of pluralism of baptismal expression, but with insistence on the absolute necessity of Christian baptism for church members.

The restrictive doctrine of baptism was that held by the New Testament Church of Christ, a restorationist body originating in western Tennessee. The New Testament Church of Christ was a form of Free Methodism indigenized and fitted to the Southern context. Robert Lee Harris, its founder, encountered Free Methodism in Texas in the early 1880's, was sanctified under its auspices, entered the Holiness Movement through its doors, joined its clergy; and was ordained deacon and elder by B. T. Roberts, its founding general superintendent. Harris was a valued evangelist in the Texas Conference of the Free Methodist Church, but his enthusiasm for independent foreign missions put him at odds with denominational programs. He withdrew in 1889, uniting with a Southern Methodist congregation in Memphis. Harris continued his evangelistic career, using a local preacher's license as the new basis of his ministerial authority. He was involved in "the evangelist controversy" in Southern Methodism, and was again drawn into conflict with denominational authority. Another source also fueled Harris' tension with Southern Methodism: as he itinerated, he propagated Free Methodism's distinctive spirituality which was united to restrictive personal ethics and, in many instances, liberal social doctrines. Harris searched for an answer to his ecclesiastical dilemma throughout his five years in the Southern Methodist Church. Besides scripture, it is unknown what specific theological texts he searched, although he lived in an area conducive to restorationist views. Memphis was the home of Baptist controversialist James Graves and a center for the dissemination of Landmark Baptist doctrines. The people of western Tennessee were also conversant with the restorationist views of the Christian Church, known popularly as Campbellites. But Harris' new movement differed from these by uniting to its restorationist base the spiritual and moral vision of Free Methodism.4

Baptismal theology became an important element in the new holiness sect that sprang from Harris' ministry. The New Testament Church of Christ took shape during May and June of 1894 as Harris preached a series of sermons in Milan, Tennessee on "the church question," or the relationship of Wesleyan-holiness people to the "popular churches." According to the unpublished diary of Donie Mitchum, Harris "unmasked sin in and out of the churches and showed all sects and denominations to be unscriptural." Afterwards, he preached a series on "justification, sanctification, second coming of Christ, and how our souls were fed. After [that,] he preached a sermon on pouring as the scriptural mode of Baptism." This last sermon provoked a challenge from a local Campbellite. Harris then set aside services to debate baptismal theology with his challenger, gaining from this debate a new and significant convert: Robert Balie Mitchum, a Baptist deacon.5 One month later, on July 5, 1894, the New Testament Church of Christ was "set in order," a phrase meaning that the church of which Christ alone is founder already existed among the Christian people and was being recognized and ordered along scriptural lines. In a service held four days later, Harris summarized the government and doctrines of the New Testament church, called for new members to step forward, and rebaptized those whose previous baptism was by immersion. The identities of two of these are known. One was Donie Mitchum, a lifelong Methodist who taught the young girls Sunday School class at the Methodist Church. Her Baptist husband, Balie Mitchum, was another.6 The new church's doctrines were reported by a Memphis newspaper, and Harris' view of baptism was stated succinctly: "The baptism of the holy ghost was administered by pouring, and therefore as water baptism is a likeness of the baptism of the holy ghost, it also must be administered by pouring."7

The earliest available exposition of this baptismal theology was published in the 1900 Guidebook of the Texas Council of the New Testament Church of Christ. Article 10, on baptism, is identical to the wording that appeared in the Memphis newspaper, and therefore bears the direct stamp of Robert Lee Harris. The article is followed by a series of scripture texts, each dealing primarily with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:15-48; Acts 10:44-48; Acts 11:15-46; and Joel 2:28).8 More than three pages of discussion followed. This is significant, for baptism was the only doctrinal point given exposition in the entire manual! The case for pouring as the scriptural mode was stated in three points: (1) "The baptism of the Holy Spirit was promised to believers throughout this dispensation." (2) Spirit baptism is real baptism, while water baptism "is called baptism" because its design is to be "the likeness, or picture, of real baptism." Harris argued: "Wine was called the blood of Christ when drank to represent it, yet it was not the blood in reality, but it wore the name of the thing it [depicted]... so it is with water baptism. If it is not. .. [done in a mede that depicts] the real baptism, it is no more baptism than wine, when drank (sic) without reference to the blood of Christ, is blood." (3) Real baptism consists of the Spirit, the baptismal event, and the mode of outpouring. In water baptism, water symbolizes the Spirit, and the mirror image of Spirit baptism is by pouring. Article 11 defined who could baptize, vesting that authority in a duly recognized minister, but adding that "under circumstances of necessity a simple disciple may administer baptism."9 There was no printed baptismal ritual, nor any indiciation of whether infants could be baptized.

Robert Lee Harris died five months after the New Testament Church of Christ was formed. That fact altered completely the trajectory of the movement. Harris had created a church in which ecclesiology and soteriology were both determinative doctrines in a theological system, but in the hands of his successors the gravity of theological weight shifted, increasingly subordinating ecclesiological values to soteriological ones. A clear theological transformation took place within the sect over the course of the next decade.10

As the New Testament Church of Christ expanded, its baptismal doctrine inhibited its growth within a Southern religious culture steeped in immersionist thinking. This was recognized early and led to a reconsideration of the church's baptismal doctrines when the first connectional council met in 1899. The discussion was quite heated. Harris' widow, Mary Lee Harris (soon to become Mary Lee Cagle), insisted that her late husband's founding principles should be maintained without amendment. Others strongly disagreed. Donie Mitchum wrote in her private journal that Mary Harris "would not yield an inch but rather manifested (apparently) an ugly spirit. All other talks were made in the spirit of Christ. My sympathy goes out for her as she has much to overcome on the line of having her way about things." After debating the issue three separate times, the council reaffirmed pouring as the scriptural view but recognized that there are saved people in [God's] church who give evidence of the same by their godly walk and conversation who have been immersed, and we recognize them as God's children and we as a part of His household cannot afford to turn away those He accepts...as we are congregational in government it is left with each local congregation to say whether or not they accept or reject members who believe in and practice immersion and have not been baptized by pouring.11

On this basis, the sect's churches in Tennessee and Arkansas continued to baptize by pouring but opened the way for individuals previously baptized by other modes to join those New Testament churches that might elect to receive them without rebaptism.

This adjustment applied only to the Eastern Council of the New Testament Church of Christ. Before this time, Mary Lee Cagle had organized congregations in Texas, and in 1902 she formed these into a separate Texas Council. There, baptism by pouring remained a condition of membership, though in 1903 it became a contested issue. In that year, the Texas Council debated a motion that read: "Resolved, that we do not make the mode of water baptism a test of church membership." This resolution was defeated, but the issue was reopened the following day when the council learned that some congregations had accepted, without rebaptism, members previously baptized by other modes. The council president ruled that such persons were not members, and this ruling stood. Rev. J. W Manney, who had led attempts to change the rule, then reported "that he had set in order a congregation at Chilton, Texas, composed of 30 members, all of whom agreed to submit to the ruling of the Council on the baptism question."12 Thus, the Eastern and Texas Councils of the New Testament Church of Christ remained agreed on pouring as the scriptural mode of baptism, but differed on whether rebaptism was required to receive into membership those already baptized by other modes.

During this period, the New Testament Church of Christ moved toward merger with the Independent Holiness Church led by Charles B. Jernigan and James B. Chapman. Jernigan, a consummate organizer, believed in casting wide nets. In 1901, he helped organize both the Holiness Association of Texas, an interdenominational body, and the Independent Holiness Church, a sectarian one. In justifying the rise of the Independent Holiness Church, Jernigan stated repeatedly that its people sought "a place where the sacraments could be administered." In his view, the scattered holiness bands in East Texas needed to be organized into churches because in the bands "there was no baptism, no sacraments for her people, and they were called comeouters by the church people." The Independent Holiness Church recognized all modes of baptism as valid and scriptural, though Chapman, at least, preferred immersion. According to critic B. F. Neely, they also accepted unbaptized Christians into membership.13

In the late summer of 1904, Jernigan sought the merger of three Southern churches: the Independent Holiness Church, the New Testament Church of Christ, and the Holiness Baptist Churches of Arkansas organized and led by W J. Walthall of Texarkana. In sharp contrast to the New Testament Church of Christ, the Holiness Baptists were strict immersionists. Some version of Jernigan's position was obviously the only valid basis for a merger of the three bodies. At their annual council in late September, the Holiness Baptists expressed very strong interest in consolidating with other holiness churches, but only if immersion were the exclusive mode of baptism practiced.14 The other two denominations went forward without the Holiness Baptists, calling for a delegated meeting in November at Rising Star, Texas. There, Mary Lee Cagle and her associate, B. F. Neely, defended pouring as the scriptural mode, but agreed ultimately to a compromise in which both groups made concessions. The two churches agreed that in the new Holiness Church of Christ, baptism would be required for church membership, but mode would be left to the individual conscience. Jernigan's published account of this council declared baptism a "nonessential." What did he mean, exactly? In context, it meant that different modes of baptism could be accommodated in the search for unity in holiness, though baptism itself was a requirement, in their view, for identification with the visible church. This point was strengthened in the Manual of 1906, when a sentence was added following that on freedom of mode. The new line declared: "This article can in no wise be construed to mean, that one can be admitted into the congregation without water baptism.15

II. BAPTISM AND THE ASSOCIATION OF PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES OF AMERICA

Like the Holiness Church of Christ, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America stood in the believers' church tradition. Also like its Southern sister, it was the product of a merger. No single manual bound this denomination together, for each congregation wrote its own. Like some Baptist denominations, this one was a union of congregations united by a common theology, mutual support between churches, educational and publishing interests, and a strong sense of mission to the world. Except for a lengthy statement on entire sanctification, the doctrinal standards of the denomination were brief, containing but one short reference to baptism as the "initiatory rite" of the visible church. Our method here, then, must be to analyze baptismal statements in congregational manuals.

The older branch of this body was the Central Evangelical Holiness Association, a small New England denomination formed in 1890 by ten independent congregations all less than four years old. One of these was the People's Evangelical Church of Providence, Rhode Island, formed in 1887 under the leadership of Fred Hillery. A vital church, its paper, The Beulah Christian, functioned after 1890 as a connectional organ for the New England churches, and after 1897 as the official organ of the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America. A congregational manual of the People's Evangelical Church, dated 1895, resonates with the key themes of the believers' church tradition. Its opening paragraph states

A church consists of a number of believers who unite themselves by a public profession of the Christian religion, and by mutual covenant, to pray together and watch over one another in love, to maintain the worship and service of God, and the ordinances and discipline of the Gospel.16

The manual contains a Confession of Faith, with three of its eleven articles concerning the church and sacraments (Articles VII, VIII, and IX). Two of these are quoted in their entirety:

ARTICLE VII

We believe that Christ has a visible church in the world, that its ordinances are Baptism and the Lord's Supper; that the Christian Sabbath and the Gospel Ministry are institutions of divine appointment, and that it is the duty of Christians to unite with this visible church and observe its sacred ordinances.

ARTICLE VIII

We believe that the outward sign in Baptism is water applied in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; that the inward grace signified in this ordinance is a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness.17

A good deal is left unsaid. Were infants baptized, and was mode of baptism an issue? Was baptism a condition of church membership? Taking the last question first, Christian baptism was indeed required. Article VII stated clearly that the visible church's ordinances are two in number, and that "it is the duty of Christians to unite with this visible church and observe its sacred ordinances." The congregational covenant gave this general principle concrete application, a line of it stating: "We do covenant to attend the worship of God and the ordinances of the gospel with this Church." Moreover, a baptismal ritual is integrated into the ritual for church membership. The place in the membership ritual where the baptismal act occurs, is in brackets, indicating the option of omission, but the option would be for new members previously baptized. Indeed, all the means of grace were valued so highly that Standing Rules 10 and 11 made their neglect, including "unnecessary absence" from communion, a ground for church discipline and dismissal. Two other items are worth noting. First, the manual required the church clerk to keep "a chronological register of all members showing name and date of those baptized." Second, the church had five committees, including a Baptism Committee. The Manual set forth its duties:

The committee shall arrange things necessary for the proper observance of this ordinance, and, if the mode of baptism selected by the candidate be immersion, furnish suitable dresses and proper conveyance to and from the water.

Clearly mode of baptism was a matter of individual conscience. Many other marks of the believers' church tradition are reflected in this manual, including a Sick and Destitute Committee composed of nine members. Its duties included visiting the sick, the infirm and the destitute; furnishing watchers for the sick; providing for the needy from the funds at their disposal; and assisting the unemployed find suitable employment.18 This and other such characteristics reinforce the idea that Christian baptism was understood as initiation into a community of devotion, service and love.

The year after the People's Evangelical Church organized, a sister congregation formed in Lynn, Massachusetts. A manual dated 1898 contains a Confession of Faith identical to that of the People's Church, including three identical articles on the church and sacraments.19 Everything else in the Lynn church's manual is different, including its church covenant and Standing Rules, though evidence of the believers' church tradition again abounds. The church Constitution established regular covenant meetings as a specific type of meeting distinct from business and prayer meetings. The significance of the covenant meeting was underscored by its relationship to the sacrament of communion: "The covenant meeting should be held the last Friday evening before the first Sunday in every month, and the Holy Communion should be celebrated on the succeeding Lord's day."20 The Lynn congregation vested oversight of baptism in the Official Board of the church, assigning it the task of examining candidates and making necessary preparations for observing the rite. Nothing more of baptism appears in this manual, but the believers' church tradition is the context for the observance of both sacraments. For instance, the Lynn church's emphasis on mutual support is reflected in the fact that among its five committees were a Committee on Sick and Poor and a Committee on Hospitality.21

In 1897, the Central Evangelical Holiness Association, including these member churches at Providence and Lynn, united with the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, an organization formed in 1895 under the leadership of William Howard Hoople of Brooklyn. Both merging groups were congregational in government. Each ordained ministers subject to a congregational vote and the examination and laying on of hands by a presbytery of ministers.22 Hoople's wing of the merger was vital and growing but may have lacked theological depth, since some later congregational manuals of the united body contain confessions of faith modeled after the confessions of the older New England churches. The name of the younger body was geographically inclusive and was retained as the name of the united body, which by 1907 had congregations extending from Nova Scotia to Iowa.

One finds both less and more when looking for baptismal doctrines in the manuals of the New York and Pennsylvania churches that stemmed from Hoople's wing of the denomination. Lincoln Place Pentecostal Church in Pennsylvania was organized in 1899. Its manual of 1904 has a single article (Article VIII) on the church and its sacraments, referring to the latter simply as "the initiatory and memorial rites, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper." A lengthy exposition of the article follows but deals solely with establishing a theological basis for the independence of the local church. This manual carries no rituals and its only other mention of baptism is to vest the church advisory board with the task of examining baptismal candidates.23

By 1900, however, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America had in print a generic manual that new congregations could adopt or modify The generic manual provides the most detailed glimpse available into baptismal practices. It includes rituals for both infant and believers' baptisms. The ritual for infants appeals to Jesus' welcoming the little children. It then sets forth specific conditions for parents or sponsors, including teaching the child to know the "nature and end of this holy sacrament." Children were to be taught to give "reverent attendance upon the means of grace," specifically public and private worship, the ministry of preaching, and study of scriptures. The ritual for believers' baptism is strikingly different. It begins with a narrative of Nicedemus' conversation with Jesus on the distinction between water and Spirit, moves to the renunciation of the devil and his works, affirms the Apostle's Creed, and ends in a vow of obedience to the commandments of God. The generic manual recognizes sprinkling, pouring, and immersion as valid modes, leaving the choice of mode to the candidate.24

The Beulah Christian reports a variety of baptismal practices in use throughout the denomination. In 1893, for instance, Rev. H. N. Brown conducted a service at the church in Keene, New Hampshire in which he "baptized five children, received two adults on probation, and administered the Lord's Supper." In different vein, the church at Malden, Massachusetts conducted a baptismal service in 1895 in which three adults were immersed. One reads that "the service was impressive."25

Baptismal practices within the Association of Pentecostal Churches of American can be summarized as follows. First, each congregation was at liberty to shape its own theological statement about the meaning and significance of baptism. Secondly, the denominational framework allowed the widest latitude, permitting infant as well as believers' baptism, and making choice of mode a matter of the candidate's conscience. Third, the fact of pluralism meant that church members were expected to maintain a spirit of harmony with those who thought and acted differently on the subject. Fourth, all this was within the framework of a strong believers' church tradition that stressed a local congregational covenant, church discipline, good works, and mutual support.

III. BAPTISM IN THE CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE IN THE WEST

In turning to the Church of the Nazarene in the West, the treatment is more cursory, limited to identifying salient features that invite comparison and contrast with the other groups. A key place to turn is to the 1898 Manualthe first published by Phineas F. Bresee's organization. The contrast with the early ecclesiology of the New Testament Church of Christ could not be more dramatic. An introduction states that the founders of the Pacific movement, "believing that the Lord Jesus Christ had ordained no particular form of government for the Church," were guided by "common consent" in framing their polity, provided that nothing agreed upon was "repugnant to the Word of God."26 Clearly, these people were not restorationists, and certainly not in the ecclesiological sense. Yet the basis for counting this group as a believers' church is unmistakable. The introduction states that those who formed the first congregation in Los Angeles were "called of God to this work, to come out and stand together." They were called especially to live holy lives together, to minister to the poor and neglected, and to give active Christian testimony to their faith. Firm and explicit guidelines were given for applying church discipline.27

The section on baptism is specific and liberal, affirming infant and believers' baptism as proper choices, allowing any mode of baptism, and allowing rebaptism "on account of uncertainty, or lack of proper instruction, or scruples having arisen as to mode." The rituals for infant and adult baptism state that it "is an external seal of the New Covenant," while the internal seal is the baptism with the Holy Spirit. In the case of infants, the external seal of baptism replaces the external seal of circumcision in the Old Covenant. The story of Jesus and the little children in Luke 18 was called to remembrance before the charge to parents or sponsors was read. Among the charges is the obligation of parents to teach the child "the design of this sacrament," the scriptures, and other things necessary to salvation.28

In the ritual for baptizing adults, more explicit connection was made between water and Spirit baptisms. The candidate was reminded that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is promised to all believers and will be fulfilled "in answer to obedient faith." Later in the ritual, the candidate was asked: "Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed,if not, do you now present yourself a living sacrifice to be cleansed from all sin?"29 Thus a connection was made between water and Spirit baptism in which the former could function in some as a witness to Spirit baptism, and in others as anticipation of a future event.

The Manual of 1905-06, the last manual of Bresee's church prior to union with other holiness denominations, shows unmistakable development and change in baptismal thinking and ritual. In a forthcoming biography of Phineas Bresee, Professor Carl Bangs will provide a fuller account of these developments. The major points to make here are that in the later manual the connection between water baptism and the Holy Spirit is no longer obvious, and the rite is now tied concretely to the declaration of saving faith. The ritual for believers' baptism has another change, too, with the Apostles Creed now made part of the baptismal covenant.30

IV. CONCLUSIONS

These summaries provide sufficient data to now draw definite conclusions. First, the cursory look at Bresee's branch, and our longer look at the Holiness Church of Christ, shows ongoing development of baptismal theology and practice within the regional groups that created the present-day Church of the Nazarene. Since the principle of development of baptismal doctrine is so well grounded in that early history, there should be little surprise that the new denomination's baptismal theology continued to develop after 1908, and continues to develop today. Secondly, variety of baptismal expression, particularly with regard to mode of believers' baptism, existed in each regional entity prior to their coming together. What is not clear is the stand of the Holiness Church of Christ on infant baptism, though both the Eastern and Western denominations permitted and practiced this. The very fact that early Nazarenes embraced pluralism in baptismal theology indicates that the focus of Nazarene unity rested on other points, namely those related to the Wesleyan way of salvation. The other side of this fact is that outside "the essentials" early Nazarenes not only tolerated but expected diversity of opinion and practice. Third, the founding churches were serious about the practice of baptism because they were serious about the church as a gathered and disciplined body of believers who testified to their faith through words and acts. Jernigan's insistence on the sacramental necessity for organizing the Independent Holiness Church was prompted by a concern to bring the signs and blessings of the visible church to the holiness bands, but it was also an implicit rebuke of the Methodist denominations, which practiced the sacraments in increasingly undisciplined churches in which many of the means of grace were being steadily abandoned by the membership. At first independently, and later as a unified body, the founding groups of the present-day Church of the Nazarene placed their baptismal theologies within the context of the believers' church tradition, with its emphasis on commitment and love.

V. APPROPRIATING THE USEABLE PAST

The Church of the Nazarene did not adopt a formal Article of Faith on "The Church" until 1989. Nevertheless, there were definite ecclesiological assumptions behind the multiple separations of local bodies from Episcopal Methodism, and the coalescing of 'these groups into regional churches, then a national one, and, with the accession of the Pentecostal Church of Scotland in 1915, into a multinational one. The believers' church tradition lies at the very heart of the Nazarene experience, and thereby gives evidence that the Church of the Nazarene originated with a unique soul, one that in its original context was both Methodistic and baptistic, yet not completely one or the other. In birth, it generated a unique soul of its own. This interpretation helps us better understand why that church (and some other Wesleyan-holiness churches) came into existence, even though a majority of Wesleyan holiness people remained ever-loyal to Episcopal Methodism. Moreover, it identifies a leading tension between the Methodist and believers' church poles that has shaped a leading Wesleyan-holiness denomination's subsequent development. As a believers' church in the Wesleyan tradition, early Nazarenes were not unlike American Episcopal Methodism in its first century and British Methodism since the death of John Wesley. Like recent mainline Methodism, however, Nazarenes now risk destroying the character of their original vision, though by way of a much different trajectory. While mainline Methodism now reflects the full pluralism of American culture, the Church of the Nazarene has come to reflect much of the pluralism found within American evangelicalism, much of it based on patterns of thought antithetical to Wesleyan ideas of scripture, salvation, and the means of grace. This tendency has influenced Nazarenes to accent ever more strongly the believers' church side of their tradition in a way that does so at the expense of the Wesleyan side. For this reason, attempts to "re-Wesleyanize" the church, though they may have natural limits, are regarded by some as necessary to restore the balance of the founding vision. A key part of the Nazarene theological task today may be to rediscover what it means to be a believers' church in the Wesleyan tradition. Indeed, this may be a theological need of the Wesleyan-holiness denominations generally. In the Nazarene context, the point is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of current baptismal practice, where the trend increasingly is toward the exclusive practice of believers' baptism, and increasingly by immersion. This is one of the strongest evidences (but by no means the only one) that Nazarenes are developing a Baptist soul and character at the expense of their own, and losing that creative and meaningful tension that characterized early Nazarene faith and practice.

The restoration of that creative tension, if it occurs, will have to come through various means. One aspect of that process can be the joyful recovery and practice of pluralism in baptismal expression. As a matter of conscience, ministers should become able and willing to articulate the theological basis behind each baptismal expression. Likewise, it may be essential for theologians to help by restating the case for these practices, as Rob L. Staples has done in his recent Outward Sign and Inward Grace (199l). The historian can also play a role by calling to remembrance the people, words, and deeds that exemplify founding principles.

The historian can call to remembrance, for instance, the testimony of Mary King Snowbarger, the mother of Nazarene educators, who was baptized in Hutchinson, Kansas nearly eighty years ago. In her oral autobiography, she stated that Rev. H. M. Chambers "baptized Bertha, Esther, and myself at the same time as we knelt at the altar. He was using a pitcher and poured water on our heads. That has been a satisfactory baptism to me."31 Another person to recall is Phineas Bresee, who was sought out at district assemblies to baptize infants, some of whom are still active church members today.32 Nor was Bresee the only founding general superintendent called upon for this honor. Hiram F. Reynolds was likewise pressed into willing service of this kind. Consider this notation in the 1924 Journal of the Eastern Oklahoma District: "At 2 o'clock Dr. Reynolds baptized six babies, which occasion was a blessing to all. After this a great ordination service followed." Or these lines from the San Antonio District Journal of 1927: "Baptismal service followed. Dr. Reynolds called for all who wished to bring their children for baptism and seven were presented."33 Similar statements can be found to infant baptisms conducted in district assemblies by early general superintendents Rey T. Williams, J. B. Chapman, and John W Goodwin, indicating the onetime popularity of the practice in a setting that held it, and its theological significance, up to a wide audience.34

The early pluralism of baptismal practice generated a flow of questions to the editor of Herald of Holiness, the leading denominational paper, and this became an opportunity for instructing the church. In the 1920s, editor J. B. Chapman, an immersionist, defended infant baptism, immersion, and pluralism itself as acceptable and commendable practices of the church. Chapman also counseled ministers to baptize by modes they did not prefer rather than make people wait for a minister in wholehearted agreement with their mode of choice. One thing he did not defend was membership by unbaptized Christians in the Church of the Nazarene. He insisted: "It is expected that people who unite with the Church of the Nazarene shall have some water by some mode."35

Another person to recall is Mary Lee Cagle, who once stood steadfast for pouring as the only scriptural mode of baptism. After 1904, she embraced thoroughly the ideal of liberty on baptismal mode and timing, becoming on this issue a model pastor who was responsive to the individual consciences among her people. In an autobiography, she recounted a community baptismal service performed by her and her husband in an unchurched town in New Mexico. There were unbaptized people present who had been converted in various revivals over the years. Her account is written in the third person but refers to her husband and herself: "It was one time they baptized every way under the sun, by every mode possible. They dipped, they plunged, they poured, they sprinkled and they baptized babies. It was a time of rejoicing; and the shouts of the redeemed echoed and re-echoed through the hills."36

Notes

1 Donald F. Durnbaugh, The Believers' Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), pp. 4, 3233.

2 See Manual of the Church of the Nazarene; Promulgated by the Assembly of 1989 held in Los Angeles, Cal. (Los Angeles: Committee of Publication [of the Church of the Nazarene], n.d.), p.10.

3 The postmillennialism of A. M. Hills is presented, among other places, in his Fundamental Christian Theology: A Systematic Theology, 2 vols. (Pasadena, CA: C. J. Kinne, 1931), II: 339, 351360. Chapman's pre-millennial views are stated in the same volume, pp.339351. The practice of infant baptism by Bresee and Reynolds is documented toward the end of this essay. J. T. Upchurch's antagonism to infant baptism is mentioned in The Holiness Evangel (June 1,1907): 1.

4 Robert Lee Harris' Free Methodist background and its impact on his Southern Methodist ministry and on the creation of the New Testament Church of Christ are detailed in chapters 4 and 5 of Robert Stanley Ingersol, "Burden of Dissent: Mary Lee Cagle and the Southern Holiness Movement," Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1989.

5 The Journal of Donie Adams Mitchum, unpublished manuscript, p.17. Microfilm copy in the Donie and Robert Balie Mitchum Collection of the Nazarene Archives. Balie Mitchum became a significant lay leader in the New Testament Church of Christ and its successor, and at the union of 1908 was president of the Holiness Church of Christ. In 1928, he was a founding member of the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene. He became a rather successful Nashville businessman.

6 Donie Mitchum's Journal, pp.1920; "The Church of Christ," Milan (TN) Exchange (July 7, 1894): 4; and "Organized His Church," ibid., (July 14, 1894): 4. The Mitchum daughter Hazel did not require rebaptism, since she had been baptized by pouring at age six in the parlor of the Mitchums' home. That service was performed by Mrs. Mitchum's brother, T. L. Adams, a Southern Methodist minister and holiness evangelist. For that account, see Donie Mitchum's Journal, unnumerated pages inserted inside the front cover.

7 Clipping on page 23 of Donie Mitchum's Journal.

8 Government and Doctrines of New Testament Churches (Waco, Texas: The Evangelist Publishing Company, 1900), pp.2425.

9 Ibid., pp.2529.

10 In Ingersol, "Burden of Dissent," there is discussion of the relationship between the New Testament Church of Christ and the Church of God (Holiness), another holiness-restorationist body, including ordination of elders in the New Testament Church by Church, of God ministers. There is also discussion of why these two groups, with similar ecclesiologies, followed different trajectories of development. See pp.165168.

11 Official Journal of the Church of Christ, unpublished ms., New Testament Church of Christ Collection, Nazarene Archives, pp. 34; Donie Mitchum's Journal, p.115.

12 See Texas Annual Council, New Testament Church of Christ: Second Session; held at Ruby Texas, Nov. 2629, 1903 (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), not paginated. See "Second Day-Afternoon Session," Resolution No.2, and the discussion following. Also see "Third Day-Evening Session."

13 Charles B. Jernigan, Pioneer Days of the Holiness Movement in the Southwest (Kansas City: Pentecostal Nazarene Publishing House, 1919), pp. 109 and 123; on Chapman's preference of immersion, see Herald of Holiness (Jan.10, 1923): 3, and (February 7, 1923): 3. As settlers in Oklahoma Territory in early 1899, Chapman's family drew close to the Disciples of Christ Church. Later that year, Chapman writes, "one of my sisters and my mother joined the Christian Church and were baptized, putting in their membership at Soldier Creek." Chapman's account is reprinted in D. Shelby Corlett, Spirit Filled: The Life of The Rev. James Blaine Chapman, D.D. (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, n.d.), p.25. Perhaps Chapman was influenced directly by Disciples' baptismal theology, in which "immersion" was synonymous with "baptism," and John the Baptist was referred to often as "John the Immerser."

14 Annual Convocation of Holiness Baptist Churches," Pentecostal Herald (Oct.26, 1904): 6, and Jernigan, Pioneer Days, pp.122123. Although the Holiness Baptists did not enter the merger, some ministers and lay people united individually, including Rev. Dora Rice, later a companion and mentor to Agnes White Diffee, and Rev. F. R. Morgan, later a Nazarene district superintendent.

15 "Union of Holiness Churches," Pentecostal Herald (Dec. 7,1904): 4; and Jernigan, Pioneer Days, p.123. Also see the Manual of the Holiness Church of Christ, 19041905, esp. pp.1516. On Neely's role, see notes of Timothy L. Smith's conversation with him, August 10, 1955, in the Timothy L. Smith collection of The Nazarene Archives. Neely was baptized by Mary Lee Cagle in 1901, and at Rising Star took the position that he "could not and would not join a church that rejected water baptism, one of Christ's commands." Also see Smith's account in Called Unto Holiness (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962), pp.170171, where he draws out the significance of the water baptism issue in the merger process at Rising Star. On the addition to the article on baptism, see the 1906 Manual, p.19.

16 Manual of the People's Evangelical Church of Providence, R.I. (Providence: Office of the Beulah Christian, 1895), p.3.

17 Ibid., p.8.

18 See the church's Covenant, ibid., pp.45; for the baptismal covenant and vows, see pp.2728; on Standing Rules related to neglect of the means of grace, see pp.1213; on the registry of baptisms, seep. 18; on the Baptism Committee and other committees, see pp.1922.

An interesting feature of the internal organization of the People's Church was the division of the entire membership into Methodist type classes that met weekly under the direction of class leaders. Among other duties, the class leaders were to "consult with the pastor for the welfare of the Church," take charge of worship in the pastor's absence, and prepare and assist in administering the Lord's Supper. See ibid., pp.10, 1718.

19 Manual of the First Pentecostal Church of Lynn, Mass. (Providence, R.I.: Pentecostal Printing Co., 1898), pp.812.

20 Ibid., p.14.

21 Ibid., pp.1517.

22 The ordination practices of the Central Evangelical Holiness Association are clear from reports of ordination in the Beulah Christian, 18901894 in passim, which show that congregations selected a candidate for minister, and that a panel of ministers from sister churches examined and ordained the candidate. In the united church after 1897, explicit guidelines outline the ordination process, including the statement that ordination will be "by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." See Article VII under Summary of Doctrines in: Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, Minutes of the Sixth Annual Meeting (Providence, R.I.: Pentecostal Printing Company, 1901), p.58. The ordination credential of John Norberry, in the Nazarene Archives, has the term "presbytery" in its text and bears the signatures of the ordaining ministers.

23 Articles of Faith and Government of the Lincoln Place Pentecostal Church of Lincoln Place, Pa. (Providence: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1904), pp.1041, 18. This congregation's manual required a monthly communion observance, see ibid., p.17.

24 The generic manual was adopted by two congregations for certain: First Pentecostal Church of Johnson, Vt. and Second Pentecostal Church of Oxford, Nova Scotia. Copies of each are in the Nazarene Archives. The Oxford congregation personalized its manual with a special cover bearing the church name. On the rituals for infants, and adults, see either manual, pp.1417; on mode of baptism, see esp. p.17. Other manuals with the identical ritual include that of the Pentecostal Mission Church, West Somerville, Mass. (1901), the First Pentecostal Church of Lowell, Mass. (1904), and the Discipline of Ebenezer Pentecostal Church of Allentown, Penn. (n.d.). (The latter was a congregation formed by former members of the Evangelical Association.) An expanded form of the same ritual appears in the manual of the First People's Church of Brooklyn, N.Y (1907).

25 Beulah Christian (Sept. 1893): 2 and (October 1895): 2.

26 Manual of the Church of the Nazarene, 1898, p.10.

27 Quotation from ibid., p.9; also see pp.10, 1647, 2021, 24, and 2830.

28 Ibid., pp.2223, 3940.

29 Ibid., pp.4041.

30 Manual of the Church of the Nazarene... 1905, with Changes Adopted at Assembly of 1906 (Los Angeles: Nazarene Publishing Company ) pp 63-64.

31 Mary King Snowbarger, Autobiography, edited from interviews conducted by Willis Snowbarger, 1983, Transcript, Nazarene Archives, p.11.

32 One such infant was Alpin P Bowes, who became an official in the Department of Home Missions at the Nazarene Headquarters. Another is Alan Bresee Smith, a retired Presbyterian minister and teacher, now of Osawatomie, Kansas. See: Alpin P Bowes, memo to Stan Ingersol, March 20, 1990, which quotes an extract from the unpublished diary of his father, Alpin G. Bowes; and Alan B. Smith, letter to Stan Ingersol, August 31, 1989.

33 On H. F. Reynolds, see the Journal of the Eastern Oklahoma District, 1924: 1617, and the San Antonio District Journal, 1927: 36. Also see the Eastern Oklahoma District Journal, 1928:22.

34 For references to infant baptisms conducted by general superintendent Rev T Williams, see the Journal of the San Antonio District, 1921:30, and ibid, 1926: 26; also the Journal of the Western Oklahoma District, 1931: 31, and ibid., 1934: 37. On an infant baptism conducted by J. B. Chapman, see the Western Oklahoma District Journal, 1929: 28. On John W Goodwin, see ibid, 1932: 36; ibid, 1935: 45; and the San Antonio District Journal, 1936: 31.

35 Herald of Holiness (Dec. 13,1922): 2; (August 2, 1922): 2; (Jan.10, 1923): 3; (Feb. 7,1923): 3; (Nov. 5, 1945): 8.

36 Mary Lee Cagle, Life and Work of Mary Lee Cagle (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1928), p.119.

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