Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America

Holy Jumpers

Recent titles in RELIGION IN AMERICA SERIES Harry S. Stout, General Editor GOD FORBID Religion and Sex in American Public Life Edited by Kathleen M. Sands AMERICAN METHODIST WORSHIP Karen B. Westerfield Tucker TRANSGRESSING THE BOUNDS Subversive Enterprises among the Seventeenth-Century Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630–1692 Louise A. Breen THE CHURCH ON THE WORLD’S TURF An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University Paul A. Bramadat THE UNIVERSALIST MOVEMENT IN AMERICA, 1770–1880 Ann Lee Bressler A REPUBLIC OF RIGHTEOUSNESS The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy Jonathan D. Sassi NOAH’S CURSE The Biblical Justification of American Slavery Stephen R. Haynes A CONTROVERSIAL SPIRIT Evangelical Awakenings in the South Philip N. Mulder IDENTIFYING THE IMAGE OF GOD Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States Dan McKanan SOME WILD VISIONS Autobiographies by Female Itinerant Evangelists in Nineteenth-Century America Elizabeth Elkin Grammer NATHANIEL TAYLOR, NEW HAVEN THEOLOGY, AND THE LEGACY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS Douglas A. Sweeney

BLACK PURITAN, BLACK REPUBLICAN The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753–1833 John Saillant WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY Women and the Pastoral Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Culture Karin E. Gedge A.J. TOMLINSON Plainfolk Modernist R.G. Robins FAITH IN READING Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America David Paul Nord FUNDAMENTALISTS IN THE CITY Conflict and Division in Boston’s Churches, 1885–1950 Margaret Lamberts Bendroth A PARADISE OF REASON William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic J. Rixey Ruffin EVANGELIZING THE SOUTH A Social History of Church and State in Early America Monica Najar THE LIVES OF DAVID BRAINERD The Making of an American Evangelical Icon John A. Grigg FATHERS ON THE FRONTIER French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789–1870 Michael Pasquier

Holy Jumpers Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America

W ILLIAM K OSTLEVY

2010

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2010 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kostlevy, William, 1952– Holy jumpers : evangelicals and radicals in Progressive Era America / by William Kostlevy. p. cm. — (Religion in America series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-19-537784-2 1. Metropolitan Church Association—History. 2. United States—Church history. I. Title. BX8500.M3.K67 2010 289.9’4—dc22 2009053903

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For Rev. Elbert Ison, president of the Metropolitan Church Association, and my mentors and friends D. William Faupel and David Bundy

Preface

The subtitle of this work, Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America is intentionally provocative and necessitates definitional clarity. This is especially true for the term evangelical. A word given prominence by conservative Protestants after World War II and often associated with the ecumenically open ministry of Billy Graham, it was coined consciously as a substitute for the clearly pejorative term fundamentalist. Since 1980 this nuanced and technical understanding has, at least in public political discourse, given way to a very different usage. It has generally been reduced to a term used to describe Protestant conservatives active in the right wing of the Republican Party. In this book, I am employing the term in a manner consistent with its use by University of Notre Dame professor Mark Noll. Employing a longer range, historically rooted understanding, Noll defines an evangelical as one who “concentrates on conversion, holy living . . . as well as . . . flexibility with respect to church forms and inherited religious traditions.” Noll links evangelicalism with antecedents in German pietism mediated into the Anglo American world by Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John and Charles Wesley. This definition is very close to one used during the first three decades of the twentieth century by holiness evangelist Henry Clay Morrison who actively sought to form coalitions with all who emphasized conversion and holy living while allowing a certain degree of latitude in more specific doctrinal beliefs.1

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PREFACE

By “radical” I am referring to the discontinuous and seemingly contradictory impulses associated with the American Left. It is, in the words of Carey McWilliams, “not so much a movement as an attitude, a tradition.” It is a tradition concerned primarily with values. Following Dostoyevsky, McWilliams sees radicals as those advocating a more equal distribution of wealth, a kind of Christian humanism and autonomy of artistic creation.2 Using this definition, the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA) and many other groups and individuals in the early twentieth-century Holiness Movement are truly evangelical and radical. Further, it helps us understand how the sons and grandsons of MCA cofounder Duke Farson could maintain an attitude of reflective social criticism of North American society whether they were serving on the boards of respected evangelical agencies or as members of Unitarian Universalist congregations. Holy Jumpers attempts to answer questions first addressed in two landmark studies of American evangelicalism: Timothy L. Smith’s Revivalism and Social Reform (1957) and Donald W. Dayton’s Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (1976). Following Smith I do see great continuity running from early Methodism through the turn of the twentieth century Holiness Movement. Nevertheless, I do concur with Dayton, and Smith would certainly not dispute this claim, that the spread of premillennial eschatology and its capture of the Holiness Movement rank and file by 1900 had significantly altered holiness Christianity. It had given birth to a new radical Holiness Movement that had little regard for many elements of traditional Christianity while clinging doggedly to Methodism’s experiential and pragmatic tendencies.3 Finally, Holy Jumpers tells how a small but dedicated community of Christian radicals had a profound impact on the shaping of twentieth-century American society. By embracing new technology and employing new promotional strategies, holiness radicals helped launch and shape the worldwide Pentecostal Movement. Even as they longed for the reappearance of Jesus to reorder an unjust social order, they created intentional communities dedicated to fulfilling the promised millennial kingdom of Christ on earth. This book describes not only their theoretical vision but also the daily life they created as a foretaste of the coming reign of God on earth. In the process of establishing their community in Waukesha, Wisconsin the MCA created novel media—especially the Scripture Text and Gospel Art Calendars—to spread their message. Long after the demise of the Waukesha community, the spirit that had animated the MCA lived on in the innovative and aggressive evangelicalism of indigenous religious groups around the world who had truly made the twentieth century the “Holiness and Pentecostal” century.

Acknowledgments

I owe debts of gratitude to many individuals who helped in the formulation and completion of this manuscript. It was my rare fortune to serve as project bibliographer for the Wesleyan/Holiness Study Project at Asbury Theological Seminary where I was mentored by remarkable scholars Melvin E. Dieter, project director, and Donald W. Dayton, the project’s inspirational guru. As a close reading of the notes will demonstrate, my research draws heavily on the insights of Dieter, Dayton, and my other friend and mentor, Charles E. Jones. Jones has been a source of inspiration and encouragement. I owe a special debt to my adviser in the doctoral program at the University of Notre Dame, Philip Gleason, a gentleman and a scholar. This project was greatly facilitated by my colleagues at Asbury Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Tabor College. My supervisor at Asbury, D. William Faupel (now professor of church history and library director at Wesley Theological Seminary), created a flexible work environment that made scholarship possible. At Fuller, David Bundy, associate provost for Library Services and associate professor of history, supported my research while actively working with the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA) to see that the MCA’s papers were preserved for future generations of researchers. At Tabor College Lawrence Ressler, vice president for academic affairs, was responsible for providing me financial support for three weeks’ research in the MCA Papers at Fuller.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Among the other scholars and archivists I am grateful to are Wallace Thornton Jr.; Jennifer Woodruff-Tait; Darrin Rodgers, archivist for the Assemblies of God Church; Stan Ingersol, archivist for the Church of the Nazarene; and Grace Yoder, archivist for Asbury Theological Seminary. Tabor faculty colleagues, especially Robin Ottoson, associate professor for library services, and Richard Kyle, professor of history, have aided and inspired my research. Ellie Rempel, departmental secretary at Tabor College, was ever gracious and helpful solving several formatting problems. To my students over the years, especially at Asbury and Tabor, who have laughed with me on the journey, this book may help you understand that serious scholarship doesn’t preclude joy. A number of former and current MCA members and descendants of members have given me encouragement, insight, and hospitality. I would especially like to acknowledge the contributions of the late Eva Adams, a former editor of the Burning Bush, the late Lillian Harvey, the late Henry L. Harvey, and the late Arthur L. Bray. Especially significant were the insights of Allan Farson, grandson of Duke Farson, and Creo Peters Harvey, MCA missionary to India. My friendship with historian Edwin Woodruff Tait, grandson of Edwin F. Harvey, has enriched my life. Finally, my wife, Gari-Anne Patzwald, has been a rigorous critic, wonderful friend, and a constant inspiration. Although the latter qualities were central to the completion of this book, the finished product owes much to the former quality. This work is dedicated to Elbert Ison, president of the MCA. Reverend Ison is a man of courage and integrity who was responsible for seeing that the records of the MCA would be preserved for posterity. It is also dedicated to D. William Faupel and David Bundy, friends, supervisors, and colleagues in the search to understand the neglected but real creators of the modern world, the ordinary people who carried the holiness banner in America and around the world in the early twentieth century.

Contents

Illustrations, xiii Introduction: Variations of Holiness Radicalism in Progressive Era America, 5 1. Martin Wells Knapp and the Origins of the Radical Holiness Movement, 17 2. Marching to the Pearly White City: The Birth of the Metropolitan Methodist Mission, 37 3. Pentecost Comes to the White City: The Chicago Revival and the General Holiness Assembly of 1901, 63 4. The “Pentecostal Dancers” Invade Boston, 77 5. “A Standard for the People”: The Burning Bush and the Organization of Mission in the MCA, 89 6. “Forsaking All for Jesus”: F. M. Messenger and Burning Bush Communalism, 107 7. The MCA and the Making of Modern American Religious Culture, 127

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8. The Fire Wanes and Is Rekindled: The Burning Bush Movement, 1913–1931, 145 Afterword, 161 Notes, 167 Works Cited, 213 Index, 231

Illustrations

E. L. Harvey, 39 Beverly Carradine critizing him for writing popular fiction, 64 “Holy Jumpers” in Boston, 78 Asbury College founder John Wesley Hughes being replaced by B. F. Haynes as president of the college, L. L. Pickett holds key to college in his hands, 90 Fountain Spring House, Waukesha, Wisconsin, home to the MCA from 1906–56, 108 Burning Bush illustrating the central emphasis of the MCA revival campaign in Los Angeles, especially the Nazarene practice of allowing church membership for those who had been divorced and remarried, 128 Duke Farson and sons, 146

Holy Jumpers

Preacher and the Slave Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right; But when asked how ’bout something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet: Chorus: You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. The starvation army they play, They sing and they clap and they pray ’Till they get all your coin on the drum Then they’ll tell you when you’re on the bum: Holy Rollers and jumpers come out, They holler, they jump and they shout. Give your money to Jesus they say, He will cure all diseases today. If you fight hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell, When you die you will sure go to hell. Workingmen of all countries, unite, Side by side we for freedom will fight; When the world and its wealth we have gained To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain: You will eat, bye and bye, When you’ve learned how to cook and to fry.

Chop some wood, ’twill do you good, And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye. —Joe Hill, I.W.W. Songs, from Wikipedia based on 19th edition of Little Red Song Book. Tune: “In the Sweet, Bye and Bye”

Introduction: Variations of Holiness Radicalism in Progressive Era America

“There is a gospel of happiness, and I know that if I ever get religion I want to get their particular brand” novelist Jack London wrote after attending services of the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA) in Boston in 1905. As a socialist with considerable contempt for established religion, London was an unusually sympathetic observer of one of the most controversial religious bodies of the early twentieth century. Noting the joy on the faces of the “poorly clad” converts, London, as a literary figure, had particularly high praise for MCA evangelists’ “common-sense” remarks and “biting metaphors,” and seemed especially delighted with the depiction of Boston churches as “steepled clubhouses.” The MCA, as one of the most controversial religious bodies of Progressive Era America, rarely received such praise from outsiders. It was nevertheless insightful. As a figure whose life experiences and struggles duplicated those of the young working-class men and especially women who sought meaning and relief in holiness radicalism, London understood the power and the attraction of expressions of radicalism in either religious or nonreligious forms.1 London’s enthusiasm for the MCA or holiness radicalism has not been shared by holiness denominational leaders or historians nurtured in the American Holiness Movement. Depicting expressions of holiness communalism as an aberration and having a particular aversion to the single most pervasive popular stereotype of holiness Christianity, the image of the Holy Roller, these leaders and historians have insisted that the holiness faithful were traditional orthodox evangelicals

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HOLY JUMPERS

fighting the inroads of secularism and especially theological liberalism. For historians, such as the distinguished and thoughtful Timothy L. Smith, the image of the Holy Roller, rooted in art, literature, and the cinema and not, incidentally, in the standard academic historical overviews of American religion, has led to ridicule and caricature.2 As Smith and others were aware, actions of the Holy Rollers were universally assumed to be religious expressions of the poor, often rural, and always socially marginalized. They were objects of pity, psychological study, and, in the case of the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath, enlightened New Deal social programs. “Seeing little chance for better times in this life,” University of Chicago historian William Warren Sweet observed during the heart of the Great Depression, “[they] look to the future where injustices and poverty shall be no more.”3 In popular culture the image of the Holy Roller is brilliantly exploited in perhaps the single most popular American labor song, Joe Hill’s Wobbly classic “Preacher and the Slave.” Hill’s lyrics are remarkable on several fronts. Not only does he use and popularize the oft-repeated phrase “pie in the sky” to describe, at least for him and other radicals, the misplaced hopes of naive Christians, he also demonstrates a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the distinct landscape of early twentieth-century American popular religion. Unlike many later students of American religious culture, Hill understands that the “Starvation Army,” read “Salvation Army,” is not to be confused with similar groups, such as those committed to faith healing. Not inappropriately he takes a special jab at the groups identified as the “Holy Rollers and Jumpers.” “Holy Jumpers,” as Jack London and others familiar with American popular culture would have known, is a specific reference to the MCA, also known by the name of their periodical the Burning Bush. Interestingly, and fittingly for a Wobbly, Hill notes that “jumpers” shout “give your money to Jesus,” however no attack is made on the “holy jumpers’” most notorious practices, the rejection of owning private property. Hill does, however, accurately parody their commitment to faith healing.4 Hill and the other composers of songs found in the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) Little Red Songbook not only exploited the tunes and images of popular evangelical and holiness hymnody, they demonstrated considerable knowledge of Holiness Movement culture and groups, especially the Salvation Army. It should be emphasized that this knowledge was not theoretical or drawn from books but from direct contact. They were competitors, fighting a battle of wits on street corners, in saloons, and on soapboxes in Long Beach, San Pedro, Seattle, and even in migrant labor camps. It goes without saying that IWW songwriters distorted the message of their Holy Roller competition.

INTRODUCTION

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For the promised perfection of the sanctified, like that of the Wobblies, is not in the sky after death but on a renewed earth among those currently alive.5 Wobblies had reasons to parody the Holy Rollers. The IWW recruitment strategies, street meetings, the highly publicized arrests, the attacks upon similar but less radical groups such as trade unions or socialist political parties, the well-written tract or the cheaply printed book, the use of visual imagery and, above all else, rousing songs written to popular tunes had been perfected by their holiness competition. Even worse, the holy jumpers were not waiting for the great general strike to usher in the workers’ future utopia. They were actually initiating utopias across North America in cities such as Waukesha, Wisconsin; Denver, Colorado; Zarephath, New Jersey; and Bullard, Texas. Instead of looking to Marx, they, as eschatologically oriented Christians had been doing for nearly two millennia, were looking to Jesus’ teachings and the practice of the first Christians as recorded in the second chapter of the book Acts for examples of communal sharing and the rejection of private property.

The Radical Millenarian Tradition The Wobblies and holy jumpers were common heirs to a radical millenarian impulse found among sectarian religious renewal movements throughout the history of Christianity. As even sympathetic students of the Wobblies, such as Franklin Rosemont, acknowledge, the IWW stood in “the heaven-on-earth-now tradition of radical Protestant sects.” Rosemont’s observations rest on the substantial scholarly outpouring of such noted recent historians of the Left as Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, and E. P. Thompson. Historian Oscar Arnal, drawing particularly on Hobsbawm’s insights, noted in the late 1970s that “ideologically the Wobblies reflect that radical dualism absolutely essential to all forms of millenarianism. There is that ‘profound and total rejection of the present evil world, and a passionate longing for another better world.’”6 In truth, militant holy jumpers and Wobblies shared a common anticlericalism. Clergy deserved suspicion, ridicule and exposé because they so often served as agents of the wealthy and the ruling class. Wobblies called the prophet Amos the first “working class soap boxer” while Jesus was a “hobo carpenter from Nazareth.” Further, both movements were decidedly modern and innovative in their strategy and tactics. Both won the right to speak freely in public spaces by overcoming often violent and even brutal repression. Both used highly skilled mission organizers to circulate songbooks, literature, and membership cards. Finally Wobblies and holy jumpers used a variety of common media: pamphlets, testimony, poetry, plays, creeds, and novels.7

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HOLY JUMPERS

Wobblies and holiness radicals believed in the redemptive power of martyrdom. As Arnal notes, Wobblies believed suffering and death “would insure a more rapid dawning of the golden age.” It was a belief that they shared with workingclass and lower middle-class folks who flocked to the standards of both the Wobblies and radical holiness churches in the two decades before the World War I.8 In effect, the left wing of the Holiness Movement was radical for the same reason that historians have long treated its precursors, the antebellum perfectionists, as radical. It anticipated a fundamental altered social order. If it is appropriate to included the writings of Charles G. Finney and John Humphrey Noyes in radical anthologies, it is certainly fitting that early twentieth-century perfectionists be extended the same courtesy. In both eras the most consistent radicals were those who rejected private property and not infrequently conventional family structures.9

Shades of Holiness Radicalism As a complex and diverse movement of Christian renewal, the Holiness Movement was never a single entity. On its Right it was made up of denominational loyalists who differed little from other middle-class Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists. As Merrill Gaddis noted in his pioneering 1929 University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, the most rapidly growing holiness denominations were quickly assimilating into mainstream American culture. In effect, he observed that in many quarters it was difficult to distinguish members of the Church of the Nazarene from those of middle-class Methodist congregations.10 It is my contention that the best way to understand any movement is to look not at its center or right but among its most consistent, some would say, radical fringes. It is among these “outsiders,” to use the term first coined by R. Laurence Moore, where the future is being created by cultural innovators who remain untied to traditional ideas and practices. This is certainly not an exclusively American or modern phenomenon. It has been true of Christian renewal movements such as the desert fathers, Spiritual Franciscans, Anabaptists, English Civil War dissenters, and renewal movements such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements of the last two centuries. It is in such movements that one finds the clearest expression of the nonresistant logic of the Jesus of the Gospels and an insistence that the economic sharing described in Acts 2:44–45 as “having all things in common” remains normative for faithful Christians. As it will become clear, far from being merely reactive, holiness radical groups including the Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army, noncommunal

INTRODUCTION

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Southern Methodist holiness radicals, and the holy jumpers of the MCA were innovative, resourceful visionaries who sought a radical reordering of economic, social, and political institutions.11

The Burning Bush Movement and Holiness Communal Radicalism During the three decades that preceded World War I, holiness Christians organized at least a dozen communal societies. They were hardly unique, and, in fact, were merely a few of the intentional communities that flourished throughout the United States. In an environment where according to historian Glenn Porter “the central purpose of life was getting and enjoying new and abundant material goods,” communitarians proposed a radical restructuring of life where the benefits of the modern world would be shared by all.12 Holiness communalism was the natural expression of fully working out the logic of the Holiness Movement. As the greatest of the radical antebellum perfectionists, John Humphrey Noyes, observed in 1870 the immediate response to the pouring out of “the Spirit of truth” at Pentecost was the introduction of community property. What had first occurred at Pentecost, Noyes argued, had been replicated by antebellum perfectionists, including his mentor Charles G. Finney. It was to be expected, Noyes asserted, that communalism would flourish in the very areas swept by religious perfectionism and millennial fervor. And it was to be expected, he insisted, that “revivalists” and “socialists” would despise each other. They were, he believed, competitors who refused to acknowledge that each would fail without the insights of the other. Socialism without “the regeneration of the heart” and revivalism without the regeneration of society led to the same dead end.13 The most important expression of early twentieth-century holiness communalism, in part because of its duration, was the MCA, also known as the Burning Bush Movement. Ironically, it was created by two successful businessmen, E. L. Harvey (1865–1926) and Duke M. Farson (1863–1929), and organized as a conventional Methodist congregation on Chicago’s Near North Side during the 1890s. By the mid-1890s it had been swept into the Holiness Movement and had separated from Methodism, incorporating as the MCA in 1899. By 1901, the church adopted the first of the three controversial elements that would distinguish it from more moderate holiness groups: holy jumping. Caricatured in newspapers as far away as London with colorful cartoons of jumping worshipers, and often banned or expelled from rented churches and halls, the holy jumpers had become a common, if often despised, staple of everyday life by 1902.

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If MCA worship embarrassed respectable churchgoers, the group’s notorious publication the Burning Bush infuriated them. First published in 1902, the paper quickly adopted the common features of muckraking journalism and, some would say, “yellow journalism” of the big-city dailies. Using full front-page cartoons that ridiculed more moderate holiness and other popular religious figures, the Burning Bush rapidly became notorious for its brand of journalism, which was as much entertainment as serious analysis. Third, the MCA, especially after its 1906 relocation to an old resort in Waukesha, Wisconsin, embraced the teaching that following the example of the first Christians, truly sanctified Christians would live communally without personal property. Expecting the imminent return of Jesus, converts sold their possessions and relocated to Waukesha where they received Bible training and in turn were sent out to evangelize as far away as the Indian subcontinent, the British Isles and Africa. By 1912 more than 500 people had crowded into its Waukesha complex and the MCA had established a second community at Bullard in the fruit-growing region in East Texas. As the anarchists of the Holiness Movement, the MCA used style, strategies, and militancy remarkably similar to the radical fringe of the Progressive Era labor movement, the Wobblies. Both created anger and fear far beyond what might be warranted by a small membership base. Wobblies, like the MCA, reserved their greatest fury for moderates and advocates of change through the ballot box. According to these radicals, naive reformers believed that real change would occur through conventional politics and cooperation with enlightened middle-class moderates. As a result, both groups sought to disrupt the current order through humor, ridicule, direct confrontation, and, in the case of Wobblies, sabotage and violence. As true millenarians, both groups were assured that the inevitable course of history was on their side. The MCA did at least have an answer for an observation of General William Booth, that “the religious cant which rids itself of all the importunity of suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other side of the grave is not more impracticable than socialistic claptrap which postpones redress of human sufferings until after the general overturn.” The MCA’s millennium had commenced in the very real community in Wisconsin.14

Free Methodist Church Most holiness Christian groups remained attached to private property, but many, perhaps most, saw themselves as enlightened progressive reformers who were comfortable with the moderate evangelicalism of the early social

INTRODUCTION

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gospel. Among the most interesting is the Free Methodist Church. An important link between antebellum radicalism and the social radicalism of the Progressive Era was forged when the church was founded by B. T. and Ellen Stowe Roberts, who had been abolitionists, feminists, and critics of the growing affluence of respectable Northern Methodism. B. T. Roberts was a founder of the Farmer’s Alliance, a precursor of Populism. Free Methodists were rigorous champions of spartan simplicity in church architecture, worship, and dress. They did not use instrumental music until the mid-twentieth century while men considered the necktie, that badge of male social respectability, superfluous adornment.15 Proudly embracing the label “radical,” Free Methodists believed that they were a progressive movement tied to the future millennial state that would feature full equality for women, an end to racial discrimination, the establishment of the eight-hour workday, and the elimination of the liquor traffic. For many Free Methodists this meant full support of the political party that had first called for the enfranchisement of women, the Prohibition Party.16 The central issue in the founding of the Free Methodist Church was the practice of financing churches, including the construction of new churches, through the rental of pews. Roberts referred to such churches as “stock churches.” As he wrote in 1872, “A system that looks at finding a good market, at a high price for pews is not of Christ.” “Jesus,” Roberts noted, invited all “to come and eat without money and without price.” As he wrote in 1865, the apostolic model depicted in the second chapter of Acts was “having all things in common.”17 Unlike the more radical communal groups, the Free Methodist Church refused to make the surrender of property a membership requirement. Roberts, following Jesus, did insist that the poor merited special concern and treatment. This was expressed directly in the movement’s foundational document, the Free Methodist Discipline. The Discipline defined the movement’s mission as twofold: “to maintain the Bible standard of Christianity and to preach the gospel to the poor.” As the Discipline noted, it was Jesus himself who had designated the poor as special recipients of the gospel and had provided the gospel rationale. “Who must be particularly cared for? Jesus settles this question. ‘The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up,’ and, as if all this would be insufficient to satisfy John of the validity of his claims, he adds, ‘and the poor have the gospel preached to them.’”18 During the early Progressive Era many Free Methodists, such as pastor and educator C. M. Damon, continued to anticipate a new order “possible under some form of Christian socialism.” As Damon wrote in his autobiography, he

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fully expected the “sweat system” oppressing labor to be abolished, women to be “elevated, educated and enfranchised,” and African Americans, Native Americans, and Chinese to be given full equality with other Americans. As late as 1916, the Ohio Annual Conference of the Free Methodist Church attacked monopoly capitalism for dictating the prices of food, clothing, and shelter; forcing labor to desecrate the Sabbath; and employing modern war to cheat poor nations out of their wealth. However, unlike early Free Methodists, members now were urged to temporarily accept such injustices while looking for the return of Jesus who would put the oppressors in their place.19

Salvation Army In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels wrote that the Salvation Army “revives the propaganda of early Christianity, appeals to the poor as the elect, fights capitalism in a religious way, and thus fosters an element of early Christian class antagonism.” Engels’s view, while not generally accepted by Salvationists, has been supported in recent historical interpretations of the Salvation Army. In these studies by Lillian Taiz and Pamela Walker the Army is depicted as a religious expression of urban working-class culture. Accepting at face value the Army’s own carefully constructed image of itself as a unique movement, these studies fail to acknowledge the degree to which the class composition and social ministries of the Army are found in many other holiness bodies. In fact, the very emphasis on serving and living among the poor is the central characteristic of the Holiness Movement after the Civil War. As a result, the Salvation Army is in many ways the quintessential expression of the Holiness Movement between the Civil War and rise of premillennial eschatology in the late 1890s.20 The Salvation Army was the creation of William and Catherine Booth, British Wesleyans who had grown tired of the denominational restrictions and lack of flexibility in conventional British Wesleyanism. Both had also been deeply influenced by Holiness Movement matriarch Phoebe Palmer and American perfectionist revivalist Charles G. Finney. Initially organized as the Christian Mission, the movement the Booths founded became the “Salvation Army” in 1878, complete with military ranks, uniforms, and vocabulary. Its mission, as Donald W. Dayton has argued, “was a protest against ‘respectable churches’ whose life was cut off from the masses. Its dominant concern was to follow Christ, ‘who,though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we, through his poverty, might become rich, and who has left us an example that we should follow in his steps.’”21

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The studies of Walker and Taiz, while in the tradition of Eric Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson, have moved beyond the materialist reductionism of traditional Marxism. Both see the Salvation Army as an expression of urban working-class culture that has much to teach us about the nature of that culture, its religious beliefs, and its gendered constructions. The Salvation Army, Walker notes, insisted that the one criterion for religious office was holiness, and holiness was available to all regardless of gender, wealth, or education. One of the many virtues of both studies is that they help explain the violent resistance the Army experienced during its first two decades. In fact, during one twelvemonth period in 1889, 699 Salvationists were assaulted, 56 Army buildings were stoned, and 86 Salvationists were imprisoned.22 In spite of later critics within and outside the Salvation Army who argue that it was a thoroughly middle-class Victorian operation, an actual study of the people who joined the Army, often young women, suggests a very different picture. As Taiz’s careful study demonstrates, the early Salvation Army was made up of a greater percentage of people who had been employed as laborers than that constituted the population at large. Many came from the criminal underclass. One early Army corps, the Salvationist name for a church, reported that forty-seven of its forty-eight soldiers, the term for member, had prison records. “Who ever joins the Salvation Army,” the New York Times editorialized in 1892, “bids good-bye to respectability as much as if he went upon the stage of a variety show.” As Walker notes, the testimonies of first-generation Salvationists assume a common countercultural perspective. In fact, the very ease with which the Army adopted elements of working-class culture, including some copied from vaudeville shows, employed popular music tunes, and preached in public houses, in theaters, and on street corners illustrates its ability to conform to working-class cultural norms. Especially controversial was the preaching of women. As one Army critic bitterly complained, “Can you imagine the Blessed Virgin Mary heading a procession with a tambourine?”23 One of the more fascinating questions is whether there was a relationship between the Salvation Army and the growth of socialism and the labor movement in Great Britain. The answer is complex and certainly not possible here. It should be noted that Frank Smith, an important early Army leader, and perhaps the primary architect of Booth’s most famous social plan, the Darkest England scheme, was one of the principal founders of the British Labor Party. “The General,” Taiz writes, “rejected laissez-faire political economy . . . and called its advocates ‘anti-Christian economists.’” Booth, in fact, did pay close attention to the emergence of socialism and affirmed some of its elements. As Dayton notes, Booth dismissed certain socialist notions, such as the postponement of meaningful reform until after the proletarian revolution. In his mind

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socialists shared the pessimism of certain premillennial Christians who “postpone all redress of human suffering until the general overturn.”24 Early students of the social gospel correctly identified the Salvation Army as an important expression of social Christianity. The failure of these studies was that they viewed the Salvation Army as a singular entity and not merely as a single expression of the larger Holiness Movement. In spite of its unique style and skillful self-promotion, its ministry of social amelioration differed little from that of the Free Methodist Church. Both were expressions of the social impulse within Progressive Era American Christianity.25

Southern Methodist Holiness Radicalism Commonly stereotyped as being particularly at home in Appalachia or the rural South, the Holiness Movement only penetrated the heart of the old Confederacy during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.26 As it spread and adapted to Southern cultural mores, the once largely Northern Holiness Movement experienced considerable modification. One of the first casualties was the optimism that had characterized both Free Methodist and Salvation Army holiness agitation in the North and West. In particular, the common postmillennial belief that expected progressive social improvement culminating in the return of Jesus at the end of the millennium gave way to a new, chastened premillennialism. Spreading north, the new chiliastic millennialism had come to dominate the Holiness Movement in all sections of the country by the turn of the twentieth century.27 Many students of the holiness experience have associated this millennial shift with an abandonment of the early enlightened reform emphasis of the Holiness Movement. This commonsense reading unfortunately misses much of the subtlety and continued social engagement of the generation of Southerners who embraced holiness Christianity in the late nineteenth century. It did reflect a general rejection of the jingoistic optimism of many Northern clergy, including holiness adherents who had interpreted the Civil War victory of the North as a gateway to a new millennium. It should further be noted that the plummeting of farm prices in the late 1880s, the devastating depression of the early 1890s, and the crushing defeat of William Jennings Bryan and Populism in the 1896 presidential election signaled a repudiation of the evangelical-based moral economy that the Great Commoner represented. As Southerners and Bryan supporters, holiness Christians in the South had few reasons for optimism outside of an emotionally satisfying faith and scriptural promises that Jesus was about to arrive to set things right. As one of the first Free

INTRODUCTION

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Methodists to embrace premillennialism wrote in 1900, the great producers of wealth were the victims of a legal system that expropriated “the great proportion of wealth, produced solely by labor . . . into the coffers of the favored few.”28 The spirit of the English Civil War millenarians comes to life in the words of one of the earliest and most persistent Southern holiness premillennialists, L. L. Pickett. A Texas native who lived in North Carolina and Kentucky, Pickett anticipated a literal reversal of the fortunes of the working poor. “Jesus,” Pickett wrote, “who denied himself and became poor and humble . . . for the salvation of men will judge the covetousness and selfishness which hoardes while others hunger, bloats while others beg, and fattens while others starve.” As Pickett argued in 1903, the Second Advent was not about “pie in the sky in the bye and bye.” It was about a “renewed earth.” Pickett’s views were shared by his friend and associate, the influential holiness editor Henry Clay Morrison. Will God Set Up His Kingdom on Earth? Morrison asked in one of his widely read books. Answering “yes,” Morrison noted that under God’s reign “the earth will not be owned and dominated by a few people of vast wealth but will be amicably divided up among the people and they will possess it in peace and plenty.”29 In Pickett’s eschatological reconstruction, the future promised the faithful was an actual future on earth where “the humble-hearth poor of the earth shall be possessors of the kingdom, the glory, the honor and wealth of nations.” Further, as Bryan Democrats, Pickett, Morrison, and many others believed that faithful Christians would support progressive farmer- and worker-friendly policies. Still for them the “blessed hope” was not in moderate social programs that would temporarily make life better for workers and farmers. It was in a “renewed earth” where the promised agrarian paradise described by the great Hebrew prophets as living without fear “under one’s own vine and fig tree” would become a literal reality. The enduring legacy of Southern Methodist holiness radicalism was expressed in the ministry and witness of E. Stanley Jones. A convert of Morrison and a product of holiness education, Jones became a noted missionary in India, best-selling author, and friend of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1942, in the midst of promoting his controversial book The Christ of the American Road, Jones spoke at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where he first introduced the senor pastor’s thirteen-year-old son Martin Luther King Jr. to the idea that Gandhi’s strategy for achieving Indian independence through nonviolent civil disobedience had a special relevance for African Americans. As a pacifist sympathetic to socialism and the American labor movement, Jones was frequently used as an illustration of the naïveté of conventional Protestant liberalism

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by the famous Christian social theorist Reinhold Niebuhr. As Niebuhr rightly noted, the roots of Jones’s “liberalism” were in a view of human nature that broke with the pessimism of traditional Protestant anthropology. In Jones, the holiness radicalism of Pickett and Morrison had moved from the world of William Jennings Bryan to that of Martin Luther King Jr.30

1 Martin Wells Knapp and the Origins of the Radical Holiness Movement

While it is common to view Holiness Movement and Pentecostal Christians as conservative defenders of the status quo, this common characterization would have astonished Martin Wells Knapp, one of the great, if neglected, figures of the early twentieth-century Holiness Movement. By 1900 Knapp had little regard for the methods and message of traditional Methodism. Dismissing the Apostles’ Creed, that bedrock of traditional orthodoxy, as a merely human document, Knapp editorialized that “the average Christian of intelligence could make a more Scriptural one.” In fact, given the rapidly changing technological and spiritual needs of the modern world, it seemed self-evident that God was summoning a new “Holy Ghost movement, . . . fearless of creeds and sanctimonious popes, [which] dared to shape the lives of its subjects according to the life of Jesus, and the principles and practices of the New Testament.” To Knapp it made as much sense to stay with a “tallow candle” as it did to rely on human creeds and traditional churches tied hopelessly to a world that knew neither railroads nor electricity.1 Knapp was a living embodiment of the ease with which radical holiness insurgents embraced features of modernity as a foretaste of the millennial age about to be inaugurated materially by Christ. As a young evangelist in rural Calhoun County, Michigan, Knapp employed electric lantern slides, drawings and cartoons to communicate the gospel in schoolhouses, town halls, churches, and at camp meetings. Drawn into the increasingly controversial

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Holiness Movement, Knapp gradually tired of the conservative leadership of the Methodist-dominated National Holiness Association (NHA). Frustrated by NHA loyalists’ hesitancy to embrace innovative teachings, such as faith healing and the new chiliastic teaching that the second advent of Jesus was imminent, Knapp believed that the church, like the modern world, was about to be radically transformed by a power greater than electricity. In his important early systematic statement of his faith, Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies (1897), Knapp forged a masterful synthesis of traditional Holiness Movement teaching, primitivism, eschatological supernaturalism, and the imagery of modern technology. “We live in the electric age in both the material and spiritual worlds,” Knapp wrote. Unlike the leadership of the NHA, Knapp gave little attention to the growing rationalism of Methodism’s theological elite. His emphasis was on the revolutionary consequences of the “pentecostal dynamo” that was “causing multitudes to rush from the old candle lighted stagecoaches of forms and ceremonies and dry creeds and crooked experiences into the brilliantly lighted, swiftly propelled cars of full salvation, which by divine power, are bearing inmates triumphantly on and up from ‘glory unto glory.’”2 To NHA loyalists, the arrogance of holiness radicalism was deeply troubling. As loyal Methodists they had long struggled to contain holiness currents within the bounds of traditional orthodoxy. As conservatives within their churches, they found themselves fighting and losing a two-front war against liberals who distrusted traditional Methodist doctrines and experience, and radicals who affirmed many elements of historic Methodism but found its doctrines inadequate for the modern world. Between 1890 and 1910 these radicals would triumph over traditionalists, even among holiness adherents within Methodism. In the course of this struggle they would create holiness and Pentecostal Christianity, transforming the religious landscape of not only North America but the world. The point where holiness radicalism morphed into Pentecostalism was frequently in the communal societies at Zion, Illinois; Shiloh, Maine; or Waukesha, Wisconsin. The roots of holiness communalism that would culminate in the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA), also known as the “holy jumpers,” began in Cincinnati with Knapp and his struggle to lead holiness Christians out of reactionary ecclesiastical structures and into a church modeled after the first propertyless Christians depicted in the second chapter of the book of Acts. To understand Knapp and his MCA descendants one needs to begin with the Holiness Movement itself. The Holiness Movement’s central tenet was that all Christians needed a second religious experience of purification and empowerment following

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conversion. This experience, commonly designated by such terms as Christian perfection, entire sanctification, the second blessing, and the higher Christian life, remained the Movement’s distinctive characteristic and doctrine. It affected virtually all denominations in the Wesleyan tradition and a number of denominations outside the tradition, as well as the ministries of popular American evangelists such as Charles G. Finney, D. L. Moody, and Billy Graham, and their followers. The MCA emerged at a time when the Holiness Movement was experiencing serious internal conflict. This conflict was felt keenly in the Movement’s major institutional expression, the NHA. The Methodist-dominated NHA had been established in 1867 to revive the quest for holiness among Americans struggling to overcome the social and economic effects of the Civil War and to quell the growing fear that increased affluence among Methodists was undermining the traditional piety of Methodism.3 The success of the first NHA-sponsored camp meeting at Vineland, New Jersey, led the association to sponsor other camp meetings. In addition, the NHA quickly established a publishing arm, a periodical and, eventually, a mission board. The success of the NHA led to the establishment of regional, state, and local holiness associations. Unlike the NHA, which remained the domain of Methodist loyalists well into the twentieth century, these regional associations tended to move beyond existing denominational structures. In effect, they became quasi denominations, issuing credentials to ministers, publishing periodicals, founding mission boards, and organizing their own yearly camp meetings. While the NHA dominated the organized Holiness Movement in the East, these new groups assumed leadership of the Movement in the Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest where they became breeding grounds for “comeouterism,” as the movement to establish independent holiness denominations was known.4 During this period the influence of the Holiness Movement was being felt in Great Britain where meetings to encourage “a higher Christian life” were given permanent institutional expression in the Keswick Conventions that have convened yearly in England’s Lake District since 1876. The Keswick Movement, which was to have a profound effect on the MCA, was not dominated by Methodists and, consequently, it developed a distinctive coloring that distinguished it from the American Holiness Movement with its dependence on Wesleyan theology. Keswick teaching departed from the emphases of the Holiness Movement in two crucial matters. First, unlike the Holiness Movement, it taught that while the experience of holiness counteracted one’s inclination to sin, it did not eliminate it. Second, it championed a premillennial eschatology while the American Holiness Movement generally remained committed to the postmillennialism of its Methodist forebears.5

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Keswick teaching was imported to North America by evangelist D. L. Moody, whose celebrated Northfield Conferences in Massachusetts became the center for the propagation of Keswick views among North American evangelicals. Moody united a growing millennial expectation and the quest for a deeper Christian life with revivalism’s traditional emphasis on individual conversion into a potent theological mix that was destined to dominate American evangelical Christianity for more than a century.6 Presbyterian minister A. B. Simpson, a frequent participant in Moody’s Northfield Conferences, had a profound, if indirect impact on the Holiness Movement, and particularly on the MCA. Simpson, who claimed the experience of entire sanctification in 1874, became pastor of the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1879. Feeling discouraged with the church’s lack of enthusiasm for evangelism, as well as suffering physical and emotional exhaustion, Simpson took a leave of absence from his church during the summer of 1881. While recuperating at Old Orchard, Maine, he was miraculously healed through the ministry Charles Cullis, a homeopathic physician and a leader of the Holiness Movement in New England. Reinvigorated, Simpson returned to New York City, resigned his pastorate, and severed his ties with the Presbyterian Church. He established an independent congregation, a periodical, a bookstore, a missionary training college, a home for faith healing, a series of New York-based rescue missions, a mission to German immigrants, and, most important, in Simpson’s estimation, a missionary arm to promote foreign missions and send missionaries around the world. Simpson’s work, which was formally incorporated in 1887, became known as the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1897. Initially understood as a loose coalition of evangelicals who retained membership in their own denominations, the Alliance saw itself as a product of five “providential movements” of the nineteenth century: the gospel evangelism of Charles G. Finney and D. L. Moody; the Holiness Movement as represented by the teachings of Finney and the famous New York Methodist lay evangelists Phoebe and Walter C. Palmer; the divine healing movement; the renewed interest in missions; and the recent revival in premillennial eschatology.7 Simpson brilliantly wove these disparate theological elements into a unified body of doctrine that became known as the “four-fold gospel”: Christ as savior, Christ as sanctifier, Christ as healer, and Christ as coming king.8 While Simpson’s thought had little immediate impact upon the leadership of the NHA, its influence upon the rank and file was pronounced. Among those influenced was Society of Friends evangelist Seth C. Rees and Rees associate, Methodist evangelist Martin Wells Knapp. It was Knapp who introduced

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the fourfold gospel to many in the Holiness Movement, including members of the MCA. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, even as ideas concerning faith healing and premillennial eschatology were making rapid inroads among the faithful, opposition to holiness teaching in all evangelical bodies intensified. Although the reasons for the growing conflict were manifold, in terms of the development of the MCA, several deserve note. First, the explosive growth of the Holiness Movement threatened normal institutional structures. By 1888, more than 200 evangelists, often with virtually no supervision, created a growth industry of second blessing holiness that served an ever increasing number of camp meetings and local church revivals. This growing separation of the Holiness Movement from ordinary congregational life was occurring at a time when virtually all evangelical denominations were undergoing a generational transition in leadership. In spite of a long history of lay leadership, the Holiness Movement had always maintained close ties to denominational structures and their recently established educational institutions that dotted the North American landscape.9 In the years immediately following the Civil War, seminaries and colleges such as Garrett Biblical Institute (Evanston, Illinois), Drew Theological Seminary (Madison, New Jersey), Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee), and Boston University were staffed by faculty friendly to holiness teaching. Among Friends, Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana) established a Biblical Department in 1884 under the direction of Dougan Clark, a holiness advocate who used textbooks written by Methodist holiness champion and Boston University professor Daniel Steele, along with the writings of Keswick authors such as F. B. Meyer and D. L. Moody.10 Things began to change as early as 1876 when Boston University hired German-educated Borden P. Bowne. Trained in an environment that glorified empiricism and ridiculed the pietistic emphases on religious experience, Bowne was contemptuous of holiness spirituality, scriptural exegesis, and the Movement’s fondness for the apologetic use of personal testimonies of the sanctified. After 1880, the Boston University experience was repeated with varying rapidity and consistency at virtually every Methodist institution of higher education. With the retirement of Daniel Steele in 1894 and the departure of holiness-friendly Methodist theologian Olin A. Curtis for Drew University in 1895, the Holiness Movement could count on little sympathetic understanding from those training the future leaders of Methodism in New England. At Earlham College, University of Chicago–trained Elbert Russell was hired to replace Dougan Clark in 1895. Russell, whose enthusiasm for modern biblical scholarship was not limited to the classroom, organized the first Earlham Institute in

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1897 to fight the inroads among Friends of what he termed “the ultra evangelical” fourfold gospel.11 Conflict was particularly intense in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Georgia, where Holiness Movement leaders were frequently reassigned to isolated rural charges and were subject to repeated verbal abuse. The opposition was centered at Emory College where president and Methodist bishop Atticus Haygood sarcastically referred to holiness doctrine as “cranktification.”12 In order to stem the rising tide of unsupervised holiness evangelists and lay-dominated holiness associations, in 1894, bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, issued a ringing condemnation of holiness agitators. To give teeth to the bishops’ verbal warnings, the church’s Discipline was modified to place all services in a parish under the supervision of the pastor. This meant that any local pastor could threaten the ministerial credentials of any Methodist Episcopal Church, South, evangelist who conducted unauthorized services in the area surrounding his church. This aspect of the conflict was particularly divisive in Texas where the North Texas and Northwest Texas conferences requested that Methodists cease membership in all holiness associations.13 Inspired by the Texas experience, holiness evangelist and Methodist Episcopal Church, South, member L. L. Pickett wrote a book-length defense of the Holiness Movement. In it he graphically described the repeated injustices suffered by the Movement’s faithful at the hands of a ministry that “appended D.D.” to their names and cultivated a “spirit of selfishness . . . in the fashionable churches” that never experienced revival or exerted any effort to save the perishing. “The average church,” Pickett noted, “vacates the field and moves uptown, but the Salvation Army and the Holiness People in general, hold their meetings on the streets, in vacant saloons, in prisons and penitentiaries, on the squares and commons, in the face of dangers and assaults, as well as in places of refinement and welcome.” These views on the class dimension of the conflict were shared by popular holiness evangelist Henry Clay Morrison, whose ministerial license had been suspended after he had preached without authorization at a lay-sponsored camp meeting in Dublin, Texas. In his autobiography he wrote that “there are no people that will become more quickly aroused and more bitterly opposed to a true spiritual awakening than dead, formal, ecclesiastics.”14 While the intense opposition to the Holiness Movement in Georgia and Texas did not immediately lead to the formation of new independent holiness congregations, in New England several independent churches were organized beginning in 1882. In New England the crucial ingredient was a conflict between “a socially ambitious group” of laity, frequently with the support of a pastor, and a radical faction that championed the rigid cultural mores and experiential emphasis of the Holiness Movement. The former were intent on adding dignity

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and beauty to worship services by such elements as professional choristers, larger and more elaborate churches, and an active church social life, which included fund-raising dinners and secular forms of entertainment. The latter were champions of traditional Methodism’s austere code of behavior, simple church architecture, and, more controversially, the doctrine of entire sanctification as taught by the NHA.15 St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Providence, Rhode Island, emerged as the center for the independent Holiness Movement in New England after a conflict that caused the congregation to split from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The first step toward an independent holiness denomination occurred in September 1888 when Fred Hillery, former Sunday school Superintendent at St. Paul’s, founded a periodical, Beulah Items. The second step occurred at the first New England Union Holiness Convention, which convened in Boston in March 1889. Although denouncing comeouterism, the convention expressed “sympathy” and promised to maintain “fellowship” with “those who have been excluded from the visible church” for their adherence to the experience of entire sanctification. One year later, representatives from most of the independent holiness churches in New England organized the Central Evangelical Holiness Association. In effect a new holiness denomination had been born.16 Unlike the conflict in Texas, which was rooted in social location, the holiness dispute among New England Methodists was rooted in a cultural crisis surrounding three of Methodism’s most distinct characteristics: an emphasis on the role of Christian experience in the Christian life, the doctrine of Christian perfection, and Methodism’s long-standing opposition to so-called “worldly amusements.” For holiness adherents these three interlocking ingredients were the nonnegotiable essence of historic Methodism. The unifying element was the role played by Christian experience in the lives of believers. This receives its classic expression in the Movement’s distinctive literary genre, the personal testimony. Drawing on much older Christian devotional writings such as those of Thomas à Kempis, Francis de Sales, Madame Guyon, Francis Fénelon, Jeremy Taylor, and William Law, as well as the autobiographical writings of John Wesley and early Methodists, holiness apologists created a substantial body of literature containing testimonies to the higher Christian life, or, in the terminology of Methodism, the experience of “entire sanctification.”17 Especially disconcerting to holiness adherents was the rejection of the experience of full salvation by James Mudge, a respected former missionary to India and past secretary of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Denying the possibility of full salvation before death, Mudge added to the conflict by arguing that sanctification, at least in this life, was

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“entire up to the light . . . given,” but as one’s experience deepened, “a subsequent . . . work remained to be done.” “Theology is a progressive science,” Mudge observed. “Certainly, a century of experience, observation, and investigation must have yielded some beneficial results.” Particularly offensive to the holiness faithful was Mudge’s treatment of John Wesley. In Mudge’s words, “He [Wesley] groped eagerly for light, but the fog was thick about him.” Mudge’s work demonstrated that holiness terminology was imprecise, its leading proponents contradictory, and its exegesis confused.18 The patriarchal holiness exegete Daniel Steele, whose words “sanctified up to knowledge” appeared opposite the title page in Mudge’s work, wrote a booklength response. Quoting Methodism’s first theologian, Richard Watson, Steele argued that “anything essentially new in Christian theology is essentially false.” In his conclusion, Steele noted that the first and second signs of Methodism’s decay were its compromises with worldliness and its growing repudiation of a life of holiness. In a blistering attack upon “progressives” in the church, Steele noted that critics of the Holiness Movement “wished to rid themselves of a doctrine displeasing to worldliness, and which barricades the way to the theater, the card table, and the ball room.” Finally, Steele noted that, with Methodism’s doctrinal and experiential unity in retreat, the church was rushing headlong toward a future that included “a high Church magnifying the ritual, a broad Church magnifying reason and prating progress in liberal thought, and a low Church with whom the converting and sanctifying power still abides.” In Steele’s eyes, any retreat from the Holiness Movement understanding of Christian perfection was a movement away from experiential piety and toward worldliness.19 In the struggle over the nature and meaning of Christian experience the central figure was Borden P. Bowne. Bowne had become convinced that evangelical Christianity, especially Methodism, was emotionally destructive and hindered ethical development. He also believed that its legalism and emotionalism were unsettling to educated young families and were the chief causes of its failure to retain thoughtful young people for more then one or two generations. Bowne, who was especially critical of the traditional Methodist doctrine of “the witness of the spirit,” suggested that the majority of inquirers at Methodist revivals were aiming at an experience instead of surrendering themselves in faith to Christ. As his friend William James noted, little of the ancient spirit of Methodism survived Bowne’s intense scrutiny.20 Bowne, in his desire to provide a positive alternative to the seemingly naive Methodism, introduced a series of doctrinal innovations that angered Methodist traditionalists. Drawing on recent evolutionary views, Bowne dismissed the traditional Christian view of the special creation of humanity.21

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Especially troubling for those active in the Holiness Movement was Bowne’s rejection of the evangelical understanding of conversion. In fact, he argued that the very distinction between “saved” and “unsaved” was a theological abstraction of little universal validity. “Salvation conceived as something possessed by one and not by another,” he observed, “has no moral content . . . but sinks to the level of a magical incantation.”22 In the first of two extended attacks upon the Boston University professor, New England Holiness Movement leader George W. Wilson boldly suggested that Bowne’s doctrine of the “universal fatherhood of God” was “unbiblical” and “unMethodistic.” “To become a son of God,” Wilson concluded, “one must be born again.”23 This interpretation was shared by other Holiness Movement figures. Dismissing the doctrine of the “fatherhood of God” as “the tap-root of modern liberalism,” Daniel Steele insisted that its emphasis would result in a decline in “evangelical conversions” and an increasing “drift world ward” as “the time-serving preacher” devoted himself to “those amusements forbidden by his church, because his rich and fashionable members desire them.” In his usual forthright manner Steele concluded that his life was driven by two goals: resistance to both the worldliness in the church and “the tide of liberalism which begins to trickle through the dikes of our theology.”24 The struggle against liberalism was only one of the concerns that the leaders of the NHA had. Equally troubling was a second doctrinal innovation that, by the mid-1890s, had made far more serious inroads among the membership of the NHA than theological liberalism—the belief in the imminent and actual physical return of Jesus to earth. Popularly known as “premillennialism,” this millennial innovation received some of its most extended criticism from Daniel Steele and George W. Wilson, the Movement’s most articulate opponents of theological liberalism.25 This controversy is less surprising than it appears, for both liberalism and premillennialism represent radical doctrinal departures from traditional Christian teaching. In a certain sense, both movements, although radically divergent, were innovative responses to such profound cultural crises as immigration, urban poverty, biblical criticism, and the growth of religious skepticism. Of the two, premillennialism, with its affirmations of the Bible, evangelical conversion, the deeper Christian life, and actual historical evidence for God’s unfolding plan in history, presented a far more compelling case to the Movement’s faithful than did theological liberalism.26 The spread of premillennial eschatology in the Holiness Movement coincided with the growing resistance to the holiness message on the part of denominational leaders during the 1890s. As late as 1890, with the exception of Quakers Rees and David B. Updegraff, virtually all of the Movement’s major

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evangelists were committed to postmillennialism.27 Only eight years later, colorful holiness evangelist W. B. Godbey wrote, “What a wonderful flood of light on this subject [the second coming] is inundating the world! Only two years ago brother [Beverly] Carradine got light on it, and preached it, and Dr. [George D.] Watson preached his first sermon on it, and there has been a regular revelation on the subject in the last few years. You do not find one sanctified man in a thousand who is not looking for the speedy coming of the lord.” In fact, Godbey even discovered an eschatological dimension to the growing opposition to the Holiness Movement: “Do you not know that Jesus said that just before his coming they would put you out of the synagogues; that is, out of the church? Do you not see the wonderful turning out of the church for professing sanctification?”28 By 1900, in spite of the determined efforts of Steele, Wilson, and Isaiah Reid, president of the influential Iowa Holiness Association, premillennialism had come to dominate the Movement in the Midwest and South.29 The central figure in this transition was Martin Wells Knapp, holiness evangelist, editor, and founder of God’s Bible School. Knapp was born on a farm in rural Calhoun County, Michigan, in 1853. His parents, who had migrated from western New York to Michigan during the 1830s, were faithful members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Although raised in relative poverty, Knapp attended Albion College, a Methodist school in nearby Albion, Michigan. In 1877, still two years short of graduation, he married his college sweetheart, Lucy Glenn, who had been instrumental in his conversion, and left college to pursue a career as a minister in the Michigan Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1882, while serving his second charge, three events occurred that decisively shaped the subsequent ministry of Martin and Lucy Knapp. After several months of intense soul-searching, he experienced entire sanctification, was physically healed, and, with his wife, received a call to become an evangelist.30 In the years immediately following Knapp’s sanctification, he continued in the pastoral ministry while preaching revival services throughout Michigan. Lucy Glenn Knapp not only supported her husband’s ministry, she frequently conducted services separate from those of her husband. In 1885 Knapp published his first book, Christ Crowned Within. The book, which had gone through three editions by 1888, reflected the earnestness of its young author. It rejected expensive attire and the use of tobacco, and even suggested that coffee and mince pie could impede one in the quest for entire sanctification. Although critical of denominational exclusiveness, Knapp strongly affirmed the Methodist Episcopal Church in spite of its imperfections, and vigorously opposed the rising comeouter sentiment.31

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In July 1888, Knapp began publishing the Revivalist, a monthly periodical dedicated to revival and entire sanctification and free from “worldly” advertisements.32 In spite of his deep loyalties to the Methodist Episcopal Church, and especially to the Michigan Conference, Knapp saw himself as a modern-day Jeremiah and defined the ministry of the Revivalist primarily in negative terms. “In every age the true gospel-herald must ‘root out’ error, ‘pull down’ formality, worldliness, and sham religion, ‘destroy’ the works of the devil and ‘throw down’ all that persists in the way of revival truth.”33 Two years later Knapp published his most enduring work, Impressions. Writing in response to outbreaks of fanaticism in the Holiness Movement, Knapp proposed a simple fourfold test to assure the validity of any seemingly divine command: is the prompting scriptural, ethical, providential, and reasonable? However, in spite of the dangers of fanaticism, Knapp’s greatest concern remained with the “icebergs of formality.”34 The year 1892 was one of particular importance for Knapp. In September, he moved his family and publishing ministry to Cincinnati, Ohio. In relocating from south-central Michigan to the Queen City, Knapp was significantly broadening the scope of his ministry, which had previously been confined to Methodist churches in Michigan. In Cincinnati, the early center of Methodism in the West, and a city bordering on Methodist Episcopal Church, South, territory, Knapp’s ministry took on a truly intersectional and interdenominational character.35 Upon arrival in Cincinnati, Knapp organized a weekly prayer meeting that rapidly evolved into the Cincinnati Holiness Association. In May 1893 the Association sponsored a weeklong holiness convention at Cincinnati’s large Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church. Among those present were NHA leader John Thompson, a Northern Methodist from Philadelphia; another Philadelphian, popular Baptist holiness evangelist E. M. Levy; and prominent Methodist Episcopal Church, South, pastor Beverly Carradine. At the convention, Carradine affirmed the transdenominational and transsectional character of the Holiness Movement. “When I got a clean heart,” Carradine noted, “it wiped the Mason Dixon line all out.” Carradine, amid shouts and tears of joy, then punctuated his message by hugging convention leader John Thompson. The convention concluded with the organization of the Central Holiness League. Patterned after the Eastern-based General Holiness League, an organization of Methodist loyalists in New England, the Central Holiness League provided Knapp with an organizational structure to support his growing evangelistic and publishing ministries. The League conditions of membership—belief in entire sanctification as a second work of grace and membership in an “evangelical” denomination—placed the group squarely in the camp of the anti-comeouter NHA.36

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In November 1893 Knapp announced the formation of the International Revival League, an informal organization of individuals who would covenant to pray daily for revival. In addition, the Revivalist began publishing regular lists of accredited evangelists.37 By June 1895, Knapp’s recently renamed International Revival Prayer League was distributing League letterhead to any member reporting revival results. The League quietly moved outside of the ecclesiastical orb of Methodism as it began to assume such denominational functions as providing credentials for ministers, and establishing missions, camp meetings, and, in 1894, a school at Beulah Heights in southeastern Kentucky. Knapp’s waning loyalty to Methodism first became evident in the fall of 1894. “True loyalty to the church,” he wrote, “may lead men as it did Paul, Luther, and Wesley to do things which will be disloyal to church customs. It may lead them to step on structures of straw which would impede their progress, but they will do this out of true loyalty to Christ and His church.”38 By the summer of 1896, even as populist-style Holiness agitation raged from New England to Texas, Knapp was structurally and intellectually prepared to lead the holiness insurgents into battle against both traditional denominational foes and the conservative leadership of the NHA. Knapp’s growing alienation from Methodism was greatly intensified through contact with Rees, whom Knapp met in November 1896. Rees, an imposing, colorful, and demonstrative preacher, was popularly known as the “Earth-Quaker.” He was an early champion of premillennial eschatology, having served as president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance auxiliary while serving as pastor of the Raisin Valley, Michigan, Friends Meeting. His wife, a fellow Quaker evangelist, Hulda Johnson Rees, had served as Alliance secretary. In 1890, the Rees family relocated to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where Rees served as pastor of a Friends congregation. In 1894, the Reeses became co-pastors of the Church of Emmanuel, an independent congregation in Providence committed to the fourfold gospel. The Reeses instituted a structural revolution in the church. In very un-Quaker fashion, church members were organized into six military-style corps: the slum corps, the sailor corps, the prison corps, the city mission corps, the hospital corps, and the open-air corps.39 Results were astounding; in thirty months more than 1,000 conversions were recorded. In the fall of 1896 the Reeses relinquished their ministry in Providence to enter into full-time evangelistic service.40 Fresh from their remarkable ministry in Providence, the Reeses arrived in Cincinnati in November 1896. In a series of bold messages that cemented a permanent relationship with Knapp, Rees vividly described the characteristics of a “church that has received her pentecost.” In such a church, “old-fashioned conversions, resulting in old fashion shouting” were common, even as the

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account of the church at Pentecost became the formative ecclesiastical vision. Specifically drawing on Acts 2, Rees described a church free from sexual distinctions, generous to those in need, joyful and demonstrative in worship, united in service, and committed to missionary outreach. In the tradition of A. B. Simpson, “The Ideal Pentecostal Church” was committed to divine healing. Further, it was free from compromise with ecclesiastical bureaucrats. “This sweet, sickish, sentimental gush about ‘love and unity’ which composes the stock and trade of a great many religious tongue-waggers,” Rees stormed, “is producing a race of cringing, sensitive, puny, delicate Christians who wilt and curl under a hot sun. . . . The love of God shed abroad in the human heart . . . will deplore and denounce all sin, and rebuke worldliness [and] compromise . . . wherever found.”41 Published by Knapp as The Ideal Pentecostal Church, Rees’s series contained all the elements of A. B. Simpson’s fourfold gospel holiness with the notable exception of premillenial eschatology. Since Knapp had not yet publicly embraced the doctrine of Jesus’ imminent Second Advent, this omission may have been intentional. Emboldened perhaps by Rees’s presence in February 1897, in an editorial titled “The Aim of the Revivalist,” Knapp announced his, and the publication’s, affirmation of the doctrine of the imminent return Christ.42 In spite of the change in editorial policy and his growing suspicion of denominational Christianity, Knapp, at least publicly, remained steadfast in his support for the NHA. In the statement of purpose of the Pentecostal Holiness Union and Prayer League (International), as the International Revival Prayer League had become known, Knapp reaffirmed the group’s unity with the NHA, and its desire to “propagate Pentecostal experience” and resist “the formality, coldness, worldliness, self-complacency and sin which abounds” in the world and among nominal Christians.43 This professed unity was severely tested in August 1897 when the NHA issued a series of resolutions that were intended to reduce the prominence given to faith healing and premillennial eschatology at NHA-sponsored camp meetings and conventions. The response of Knapp and Rees was swift. Meeting in Cincinnati during the following month, they organized the International Holiness Union and Prayer League (IHUPL). The new body, with clear similarities to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was an interdenominational fellowship, designed to promote “deep spirituality” and to provide support for Holiness Movement adherents of faith healing and premillennialism. Its first president was Rees, with Knapp as vice president. Assuring Revivalist supporters that the new body did not oppose church organizations, its constitution explicitly rejected “ecclesiastical popery,” even as it affirmed “individual liberty of conscience in all matters . . . not sinful.”44

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The founding of the IHUPL was a significant event in the history of the Holiness Movement. It marked the formal separation of the radical champions of divine healing and premillennial eschatology, with which the MCA would be associated, from the conservative, Methodist-dominated NHA. The separation itself was wrought with pain and considerable complexity. Alliances formed in the heat of battle by individuals with heightened millennial expectations were frequently short lived. This was especially true for the motley assortment of holiness Movement radicals who became associated with Knapp and Rees during the decade following 1897. It was a time of remarkable religious ferment that would culminate in the formation of a series of holiness denominations, most notably the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene (later known as the Church of the Nazarene). Knapp, Rees, and their immediate associates would organize the Pilgrim Holiness Church and, perhaps most significantly, play a determinative role in the origins of the worldwide Pentecostal Movement. All of these religious movements would be deeply affected by the MCA. In light of the subsequent modernist/fundamentalist struggle, it has not been uncommon for scholars and participants to understand even the more radical phases of the Holiness Movement as a mere restatement of historic Methodism by dissident and reactionary individuals in revolt against modernity.45 Such interpretations misunderstand the truly revolutionary transformation of basic theological concepts by large segments of the NHA constituency during the decade of the 1890s. Among the more notable features were a new millennial expectancy, coupled with a growing urgency for global mission; an increased desire for manifestations of the supernatural; and a craving for spiritual power to withstand temptation and to accomplish one’s divine mission. As several scholars have suggested, these changes were reflected in the radically altered religious vocabulary that highlighted the growing intensity of conviction and in an increased disregard for ecclesiastical authority.46 In effect, the radical premillennial wing of the Holiness Movement, of which the MCA was a part, was in the process of formulating a new faith rooted less in the traditions of Methodism than in its own innovative exegesis of Scripture and in an eschatological expectation. Radical holiness insurgents readily embraced features of modernity as a foretaste of the millennial age about to be inaugurated materially by Christ. Closely linked to Rees’s Ideal Pentecostal Church was Knapp’s Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies, a systematic account of the consequences of “the promise of the pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Ghost.” As in Rees’s work, the book of Acts, particularly Acts 2, was determinative. Predating such features of Pentecostalism as speaking in tongues, “the word of knowledge,” “gifts of healing,” and “the working of miracles,” and such physical manifestations as shouting, crying, and leaping, Knapp’s work

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emphasized divine empowerment independent of rank, sex, nationality, or education. “To the chagrin of schoolmen, and the perplexity of the Pharisees, the founders of Christianity . . . were not college-bred men,” Knapp reminded his readers. Christ, in fact, “passed them by and conferred the highest degrees ever known on earth upon unschooled laborers.”47 Three features of Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies reflected important new directions for Holiness Movement radicals, and especially the MCA. These were the book’s denunciatory posture, its use of visual images, and its suggestion that the communal sharing of the early Christian church, as recorded in Acts, was normative. Especially important for Knapp was the prophetic responsibility to expose corruption, immorality, hypocrisy, and pretense. “They [Pentecostal lightning bolts] fall in defiance to color, clime, creed, and social, political or ecclesiastical position,” Knapp wrote in his own inimitable style. “Pentecostal bolts fall wherever shams and sin are found, and give light and comfort to all who, irrespective of names and creeds, love to see error die.” These same lightning bolts often appeared sacrilegious. “They often strike churches,” Knapp wrote. “Indeed the tall steeples of many modern temples invite them. Sham churches and preachers in a similar way draw down bolts of burning rebuke and exposure from Pentecostal skies.”48 In a chapter aptly titled “Pentecostal Impostors,” Knapp argued that one of the primary functions of a faithful prophetic ministry was the detection and exposure of Satan’s false ecclesiastical system, which in many ages and times employed those who professed to be officers in “God’s great and celestial union.” This task was made easy by such ministers’ love of fancy dress, money, titles, and honorary degrees. Knapp fumed, “Proud of their ancestry, their church property and prestige, their education and position in the nation they were so full of human conceit . . . that they had no place for Jesus, nor disposition to hail the message of an humble carpenter, and accept a religion, the foundation principles of which embrace repentance and self-surrender.”49 A second distinctive feature of Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies was Knapp’s use of illustrative drawings. In several pointed sketches, Knapp depicted the book’s central messages. These included the destruction of the “tree of sin” by Pentecostal lightning bolts; two depictions of the Second Coming of Christ; a graphic attack upon religious and social pretension that showed three spirits—the world, the flesh, and the devil—hovering over Rev. Demus Hypocrisy; and a vivid portrayal of the three classes of individuals: the lost about to plunge into hell, the saved passing through the portal of repentance and regeneration, and the sanctified passing through the portal of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and boarding streetcars bound for glory.50

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The third radical aspect of the book was a new understanding of Christian views on property and stewardship. Moving beyond the Holiness Movement’s usual practice of tithing, Knapp suggested that under the influence of the Pentecostal Baptism of the Holy Spirit, early Christians sold their possessions and distributed their resources as needs arose. As Knapp wrote, “New Testament stewardship is not like renting a farm or store and paying the owner a per cent. It acknowledges the proprietorship of Jesus Christ, labors solely under His instructions, and renders all to Him who owns it.”51 During the next three years Knapp increasingly began to question traditional definitions of private property. Anticipating features of the MCA’s views, Knapp began to refer to the proprietorship of Jesus, or, beginning in 1899, of God. In 1899, God was formally listed as the proprietor of the Revivalist. In 1900, when Knapp opened a Bible school, it was named God’s Bible School, with Knapp as sole trustee. Appropriately, the Revivalist was renamed God’s Revivalist in 1901. Not atypically, it was announced that the “Holy Ghost Himself,” with the assistance of Rees, had been invited to conduct the fall Holiness Convention at God’s Bible School in 1900. In fact, Knapp believed that the accumulation of property for personal gain was in itself sinful. As Knapp interpreted this principle, it meant that no worker was to receive a salary.52 In spite of its idiosyncrasies, Knapp’s ministry grew rapidly during the late 1890s. In October 1897, he opened a rescue mission in an old saloon in downtown Cincinnati. While holding services twice daily and preaching directly from a manuscript copy of his yet unpublished Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies, Knapp experienced the most extensive awakening of his evangelistic career. As a firm believer that converts were a sure sign of a divinely certified ministry, he found a divine sanction for its content in the positive response to his preaching. In the first year alone, he estimated that 750 people were either saved or sanctified in this mission.53 But even as Knapp’s growing militancy produced converts in Cincinnati, it engendered strife among Methodist loyalists. In the fall of 1898, the Michigan Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, where Knapp continued to hold his ministerial credentials, censured Knapp for conducting a meeting under the auspices of the Chesapeake Holiness Union, a branch of Knapp’s own International Holiness Union. Undaunted, Knapp returned to Bowens, Maryland, to conduct the 1899 meeting of the Chesapeake Holiness Union, even as he appealed his conviction. The scene at the meeting, as described by Knapp’s secretary, was one of intense anticipation. During his first message a man leaped up to the platform, picked up Knapp, and rushed back and forth, jumping and shouting. The entire camp meeting was characterized by large attendance, testimonies of divine healing, fervent exhortations on the

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imminent Second Coming of Jesus, and physical demonstrations such as shouting, crying, and jumping. Such scenes did little to ease the growing concern in Methodism, and among the leaders of the NHA, that Knapp’s ministry was bordering on fanaticism.54 In the fall of 1899, even though he had been vindicated by the Michigan Annual Conference, Knapp continued to feel the need to defend his ministry and the physical manifestations that accompanied his services from charges of fanaticism. “There are a class of people who are strongly opposed to demonstrations in religious meetings,” Knapp raged. “Though their own hearts are in rebellion against God; they are great sticklers for the technicalities of the grave yard. Truly saved and sanctified people rejoice in trials as spontaneously as the rose blooms and gives fragrance.”55 In October, responding directly to the charge of fanaticism, Knapp suggested that the real fanatics were those who ridiculed divine healing, entire sanctification, and demonstrative worship. Knapp’s services continued to be characterized by such “Holy Ghost” manifestations as shouting and crying. In July 1901, Knapp’s desire to duplicate Pentecost led to his conviction for disturbing the peace as the result of the loud noise that accompanied the annual Mount of Blessings Camp Meeting in Cincinnati. In his defense, he noted that “the revival services that accompanied the Apostles as recorded in Acts” produced similar demonstrations and convictions. As he observed, “the Baptism of the Holy Ghost moves to vocal demonstration.”56 In fairness to Knapp, the manifestations that accompanied his services had been common features of both Methodism and the Holiness Movement. However, Knapp’s apologetic, rooted in the book of Acts, suggested that such displays were normative for those seeking entire sanctification. In his decision to equate the “Baptism of the Holy Ghost” with such physical signs, Knapp was within a hairbreadth of Pentecostalism’s later insistence that “speaking in other tongues” was the initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. By 1900, the leadership of the NHA was committed to fighting the heterodoxy of both nascent modernism and fundamentalism. This brewing conflict was occurring at a time when the focus of Knapp’s ministry was no longer Methodism, but the creation of “Pentecostal centers . . . where souls are being saved daily.” Knapp’s decision to establish separate Holiness Movement centers, independent of Methodism, was not calculated to win the endorsement of the NHA. In January 1900, Isaiah Reid, president of the Iowa Holiness Association, suggested that ministerial credentials be withheld from those who insisted on the importance of faith healing and premillennialism. Reid’s main concern, however, was not Knapp’s innovation, but theological liberalism. “These minimizers of the divine work in the experiences of justification

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and sanctification,” Reid charged, “will in the end undermine and deny the atonement. . . . We are not Unitarians. We stand for the atoning blood of the everlasting covenant.” Others shared Reid’s concern with the widespread appeal of premillennialism among the Holiness Movement faithful. In April, Daniel Steele asserted that premillennialism was not taught in the Apostles’ Creed. In response, the Revivalist noted that the so-called “Apostles’ Creed” was a human document. The once-united Holiness Movement had been permanently divided.57 From 1899 to 1901 the conflict between Knapp and the leadership of the NHA continued unabated. In spite of the controversies surrounding his ministry, it was a time of vindication for Knapp. The circulation of the Revivalist, which had surpassed 20,000 copies a week in 1899, continued to grow. Also in 1899, Knapp began the successful marketing of his Pentecostal Holiness Library, a series of books that were not to exceed 100 pages each and that were to sell for 10 cents per volume. The growth of Knapp’s ministry occurred at the same time that the NHA was reporting sagging attendance at camp meetings and a decline in the sales of its publications.58 By August 1900, the Revivalist was encouraging holiness people to separate from apostate churches. In September, it suggested that Daniel Steele and other Holiness Movement critics of premillennialism were defenders of “dead” churches who loved ecclesiastical institutions more than they loved Jesus. It did not take long for the leaders of the NHA to respond. In an article aptly titled “The Holiness Movement Not a Church,” Isaiah Reid argued that history and statistics proved that the formation of separate holiness churches would lessen the Movement’s impact. In fact, Reid charged that those who advocated such measures were attempting to advance their own ecclesiastical schemes. In October, Reid labeled the Revivalist a “semi-holiness paper” that some people mistakenly believed actually represented the “real Holiness Movement.”59 Reid’s charges were not without merit. By the fall of 1900, Knapp’s desire to establish “Pentecostal centers” had born fruit not only in Cincinnati, but elsewhere in the Midwest and in New England. Rees, now assistant editor of the Revivalist, described four independent holiness congregations located in New England as the “hottest churches on the Atlantic coast.” These churches had become important centers of holiness radicalism. The two most important leaders of the radical holiness work in New England were Arthur Greene, pastor of the work in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, and eastern representative of the Revivalist, and Frank Messenger, manager of a North Grosvenordale, Connecticut, cotton mill and one of the most important lay leaders of the Holiness Movement in New England.60

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Messenger’s rise to prominence in the Holiness Movement had been rapid. Converted in 1893 through the ministry of George Hastings, pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in North Grosvenordale, and later sanctified at the NHA-sponsored Douglas (Massachusetts) Camp Meeting, Messenger quickly emerged as a virulent opponent of the Methodist establishment. In an 1898 article in New England Methodism’s premier periodical, Zion’s Herald, Messenger ridiculed a suggestion that Methodism needed to make its revivals less emotional and more ethical. “That ethical culture has its place in the world is not to be denied,” Messenger wrote, “but to recommend it as a diet for the churches in these days is like prescribing sawdust for an invalid who has been reduced to a skeleton by a process of slow starvation.” Noting that many of the best preachers were operating outside the pale of the denominational establishments, Messenger cut his ties not only to Methodism but also to the denominationally oriented and NHA-sponsored Douglas Camp Meeting. In July 1899 Messenger hired John Norberry, pastor of a highly successful independent congregation in Lowell, Massachusetts, and organized an independent congregation with twenty-one members. It had grown to well over one hundred members by September 1900. Supported by free will offerings, the church established missionary and famine relief funds and distributed $12 to $15 a month in poor relief in the North Grosvenordale area.61 Similarly to other holiness radicals in New England, Messenger began to attend a camp meeting founded by Rees at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. When he became associated with Rees, Messenger was drawn naturally into the orbit of the Revivalist. By February 1900, Messenger was encouraging holiness people to withdraw from New England churches. “It is our firm conviction,” he wrote, “that church relationship is the testing point among many holiness people today.” It was a position he shared with increasing numbers of Holiness Movement radicals.62 A second center of Holiness Movement radicalism, the Metropolitan Methodist Mission, was located on the West Side of Chicago. In late April 1900, the founders of the mission, Duke M. Farson and Edwin L. Harvey, invited Rees to conduct a two-week meeting. “God has given us blessed meetings,” Rees wrote, “and it is estimated that at least 100 were converted Sunday . . . alone.” In September, Rees was the main speaker at the mission-sponsored Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting, which was located near Ottawa, Illinois. Rees was impressed by the large attendance and the more than one hundred souls who professed salvation or sanctification. The admiration between Rees and Farson was mutual.63 By November, Rees had relocated his ministry to Chicago and was on the payroll of Duke M. Farson and the Metropolitan Methodist Mission. In early December, when Knapp joined Rees at the mission’s annual fall convention, it

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marked the beginning of a partnership between Knapp and the Metropolitan Methodist Mission that would only terminate with Knapp’s sudden death in December 1901. The partnership, although brief, coincided with four of the Holiness Movement’s most significant developments: Knapp’s formal separation from Methodism; an acrimonious fight between holiness radicals and NHA stalwarts at the General Holiness Assembly, which met conveniently, at least for the radicals, in Chicago; the great Chicago and Boston revivals of 1901; and the sending of missionaries Charles and Lettie Cowman to Japan.64

2 Marching to the Pearly White City The Birth of the Metropolitan Methodist Mission

The Pearly White City There’s a holy and beautiful city Whose Builder and Ruler is God; John saw it descending from Heaven, When Patmos, in exile, he trod; Its high, massive wall is of jasper, The city itself is pure gold; And when my frail tent here is folded, Mine eyes shall its glory behold. In that bright city, pearly white city, I have a mansion, a harp, and a crown; Now I am watching, waiting, and longing, For the white city that’s soon coming down. No sin is allowed in that city And nothing defiling or mean; No pain and no sickness can enter, No crepe on the doorknob is seen; Earth’s sorrows and cares are forgotten, No tempter is there to annoy; No parting words ever are spoken, There’s nothing to hurt or destroy.

In that bright city, pearly white city, I have a mansion, a harp, and a crown; Now I am watching, waiting, and longing, For the white city that’s soon coming down. No heartaches are known in that city, No tears ever moisten the eyes; There’s no disappointment in Heaven, No envy and strife in the sky; The saints are all sanctified wholly, They live in sweet harmony there; My heart is now set on that city, And some day its blessings I’ll share. In that bright city, pearly white city, I have a mansion, a harp, and a crown; Now I am watching, waiting, and longing, For the white city that’s soon coming down. My loved ones are gathering yonder, My friends too are passing away, And soon I shall join their bright number, And dwell in eternity’s day; They’re safe now in glory with Jesus, Their trials and battles are past. They overcame sin and the tempter, They’ve reached that fair city at last. In that bright city, pearly white city, I have a mansion, a harp, and a crown; Now I am watching, waiting, and longing, For the white city that’s soon coming down. Words and Music: Arthur F. Ingler, 1902, as in Burning Bush Songs, No. 1, p. 14–15.

E. L. Harvey

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Beverly Carradine (1848–1931) is one of the lost giants of American evangelical history. Remembered today, if at all, as the grandfather of prominent actor John Carradine and great-grandfather of actors Keith and David Carradine, he was one of the most popular and controversial Methodist evangelists of the Progressive Era. Born in Yazoo County, Mississippi, Carradine was converted in July 1874 and licensed to preach by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in December of the same year, and assigned to an isolated rural circuit. In spite of his humble beginnings, his rise to prominence was meteoric. Becoming pastor of the influential St. Charles Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in New Orleans in 1882, he established a reputation as a powerful preacher and social reformer. He was widely praised for his active participation in campaigns to prevent cruelty to animals and to children, and his attacks on the highly profitable Louisiana lottery led to the lottery’s demise and earned him a national reputation. Even as the lottery controversy raged around him, Carradine experienced entire sanctification on June 1, 1889. Dismissing his reform activities as the imperfect social engineering of an upwardly mobile aspirant to high ecclesiastical office, Carradine, who in 1890 had become pastor of the large Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South, congregation in St. Louis, with an annual salary of $4,000, angered wealthy parishioners and denominational leaders with his attacks on the dress, lifestyles, and social activities of his upper-class urban parishioners. Carradine was reassigned to St. Louis’s First Methodist Church, with a modest membership and salary to match, where his ministry precipitated a remarkable revival. In two years church membership increased by 750 and an urban rescue mission and a rescue home for women attempting to leave prostitution were established. It should be noted that Carradine’s salary kept pace with the number of his converts. In 1893, Carradine, to the relief of church leaders, entered full-time evangelistic ministry.1 It was Carradine who introduced the Metropolitan Methodist Mission to the experience of entire sanctification and the larger national Holiness Movement. Mission leaders were not unfamiliar with Carradine’s reputation. As E. L. Harvey remembered, he had first proposed that Carradine be invited to speak at Chicago Methodism’s premier summer evangelistic outreach, the Des Plaines Camp Meeting. The idea had been rejected out of hand and one camp meeting leader told Harvey that “they did not care to hear any Carradine preaching.”2 The Metropolitan Church Association (MCA) invited Carradine to speak at their own camp meeting, and the Metropolitan Methodist congregates

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were not disappointed by Carradine’s vigorous attacks on worldly dress or in his urging that believers make a deeper consecration to God. The meetings resulted in numerous conversions and in the experience of entire sanctification for virtually all of the adult members of the church. Among the first to receive this deeper experience were Gertrude Harvey and Duke M. Farson. For Edwin L. Harvey, a wealthy hotel owner, the struggle to experience entire sanctification was both intense and fraught with numerous apologies, restitutions, and repeated trips to the altar. Finally, early on the morning of November 28, 1897, he received the second blessing. The cost, in the terminology formulated two generations earlier by Methodist laywoman Phoebe Palmer, was high. He placed everything, including his wealth, on the altar. In doing so, Harvey moved radically beyond Palmer’s metaphorical understanding of entire consecration. For the young entrepreneur, entire consecration entailed a literal surrender of worldly possessions. Harvey clearly expressed the extent of his understanding in a 1909 account of the experience, which, because of its significance for the subsequent history of the MCA, warrants an extensive quotation. Brethren, it is not necessary to write the date down in your Bible, because the Lord says He will put the sanctification right in your heart and then you will not forget it. He will brand you the same as a farmer brands his cattle. A farmer takes the animal, throws it in, ties his feet together and burns his initials right into him. That animal will not forget it, and it will not wash off. That is the way God put the blessing of sanctification into my heart; but He had to throw me and tie my front and hind legs, as it were, and put the iron on to burn the mark in. It was several years ago on the twenty-eighth of November, that Jesus did it, and it has stayed there until this hour. . . . Before I was sanctified I used to give the Lord five per cent of my income and then ten per cent and then fifty per cent, but before I could get sanctified I put everything on the altar, and the Bible says in Exodus that every thing that touches the altar is holy. Be sure that you put everything on the altar before you profess to have this experience.3 The MCA was not merely a product of the Holiness Movement. It was decisively shaped by its roots in Chicago and Chicago’s thriving Methodist and evangelical Protestant communities during the last decade of the nineteenth

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century. A mere two decades after the devastating Chicago fire of 1871, the city had reestablished itself as the hub of the nation’s transportation system, even as it continued its domination over such key sectors of the agricultural economy as grain distribution and meatpacking, and the burgeoning manufacture of agricultural implements. During the 1890s, Chicago’s growing economic ascendancy was being augmented by a remarkable cultural renaissance, the highlight of which was the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Popularly known as “the White City,” the Columbian Exposition was in fact far more than a mere celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the New World. It was, as William Cronon has observed, an attempt to “demonstrate the progress of American civilization” with a special emphasis on Chicago’s role in creating that civilization. Because the Exposition’s leaders were intent on proving that the mission of the American people encompassed more than material prosperity, electricity, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and the invention of the Ferris wheel, the Exposition included a series of world’s congresses embracing such diverse themes as woman’s progress, medicine, music, literature, art, social reform, and Sabbath rest. The most successful of these congresses was the World’s Parliament of Religions. Although noted for its spectacular scope—it included representatives from most Christian groups and most of the major world religions—the Parliament in its actual deliberations reflected the dominant evangelicalism, albeit broadly defined, of its host city. Convened with the solemn chanting of the doxology, and closed by the singing of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” the congress was a celebration of the tolerant, and explicitly this world, religiosity of the social gospel. One speaker, outwardly brash and self-congratulating, even suggested that as Columbus had discovered America it was America’s task to find a religion for all humanity, even as the Exposition’s contradictions reflected important cultural strains in American society.4 Even before the fair opened, evangelicals who were less attuned to the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man organized a boycott of the fair because it remained open on Sundays. Others, led by evangelist D. L. Moody, whose commitment to the traditional Puritan Sabbath was supplemented by the business acumen he had acquired as a shoe salesman in postbellum Chicago, viewed the Exposition not as competition but as providing a window of evangelical opportunity. In response to the fair, Moody organized a World’s Fair Revival that preached the traditional message of evangelical conversion and the possibility of a second distinct religious experience of empowerment for service at about 125

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locations, including churches, strategically located theaters, a hastily constructed tabernacle near the fair’s main entrance, and most spectacularly, the big tent of the Forepaugh Circus. Moody outdrew the circus and the Sunday opening controversy ended with disappointed evangelicals having to accept that the fair would remain open on the Lord’s Day. Moody, comfortable in the burgeoning entertainment culture of Victorian North America, understood American popular culture, and the growing cultural pluralism of Chicago, even if he did not approve of all of its consequences. Instead of attacking Catholicism or the growing Jewish presence in Chicago, Moody invited popular German, French, Polish, Jewish, Scottish, and Australian evangelists to address Chicago’s growing multiethnic population in their native languages.5 Many Protestants did not share Moody’s tolerant spirit. The prominence afforded Roman Catholics, such as James Cardinal Gibbons, by the World’s Parliament of Religions was a painful reminder that immigration had fundamentally altered the cultural composition of North American society, especially in Chicago where 78 percent of the city’s population was of foreign parentage. In many Protestant minds, closely associated with Catholicism were poverty, illiteracy, intemperance, vice, and urban corruption. And, as British journalist and reformer W. T. Stead discovered, poverty and vice were the all too frequent by-products of the city’s great passion, the almighty dollar. Stead’s lurid narrative with and detailed maps to Chicago’s dens of iniquity, published in his widely circulated If Christ Came to Chicago (1894), remains one of the most remarkable historical documents of the 1890s, a potent reminder that, even amid the celebration of four hundred years of progress, Protestant cultural hegemony had yet to create an earthly “white city.”6 As the largest evangelical body in Chicago, the Methodist Episcopal Church was not reticent about assuming a leading role in the evangelization, and implicitly in the Americanization, of Chicago’s most recent immigrants. In part this was a natural result of Methodism’s rapid growth and of its geographic, racial, and ethnic diversity. As late as 1891, Pennsylvania Methodist pastor H. H. Moore wrote that “nothing in modern history is more remarkable than the unparalleled growth of Methodism.” Noting with approval that the world was coming under the cultural hegemony of English-speaking people, Moore insisted that Methodism was the dominant confessional expression of English-speaking Christianity, while American Methodism was the most undefiled form of Methodism. To Moore, American Methodism, as the virtual eschatological climax of history, was responsible for the abolition of

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slavery, the elevation of women, the public school system and the widespread literacy that accompanied it, and, most significantly, the temperance movement.7 Not surprisingly, Moore identified Catholicism as the primary threat to evangelical cultural dominance of North America. “The spread of popery,” he wrote, “implies the accession to citizenship of the most ignorant, sabbathbreaking, and licentious elements in Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Austria.” Nevertheless, Methodism’s success in Christianizing, and civilizing, the frontier and African Americans, and the rapid growth of Methodism among Germans and Scandinavians suggested to Moore that Methodism was the providential means for the assimilation of the foreign-born population to American ideals. Moore noted that each week, in Chicago’s Methodist block, an entire city block owned by the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist ministers, comprising the largest gathering of clergy in the city, dealt with the practical social issues of the time while serving as the “divinely appointed agency to neutralize . . . Romanism.”8 The intervening century has not dealt kindly with Moore’s prophecy or his assertions concerning the cultural potency of Methodism in general, and Methodism in Chicago in particular. This, however, does not diminish Chicago’s importance as the Midwestern center of Methodism at the dawn of the Progressive Era. Chicago’s significance as a center for Methodism began in the late 1840s with the establishment of a branch of the New York–based Methodist Book Concern. In 1852, the Book Concern began to publish a weekly periodical, the Northwest Christian Advocate. Unlike the earlier crude Methodism of the frontier, Chicago Methodism, virtually from its advent, was closely linked to the aspirations of the rapidly growing upper middle class. As such, it was often more concerned with the material and cultural development of its children and with the social transformation of its environment than it was with the eternal destiny of individuals. During the years following the Civil War, Chicago Methodists assumed leadership of such social causes as freedmen’s relief and the temperance movement. Most reflective of the distinctive middle-class character of Chicago Methodism was its abiding faith in education. Unlike Methodism in New England, which served as the source of many of the early Methodist immigrants to Chicago, Chicago Methodism during this time rapidly embraced both a professionally trained clergy and the establishment of a distinctively Christian university, Northwestern University established in 1851 and Garret Biblical Institute were located in the veritable Methodist Zion of Evanston,

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Illinois. Garrett Biblical Institute was the fruit of the financial generosity of Elizabeth Garrett, a convert, along with her husband, of a religious awakening at the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago in 1839. Its chief educational architect was John S. Dempster, a self-trained pioneer of theological education in New England before he assumed the post of professor of systematic theology at Garrett in 1856.9 From its inception, Evanston was synonymous with the cultural and social vision of Methodism. Evanston, republican in politics, faithful in war, and supportive of the rights of African Americans, saw its vision of itself and of Methodism in the years immediately following the Civil War increasingly subsumed under the broad banner of temperance. Far more than a mere reactive movement to ban the sale of intoxicating beverages, the temperance movement was a broad-based coalition of social reformers committed to reforms as diverse as the enfranchisement of women and the rights of labor. In Evanston, where the movement predated the war, the Northwestern University charter banned the sale of intoxicants within a four-mile radius of the university. In the years following the war, Evanston emerged as the nerve center of the international crusade for a liquor-free womenempowered world order. Its most prominent citizen and first historian was Frances E. Willard, the second president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Under Willard’s leadership the WCTU initiated an aggressive policy that encompassed a wide variety of reform movements, including support for women’s suffrage, and it eventually became the largest women’s organization in America. Willard’s portrayal of Evanston shared a common worldview with Moore’s Republic to Methodism, albeit free of Moore’s most bombastic and parochial rhetoric. Evanston was not merely one hamlet among many. It was “a classic town” and “the literary center of the great Northwest.” Acknowledging that Evanston had a “diabolical” side, Willard argued that the “celestial,” or dry, Evanston was in the ascendancy. Focusing on the suburb’s schools, libraries, churches, and moral crusades, Willard presented Evanston as not only the highest form of Methodist civilization, but for Willard and other Methodists, the highest form of American civilization as well. Ironically, Willard’s work emphasized the religious and cultural diversity of Evanston. Noting the presence and contributions of African Americans and Catholics, Willard was clear that her Evanston, and implicitly America, was willing to welcome all adherents of the cultural mores of Methodism regardless of creed or ethnicity. Fitting for a work published a year before the World’s Parliament of Religions convened in Chicago,

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Willard’s book suggested that “broader generalization of divine truth” would yet bring all humanity into religious unity.10 Another center of Methodism in the greater Chicago area, overshadowed only by the Methodist block and by Evanston, was the Des Plaines Camp Grounds. Founded nine years after the establishment of Northwestern University, the campground reflected the changing character of both Chicago Methodism and the camp meeting as a social institution. The location on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad lines west of the city was ideal. Following in the tradition of such venerable camp meeting sites as Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, Ocean Grove, New Jersey, and Old Orchard Beach, Maine, the Des Plaines Camp Grounds rapidly assumed the qualities of a resort for the growing urban middle class. However, the transition from camp meeting to resort was neither instantaneous nor without conflict. Early disputes centered on allowing trains to discharge passengers at the Des Plaines depot on Sunday. Interestingly, urban pastors, whose middle-class members typically spent an entire week at the campground, opposed Sunday trains. Rural pastors, whose parishioners did not have the luxury of a five-day workweek or summer vacations, supported Sunday trains. In 1869, the rural pastors won and invited the NHA to conduct a holiness camp meeting at Des Plaines in 1870. The NHA returned to Des Plaines in 1889 and 1897, and the annual Des Plaines Camp Meeting remained an important center for holiness agitation in Illinois Methodism well into the twentieth century. The Sunday train conflict was one illustration of the changing class composition of Methodism. It was clear that by 1870, middleclass Methodists were becoming suspicious not only of culturally distinct foreign immigrants but also of less wealthy rural Methodists.11 The growth of suburban Methodism and the changing social character of the camp meeting were not the only signs of the increased embourgeoisement of Chicago Methodism. As the work of historian Thomas Lenhart indicates, the years between the Civil War and the Columbian Exposition witnessed a steady increase in both the percentages of more affluent Methodists and Methodist churches that were located in middle-class neighborhoods.12 These trends in Methodism affected the evangelistic outreach of Chicago Methodism. The Home Missionary and Church Extension Society, established as the Board of City Missions in 1873, increasingly focused on the planting of suburban congregations.13 Nevertheless, the growing ethnic diversity of Chicago was not completely ignored by Methodism. Methodist missionary work among German immigrants in Chicago began as early as

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the 1840s. By 1864, there were twelve German Methodist preachers in Chicago. In 1893, there were more than seven thousand communicants in the Chicago German Conference that included Northeastern Illinois and Southeastern Wisconsin. Equally successful was Methodist mission work among Scandinavian immigrants. The first Scandinavian Methodist church in Chicago was organized in 1852. In 1877, the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a separate Swedish Conference, followed by a Danish-Norwegian Conference in 1880. Deeply rooted in Scandinavian pietism, Scandinavian Methodists established their own annual camp meetings at the Des Plaines Camp Grounds, and their own theological seminary on the campus of Northwestern University. Scandinavian Methodism’s social vision of commitment to temperance and openness to expanded roles for women closely resembled that of its largely middle-class English-speaking Methodist neighbors.14 Methodism’s success among Scandinavian immigrants was not duplicated with the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who arrived in Chicago during the last years of the nineteenth century. The new immigrants, who were primarily Roman Catholic, had little inherent appreciation for evangelicalism and for Methodism’s social vision in particular. By their rejecting Sabbatarianism and the temperance crusade, and even being suspicious of the evangelical-dominated and venerated public school system, new immigrants seemed to provide ample documentation for the traditional Protestant view that Catholicism spawned illiteracy, crime, and poverty. Although Chicago Methodism viewed the new immigrants with alarm, its immediate institutional response was to establish missions among Czech-, Italian-, and French-speaking immigrants. As the 1896 report of the Chicago Home Missionary and Church Extension Society indicated, Chicago Methodism’s failure to evangelize effectively among the city’s most recent immigrants was as much programmatic as it was cultural. In contrast to primitive Methodism, or even to the church’s early missions among German immigrants, the new motivation for missions was not the conversion of sinners or the perfection of the saints, but the acculturation of foreigners. Subsumed under “love of home” and the protection of sons and daughters of rural Illinois, the report’s dire warnings contained no reference to the immigrants themselves. In fact, it insisted that the church’s priority, the establishment of suburban congregations, was evangelically defensible. “We must help the unchurched well-to-do” the report argued, “as well as the outcast criminal class.”15

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Methodism’s, and evangelicalism’s, growing failure to reach the urban, especially working-class, masses did not go unnoticed. In a stinging indictment of Chicago’s Protestant churches, W. T. Stead suggested that they had succumbed largely to the temptation of “being at ease in zion.” Singling out Methodism, Stead suggested that Chicago Methodist ministers did little more than “make faces at the devil from behind the pulpit.” Stead reserved praise for only two Christian ministries to the poor: Hull House and the Salvation Army. Although these ministries contained common elements, Stead, biographer of Army cofounder Catherine Booth and author of the Army’s blueprint for the social regeneration of London, had special praise for Hull House for its humanitarianism without intolerance. In effect, Stead was one of the first observers to recognize that the humanitarian, social, nonconversionist, and explicitly earthcentered emphasis of Hull House represented a distinctive nonevangelical approach to social regeneration.16 Among Chicago Methodists, the settlement model of Christian mission struck a responsive chord. As early as the 1890s, Northwestern University established a settlement project under the direction of Harry E. Ward. In 1907, while serving as pastor of a working-class congregation near the Chicago stockyards, Ward helped to organize the Methodist Federation for Social Action. And in 1908 he authored a “Social Creed” for Christianity, which was adopted by the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and later by the Federal Council of Churches. In fact, under Ward’s direction, Chicago Methodists rapidly assumed a leading role in the formulation of the social gospel.17 In spite of the truly revolutionary views of Ward and other Methodists active in the social gospel movement, the dominant social concerns of Chicago Methodism remained temperance, Sabbatarianism, and the threat posed by Catholicism. The majority of Chicago Methodists, including both progressives and suburban moderates, were moralists intent on the civilization of an alien population through legislation and education. Its radical rhetoric notwithstanding, the social gospel was never successful in either the socioeconomic integration of Christian communities or the establishment of churches among the poor. In abandoning, or more commonly minimizing, the evangelical message of personal salvation, Chicago Methodists were unintentionally replacing an experiential basis for unity, which allowed for a degree of cultural diversity, with a cultural and political understanding of Christian mission that saw the recipients as objects of charity and not brothers and sisters in Christ.18 In his affirmation of Hull House, Stead explicitly criticized the Salvation Army’s “narrow” conception of orthodoxy. Rooted in the heritage of American

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perfectionistic revivalism, the Salvation Army, while sharing the settlement movement’s commitment to solidarity and service among the poor, explicitly affirmed historic evangelicalism’s commitment to individual conversion and a subsequent religious experience of purification and empowerment for service. Nevertheless, Stead remained suspicious of the transcendent hold of “civic regeneration.” “Very broad people,” he observed, “are . . . seldom as earnest as they are broad.”19 In fact, the Salvation Army represented only one manifestation of evangelical service ministries among the urban masses. Drawing on a tradition that dated at least to the Finneyite revivals of the 1830s, urban perfectionist missions had spread rapidly in the two decades after the Civil War. During the decade of the 1890s, as holiness evangelists were increasingly barred from stylish urban pulpits, they found receptive audiences in urban missions. As Timothy L. Smith has noted, the missions, in turn, produced converts who were hardly suitable for upscale Methodist churches. In many cities, such as Cincinnati, Providence, Washington, Brooklyn, Evansville, St. Louis, and even Chicago, holiness missions evolved into independent holiness congregations. This, in fact, was the experience of Chicago’s Metropolitan Methodist Mission.20 Founded in the spring of 1894 by a group of religiously intense young adults who were members of the Western Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, the Metropolitan Methodist Mission was a lay-initiated evangelistic outreach in a heavily German and Scandinavian neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. The central figures in the endeavor were two promising businessmen, Edwin L. Harvey and Marmaduke Mendenhall “Duke” Farson. On the surface, the two upwardly mobile businessmen appeared to be highly unlikely candidates to found a utopian religious community. The twenty-eight-year-old Harvey operated a string of low-priced workingmen’s hotels that catered to business travelers. The thirty-year-old Farson was a partner in the investment firm of Farson, Leach, & Company, which specialized in the sale of municipal bonds to finance irrigation and street railway projects, primarily in the West. The company scoured the West for municipalities that were in need of funds, expediting legal formalities and selling the bonds to Eastern banks, insurance companies, and private investors.21 Harvey and Farson, both products of pious Midwestern Methodist homes, met sometime during the early 1880s at the Western Avenue church. Converted in his youth, Harvey had become a class leader and secretary for Chicago’s sixty-six Epworth Leagues (Methodist youth organizations), and was the natural leader of a group of devout young people committed

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to evangelistic outreach. Harvey’s interest in evangelism came naturally. His father, Daniel Harvey, a deliveryman in Chicago, supplemented his income each summer through the sale of household products to downstate farm families. As his son Henry remembered years later, the elder Harvey spent as much time dispensing evangelical Christianity as household wares.22 Beginning in the early 1880s, Edwin L. Harvey began to hold evangelistic meetings in Methodist homes throughout the greater Chicago area. Upon discovering that Farson, the son of a deceased Indiana Methodist minister, had an exceptional voice, Harvey convinced him to join a gospel quartet that accompanied his evangelistic forays. In the summer of 1884, while attending the Des Plaines Camp Meeting, Farson was converted. Although continuing their promising business careers, the two became inseparable. In 1887, Farson married Annie Butcher, a musician and member of the Western Avenue church, while, in 1890, Harvey married Gertrude Ford, also a member of the Western Avenue church. Shortly after the Harveys’ marriage, the two friends purchased property on Chicago’s Near South Side and built a little red church deeded to the Rock River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Farson was listed in the conference yearbook as pastor and Harvey served as Sunday school superintendent. In the spring of 1894, even as the devastating depression of 1893 paralyzed Chicago and the bloody Pullman Strike effectively tarnished the metropolis’s “white city” image, Harvey acquired property for a new church on the corner of Chicago Avenue and Ada Street on the city’s Northwest Side. Located more than five miles from the nearest Methodist church, the Metropolitan Methodist Mission opened in July 1894 in a four-story brick building constructed at a cost of about $50,000. Although the deed to the property was held by Harvey, the congregation was officially listed as being part of the North Chicago District of the Rock River Conference. Again Farson was the pastor and Harvey was Sunday school superintendent. Initially, the mission closely resembled the social settlement model pioneered by Hull House: for example, a deaconess taught classes in cooking and sewing for mothers as well as for young girls, and others taught immigrants English. The culmination of the mission’s first year was a spectacular revival in a tent erected a block away. “Five hundred were at the altar in four weeks,” Gertrude Harvey remembered in 1920. The success of the 1895 revival left a permanent mark on the Metropolitan Methodist Mission. Evangelistic efforts and visitation among the sick and needy replaced such mundane and temporal activities as the teaching of cooking and sewing.23

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Especially noteworthy was the mission’s Sunday school. In only a year’s time, under Harvey’s direction, the Sunday school reached an average attendance of five hundred children, primarily from Norwegian, Swedish, and German immigrant families. Harvey, always an entrepreneur, hired a bus and, after Sunday school at the Western Avenue church, took as many teachers as were willing to go to the Metropolitan Mission for a 10:30 A.M. Sunday school. While many of the parents of the Sunday school students were attending their immigrant churches, Harvey, who had cards printed by the thousands promising prizes and entertainments that appealed primarily to nonchurched children, managed a Sunday school that used the methods of tabloid journalism and dime novels to present evangelical messages to children who were hardly welcome in Chicago’s largely middle-class Methodist churches. As Bernard Farson remembered years later, “They [the children] were a tough lot, and Ed [Harvey] sometimes said it needed two teachers for one pupil.” Within two years, Sunday school attendance was averaging more than eight hundred pupils. Adult church membership was more modest—averaging an attendance of about 150—and met before the Sunday school in an anteroom.24 Notwithstanding the unconventional character of the Metropolitan Methodist Mission, by the summer of 1897, Harvey and Farson were rapidly establishing reputations as leaders of Methodism in the greater Chicago area. In recognition of his business acumen and service to Methodism, Harvey was chosen as secretary of the Des Plaines Camp Grounds. Farson, on the other hand, had become one of the most important financial contributors to Methodist missions and a frequent speaker in Chicago-area Methodist churches, while his brother John enjoyed the confidence of Methodist bishops, who frequently visited his palatial estate in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park.25 In spite of the success of their ministry and the deep piety of the two men, neither Harvey nor Farson had experienced entire sanctification, nor was the Metropolitan Methodist Mission active in the thriving and Methodist-dominated Chicago holiness community. The center of the holiness community in Chicago was the office of the Christian Witness Company located in the Methodist church block on Washington Street. The Company, publisher of the Christian Witness and Advocate of Bible Holiness, a weekly holiness periodical with offices in Boston and Chicago, was closely associated with the NHA. The Christian Witness, as the periodical was popularly known, regularly contained a weekly column reporting on the Holiness Movement in Chicago, including reports of evangelistic meetings, holiness missions, and the regular meetings of holiness groups in Chicago-area Methodist churches.

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Harvey, in particular, longed for a deeper religious experience. In part, this desire was a product of the holiness agitation that surrounded the thirtieth annual camp meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness, which convened at the Des Plaines Camp Grounds in late July. Harvey was unable to “pray through,” a fact that he would later attribute to the worldliness and failure of the NHA-sponsored camp meetings to preach the full gospel, and the camp meeting left both Gertrude and Edwin Harvey dissatisfied with the quality and intensity of their religious experience.26 To meet this perceived spiritual need Harvey invited Beverly Carradine to conduct religious services at the Metropolitan Methodist Mission in November 1897. The description of the fall 1897 meetings that appeared in the Christian Witness is the earliest detailed contemporary description of the Metropolitan Methodist Mission. Although it noted that the older people in this primarily immigrant neighborhood were unaffected, the report stated that “the meeting presented the unusual spectacle of a congregation made up principally of young people.” The meeting, similar to the revival services of 1895, represented a significant turning point in the history of the MCA. The Metropolitan Methodist Mission had become a distinctly holiness church and the stage was being set for one of the most interesting and colorful chapters in the history of Methodism and of the Holiness Movement in Chicago.27 The Metropolitan Methodist Church, as it had become known by 1898, did not immediately embrace the increasingly controversial doctrines of premillennial eschatology and faith healing associated with the Holiness Movement’s radical fringes. However, the church’s new commitment did lead to at least one immediate institutional development: in typical Movement fashion, plans were made for an annual camp meeting. The first meeting was scheduled to begin in early June of 1898 and was to run for most of the summer. The primary speaker was to be Duke Farson, but the camp meeting was inaugurated by NHA evangelist and Presbyterian minister Edward F. Walker. The site, designated as the church campground, was a vacant lot near the church. Commencing on Friday, 3 June, Walker concluded his portion of the services on the evening of Sunday, 12 June, in a service that the Christian Witness described as “a season of remarkable power, never to be forgotten by those present.” Ironically, given Walker’s reputation as a scholarly and unemotional exponent of holiness teaching who preached from the Greek New Testament, the physical manifestations and lack of decorum accompanying the meetings produced widespread comment and controversy. Dismissing the services’ critics, Walker praised

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“the fully saved young people” who made up the congregation. “And how the Lord saved and sanctified the people,” Walker glowingly reported. “And how the community of ‘religionists’ around were stirred,” he concluded. The report failed to describe the exact physical manifestations accompanying “this season of remarkable power,” but it was here that the church’s reputation for demonstrative worship and its ignominy among the religious establishment began to take root. Walker, in turn, never forgot the Metropolitan Methodist Mission. Twenty years later, as general superintendent of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, long after virtually all Holiness Movement leaders had dismissed the MCA as a band of dangerous fanatics, he continued to defend the group’s leaders and much of its criticism of the Holiness Movement.28 The church’s rapid growth necessitated a structure that incorporated the standard physical features of a church. In the fall of 1898, construction began on a full-fledged church building on the site of the 1898 camp meeting. Funded by Farson, this facility, which could comfortably seat more than one thousand people, served the church into the early twentieth century when the establishment of the apparatus of a religious denomination with a retirement home, Bible and missionary training school, and a publishing house resulted in the search for larger facilities. In spite of its large Sunday attendance, the congregation increasingly became noted for the teams of youthful church workers who visited prisons and hospitals and who conducted open-air street meetings. Invariably, the church’s commitment to Christian perfection, as evidenced in increasingly controversial doctrines and aggressive evangelistic tactics, threatened the staid evangelicalism of Chicago Methodism. Nevertheless, the church’s eccentricities were easily ignored by a Methodist hierarchy hesitant to jeopardize the sizable financial contributions of Duke and, especially, John Farson.29 As their fourteen-year partnership had demonstrated, the ministry of Edwin L. Harvey and Duke Farson could not be contained in a single structure. The congregation had been in the stately Huron Street church less than a year when Farson, with seemingly endless financial resources, purchased an abandoned Episcopal church on Western Avenue on the Near West Side of Chicago, which he had remodeled into a simple, but large, barn-like structure. Referred to as a “Holiness tabernacle,” a reference to the temporary worship structure used by Israelites during the Exodus out of Egypt, the new structure was indicative of the eschatological revolution sweeping the Holiness Movement. Drawing on the imagery of incipient fundamentalism and reflecting the market-driven ecclesiology of turn-ofthe-century evangelicalism, so-called “tabernacles” were centers of

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evangelism, simply and inexpensively constructed, and easily dismantled, which could seat between three hundred and three thousand people. Tabernacles were exclusively used by premillennialists, and the goals of tabernacle ministries were the salvation and, for many, sanctification of as many sinners as possible before the return of Jesus.30 For Harvey and Farson, who drew deeply on popular religious currents, the adoption of the tabernacle metaphor did not signify an eschatological shift. It did suggest, following the example of A. B. Simpson, a pioneer in the tabernacle concept, a lessening of denominational loyalty. For unlike their earlier ministries, Farson and Harvey made no attempt to incorporate the Western Avenue holiness tabernacle into the apparatus of the Rock River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Similar to holiness skid-row missions, the tabernacle’s purpose was the evangelization of a particular social class, in this case the middle class, in an informal and not overtly religious setting, easily accessible to the target group. Services were to be held twice on Sunday and on Wednesday and Friday evenings. The tabernacle was opened in mid-November by Carradine, who was hired by the entrepreneurial Farson for an exclusive six-month engagement. Although it opened amid accusations that it would weaken the ministry of a neighboring church, the completion of the nondenominational Western Avenue tabernacle did not mean that the Metropolitan Methodist Church had abandoned Methodism. In early November, the church, in cooperation with Chicago First Methodist Episcopal Church, hired popular M. E. Church, South, evangelist Henry Clay Morrison for a ten-day evangelistic campaign. Morrison held evening services at the Huron Avenue location and spoke each noon at First Church in the Methodist block in the heart of Chicago’s downtown business district. Although he was no stranger to controversy and was certainly open to mild physical manifestations in worship, Morrison, a cultured and highly successful pastor of affluent Methodist Episcopal Church, South, congregations, was startled by the demonstrative worship of the Metropolitan Church. Years later, Harvey accused Morrison of attempting to restrain “Holy Ghost” demonstrations such as shouting and jumping. For his part, Morrison, who excused himself before the services were scheduled to end, noted that his noon meetings were well received. In spite of his hurried exit, Morrison received his full pay of $100, provided as always by Farson. Fortunately, E. F. Walker was able to conclude the scheduled ten-day Morrison campaign, setting the stage for Carradine’s six-month siege of Chicago.31 Notwithstanding his reservations, Morrison was deeply impressed by what he described as the “devout” and “zealous” body of more than three hundred

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young people, including forty-five “fully sanctified” Sunday school teachers, who composed the adult membership of the Metropolitan Methodist Church. Noting that between 75 and 100 professions of faith and more than thirty applications for church membership had occurred during his abbreviated services, Morrison praised Harvey and Farson for the tremendous energy they expended in business and evangelism. “They are the aggressive, happy type of sanctified people,” Morrison wrote concerning Edwin and Gertrude Harvey, “who overflow with joy in the Lord.” Referring to Duke Farson, Morrison wrote, “His face shines all the time, and he dares to undertake great things for God, and has faith to expect great things from Him.” “May the blessings of the Lord rest upon these good people, and give them great victory in their work,” Morrison concluded.32 Morrison’s primary concern about the Metropolitan Methodist Church was its demonstrative worship style; however, other controversial practices were taking root in the church. Throughout the fall, Harvey, already considered an expert on Christian stewardship by virtue of his wealth, was urging members of his own congregation and others active in the interrelated bodies of the Chicago holiness community to devote greater percentages of their wealth to Christian missions. In fact, Edwin and Gertrude Harvey were becoming increasingly preoccupied with the economic implications of holiness rhetoric. Dismissing the older holiness hermeneutic that had understood entire consecration of wealth to imply a figurative commitment, Edwin Harvey, adopting a position also held by Martin Wells Knapp, began urging Christians to surrender all to God above immediate living expenses. For her part, Gertrude Harvey sold her wedding ring, silk dresses, and fancy hats, and began to question the legitimacy of owning an elegant home. Turning to Carradine for counsel, the Harveys were startled to hear this so-called champion of radical self-denial defend such luxuries as wedding rings and stylishly furnished homes. Similar to Morrison’s abbreviated fall campaign, Carradine’s exclusive six-month engagement quietly ended six weeks early. Preaching at the tabernacle on Western Avenue was continued by Farson, E. L. Harvey, Harvey’s brother, Henry L. Harvey, and C. E. Ellsworth, superintendent of the Madison Street Gospel Mission. Carradine never returned to the Metropolitan Church. In less than one year, the church’s radicalism had alienated the two most powerful holiness preachers in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Frustrated by the conventional ministries of NHA evangelists, Farson and Harvey invited Seth C. Rees, president of the seemingly more friendly International Apostolic Holiness Union (IAHU), to continue the meetings at the holiness tabernacle.33 Unlike Carradine, who had reported only six conversions at his final service, Rees’s ten-day evangelistic campaign, which began on Friday, 20 April

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1900, was greeted by such spiritual demonstrations as shouting and jumping. In the final service alone, more than one hundred conversions were recorded.34 Rees’s support for demonstrative worship, suspicion of the common emphasis on denominational loyalty, and belief in God’s ownership of all property made him and the IAHU natural allies of the Metropolitan Methodist Church. In the wake of the Rees services, the Metropolitan Methodist Church entered the orbit of the IAHU and the informally linked network of holiness radicals who looked to Knapp for information, support, and direction. Once established, the relationship between the IAHU and the Metropolitan Methodist Church developed rapidly. In September, Rees was the main speaker at a church-sponsored camp meeting. By November, he had relocated to Chicago and was a paid employee of Duke Farson. In December, Knapp joined Rees for a missionary convention at the Metropolitan Methodist Church in Chicago. Harvey’s writings began to appear in the Revivalist, while Rees, in turn, was the principal speaker for a remarkable religious revival that swept Chicago during the spring of 1901. In the fall of 1901, one year after meeting Harvey, Knapp invited him to lead the 1902 Mount of Blessings Camp Meeting and to assume leadership of Knapp’s empire in Cincinnati, a plan terminated by Knapp’s sudden death in December 1901. Although blocked from assuming the leadership of Knapp’s empire, Harvey never tired of reminding his followers that their ministry was the rightful heir to the ministry of Martin Wells Knapp. During the fall of 1899, while preparations were being completed for the holiness tabernacle on Western Avenue, Duke Farson purchased one hundred acres of property near Ottawa, Illinois, as a site for a holiness camp meeting.35 Known as Buffalo Rock, for the picturesque forty-acre rock formation overlooking the Illinois River, the campsite, destined to become an Illinois state park, was praised as one of the most beautiful camp meeting locations west of the Allegheny Mountains. Farson’s decision to establish a camp meeting, linked with the opening of the nondenominational holiness tabernacle, was a clear indication that the Metropolitan Methodist Church was in the process of developing an institutional structure independent of Methodism. In this regard, the establishment of the camp meeting was especially significant. As the fundamental institutional expression of the nineteenth-century holiness revival, camp meetings could easily develop into centers of resistance to denominational structures while serving as incubators for religious loyalties that could facilitate the formation of new denominations. As in the case of the MCA, the annual camp meeting became, along with group’s

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periodical, the Burning Bush, the primary vehicle for the recruitment of church workers, for fund raising, and for the development of group solidarity. Compared to the thousands of faithful who would flock to the MCA camp meetings in the 1920s, the small gathering of holiness faithful who assembled amid a steady rain at Buffalo Rock on 25 August 1900 appeared to be of little consequence. It was, in fact, of great significance. In the chronology of the MCA, it became the movement’s first camp meeting and in a fundamental sense it established the basic chronology of the movement. In a real sense the 1900 encampment marks the founding of the MCA. For the opening days of the camp meeting, Duke Farson, employing his financial resources freely, enlisted the services of some of the most distinguished evangelists in the Holiness Movement. Among the scheduled speakers were popular Indiana evangelist John T. Hatfield, NHA evangelist L. B. Kent and, representing the Movement’s premillennial wing, Seth C. Rees. Kent, a veteran of the Holiness Movement in Illinois, provided detailed accounts of the meetings to the Christian Witness. Similar to other early reports of MCA activity, Kent’s reports show that he was deeply impressed by the preaching of Farson and Harvey. “No collegetraining can give preachers what God has given this young business man as a soul saving preacher,” Kent wrote concerning Farson. Following a sermon by Harvey, Kent noted that he was coming to believe that “fully consecrated and anointed business men may be the most effectual preachers of the word.”36 Although no hint of fanaticism appears in Kent’s account, the central themes of the sermons preached by Harvey are the themes that would be prominent in the mature MCA. Preaching from two of his favorite texts, Luke 16:19–27, the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the poor beggar, and Galatians 2:20, Paul’s statement that he had been crucified with Christ, Harvey, who was still struggling with his own wealth, defined the possession of wealth and the trappings of middle-class Methodism, such as education, insurance, and popularity, as sure signs that one was on the road to perdition.37 The most notable event in the life of the Metropolitan Methodist Church during the fall of 1900 was a missionary convention held on Sunday, 2 December. The primary purpose of the convention was to celebrate the missionary call of Charles and Lettie Burd Cowman, Chicago natives and recent God’s Bible School students who were about to embark on a faith missionary venture in Japan.

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In many ways the Cowmans’ experience illustrates the perplexing and interrelated character of turn-of-the-century evangelicalism. Following his conversion at Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago, Charles Cowman, a Western Union Telegraph Company executive, began to attend classes at Garrett Theological Seminary and at Moody Bible Institute. Experiencing a call to the mission field following an address by A. B. Simpson, Cowman, who had initially sought to fulfill his calling by applying to the mission board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, came under the influence of Martin Wells Knapp’s Revivalist. Traveling to Cincinnati, the Cowmans assisted in the founding of God’s Bible School and made the momentous decision to become missionaries to Japan without the support, financial or otherwise, of a denomination or established mission board. As “faith missionaries,” the Cowmans would have no salary, but would rely on the freewill offerings of supporters.38 In late November, the Cowmans, accompanied by the Knapps, Seth C. Rees, Rees’s son Byron, and Quaker evangelist Charles Stalker, left Cincinnati for Chicago. Knapp was deeply impressed by the generosity and spirit of the Metropolitan Methodist Church. In his glowing report of the convention, he noted that “amid shouts and tears of holy joy” $1,000 had been raised for the Revivalist’s World Wide Mission Fund. Regarding the church, Knapp wrote, “Its pastor and his helpers, abominate fairs, festivals, concerts, and all such worldly things in the Church of God, and demand that their ministers must have the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire as Jesus requires, and will not tolerate fireless preachers.”39 The convention concluded with a simple ordination service for Charles and Lettie Burd Cowman. Martin Wells Knapp, Seth C. Rees, Byron J. Rees, and Charles Stalker laid their hands on the departing missionaries. Following the convention, Byron Rees and Stalker departed for New York, the point of departure for their worldwide missionary trip, and later the Cowmans departed for San Francisco. Both adventures would enter into the lore of the Holiness Movement. In all accounts of both missionary endeavors, the central role of the MCA has been omitted, a testimony to both evangelicalism’s and the Holiness Movement’s quest for respectability and their desire to avoid the stigma of fanaticism.40 On 1 January 1901, in a decision that had profound consequences for the Metropolitan Methodist Church and for the radical Holiness Movement, Knapp withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The announcement, the natural result of the long and intense debate on the church question within the Holiness Movement, certainly came as no surprise to the regular readers of the Revivalist. In the final issue of the paper for 1900, Knapp,

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through a front-page nautical illustration, had depicted the triumphant full gospel New Testament Church navigating through stormy seas while a series of boats bearing various denominational labels, including Methodism, were in the process of sinking. In Knapp’s drawing, the multitudes aboard these doomed vessels were being quieted by eloquent and educated officers, entertained by gifted preachers and attractive music, and told that to leave the ship was to make one guilty of the unpardonable sin of “comeouterism.” As usual, Knapp reserved his sharpest criticism for the leaders of the NHA, who, in Knapp’s eyes, were urging faithful Christians to support Satan’s counterfeit church in its quest to “lure souls from God and heaven.” “The mission of the Revivalist is to God’s people of every name,” Knapp concluded, “whether on board the New Testament Church, sailing triumphantly on life’s ocean and rescuing sinking seaman on every side, or whether aboard dead and dying Churches, doing their utmost to awaken people to their danger and urge them to loyalty to God.” For holiness radicals, such as Knapp, Rees, F. M. Messenger, Harvey, and Farson, loyalty to God now implied, where possible, membership in one of the rapidly multiplying apostolic churches.41 Strong, although circumstantial, evidence suggests that Farson and Harvey played a significant role in Knapp’s decision to leave Methodism. Even Knapp’s nautical illustration may have originated with Harvey. In the same issue of the Revivalist that included Knapp’s drawing, Harvey wrote, “The Church having lost spiritual power with God, feeding ice-cream to the body, the backslidden pastor fast asleep, presents a frightful picture. Backslidden holiness evangelists holding services on deck crying: Stay on board! ‘Stay in your churches.’” Regardless of the source of the illustration, the Metropolitan Methodist Church had withdrawn from the Rock River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church during the fall of 1900. In fact, in April 1899, although still formally part of the Rock River Conference, Farson and Harvey had received a charter from the state of Illinois to operate their ministry under the name “Metropolitan Church Association.” It is undoubtedly more than coincidence that Knapp’s withdrawal from Methodism followed his introduction to Harvey and Farson at the Chicago missionary convention.42 In January 1901, Rees, associate editor of God’s Revivalist and president of the IAHU, became “under God,” and, with the unlimited financial support of Farson, leader and spokesman for the MCA.43 Building on the experiences of his successful ministry in Providence, Rees proposed a threefold strategy to bring the full gospel to Chicago’s urban masses. First, acting on Farson’s advice, Rees rented, for one year, a large meeting room in the First

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Methodist Episcopal Church in the center of the city for noon holiness meetings.44 The intended audience was the thousands of clerical employees and businessmen who worked in the heart of the great metropolis. Second, and following upon the initial success of the noon meetings, Rees announced that the MCA would host a holiness convention from 1–10 March. The convention would be led by such prominent Holiness Movement radicals as Rees, Knapp, converted cowboy and ex-moonshiner Bud Robinson, ex-prizefighter Andie Dolbow, and converted railroad engineer E. A. Fergerson. Farson promised to house as many visitors as possible free of charge. The convention promised to address various aspects of the fourfold gospel and such related topics as “slum work,” “demonstrations,” and “women’s work.”45 Third, Rees, who had recently held evangelistic services with Emma M. Whittemore, a Christian and Missionary Alliance leader active in a ministry among prostitutes, proposed that the MCA establish two rescue homes, one for men and one for women. While the noon meetings and convention would serve the middle classes, the ministry of the rescue homes would focus upon the poor. This final proposal, although eventually funded by Farson, never received the full endorsement of the church and would become one of the primary sources of conflict between Rees and the MCA in subsequent years.46 The Rees-initiated March convention was not the only holiness assembly planned for Chicago during 1901. In fact, even as Rees issued his hurried call for the March convention, NHA stalwarts were carefully laying plans for a “General Holiness Assembly” to convene at the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago on 3 May 1901. Inspired by S. B. Shaw, a Chicago-based holiness evangelist and Movement ecumenist, the assembly had as its stated purpose to pray for revival, encourage cooperation in evangelistic endeavors, remove prejudice against holiness teaching arising from “extreme, erroneous and fanatical positions assumed by some so-called holiness workers,” and create an international holiness union.47 Dominated by the postmillennial leadership of the NHA, on the surface, the assembly appeared to have wide support. Among those publicly endorsing it were representatives of more then twelve evangelical denominations and six bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Conspicuous by their absence from circulated endorsements for the convention were the leaders of the IAHU. Among those active in the radical holiness network, only A. M. Hills, a self-confessed postmillenialist, W. B. Godbey, and E. F. Walker endorsed the call for the General Holiness Assembly. The Christian Witness, in turn, refused to publicize Rees’s March convention. For Rees and his coworkers, the mission

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of the General Holiness Assembly was to suppress holiness radicalism and to preserve the loyalty of holiness adherents to what were, in their eyes, apostate denominations. In effect, Chicago had become the setting for the confrontation between two distinct movements, each claiming to speak for holiness people.

3 Pentecost Comes to the White City The Chicago Revival and the General Holiness Assembly of 1901

On 1 March 1901, “with shouts of ‘Glory to the Lord!’ and amens that rang through the block,” and under the watchful, albeit cynical, eye of the Chicago press, the hurriedly assembled holiness convention of the Metropolitan Church Association opened at Chicago’s First Methodist Episcopal Church. Although it was only scheduled for ten days, the convention benefited from extensive press coverage, and initiated one of the most fruitful (at least numerically) evangelistic campaigns of the postbellum holiness revival. In a mere seventy-five days, an estimated 2,200 seekers sought salvation or sanctification at MCA altars.1 Coming in the wake of Martin Wells Knapp’s separation from Methodism, the revival was interpreted by the radical Holiness Movement as vindication of Knapp’s abandonment of the Methodist Episcopal Church and as a sign of divine affirmation of the principles of the IAHU. Others tied to a less celestial causality seemed bemused, embarrassed, or horrified by the spectacle of jumping and shouting worshipers bitterly denouncing Chicago’s ministerial elite on the front pages of the daily newspapers. In effect, the revival, as reported to the world by the Chicago press corps, was an extended attack upon the failure of conventional evangelicalism, especially Methodism, to reach the urban masses. “God,” Duke Farson insisted, in a front-page story in the Chicago Daily News, “was anxious to reach humanity and save it.” But, he contended, preachers, fearful of “official boards,” “pew holders,” and “everything in sight,”

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hindered the divine mandate from being fulfilled. In conclusion, the entrepreneurial banker-preacher, insisting that no Chicago church was making an earnest effort to save souls, publicly reissued an old wager, doubling the stakes in the process, that he would gladly give any preacher $1,000 who, after allowing MCA evangelists to conduct services, would not have at least fifteen converts in a two-week period.2

Cartoon criticizing Beverly Carradine for writing popular fiction.

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In the highly competitive world of turn-of-the-century journalism, Farson’s offer was front-page news. Readers of the Chicago Tribune, much to the consternation of the leaders of Chicago Methodism, were greeted with the startling headline “Fifteen Souls against $1,000.” The story reported that Rev. R. A. Morley, pastor of the Sheffield Avenue Methodist Church, had accepted Farson’s offer. The agreement between the two principals stipulated that a minister of Farson’s choosing would hold services for two weeks at Morley’s church. Further, it was agreed that all services in connection with the church would be under Farson’s supervision and that “no church entertainments, sociables, bazaars, fairs or any worldly amusements” would be held during the specified period. In return, Farson promised a minimum of fifteen conversions or sanctifications. The Tribune speculated that Texan Bud Robinson, whose brief itinerancy in Chicago had produced a reported three hundred conversions, would conduct the meetings. Unfortunately, at least for the press, the meetings did not immediately receive the approval of the presiding elder of the North Chicago District, providing ample evidence in the eyes of Farson and other Movement radicals that dead churches were envious of the successes of holiness evangelists.3 Even before services began at the Sheffield Avenue church, MCA-sponsored meetings in a friendly church near the site bore immediate results. Among the curiosity seekers reportedly converted were several missionaries, students from Moody Bible Institute, businessmen, the wife of a prominent physician, a wholesale whiskey distributor, and an assorted group of bartenders, thugs, and drunkards. In one notable case, a gambler was dramatically converted in a convention service after reading a story about the wager in a sporting paper that normally barred religious news. The embarrassed presiding elder eventually agreed to allow an MCA evangelist to conduct services at the Sheffield Avenue church. Capitalizing on the free publicity, the services resulted in numerous conversions and, as Farson remembered many years later, a seventy-five-member addition to the church membership rolls. A deeply appreciative Pastor Morley remained a lifelong friend of Farson.4 Although it is easy to dismiss the wager as merely a publicity stunt, Farson’s action and Methodism’s self-confessed inability to promise similar results had a far different meaning to those nurtured in nineteenth-century evangelicalism. Drawing on a stream of evangelical thought that dated at least to Charles G. Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835), the MCA, the Holiness Movement, and most evangelicals insisted that a benevolent deity had made all provisions necessary for the salvation of sinners. Rejecting the fatalism of the older Calvinism, evangelicalism believed that conversions were the natural product of a faithful and properly trained clergy. In fact, holiness radicals, such as Seth C. Rees, going beyond Finney, insisted that Christ “guaranteed success” to any

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faithful evangelist. True to the spirit of evangelicalism’s entrepreneurial past, Rees’s authority rested on unquestionable quantifiable data, his impressive average of two thousand conversions per year. As he wrote in January 1901, “A man who preaches and does not get men converted wastes his time, squanders his energies, and misses the main thing.” Further, Rees argued that a “successful Christian is successful at saving souls” and that “the conditions of success are in reach of every man of God.” In essence, established Methodism’s rejection of the wager implied an indifference to the fate of sinners and challenged the spiritual status, and implicitly the authority, of the leaders of Chicago Methodism.5 In effect, the success of the Chicago convention served to illustrate the continued vitality of a type of religious authority rooted not in Christian tradition, education, and social status but in effective communication by evangelists who shared the life experiences, prejudices, and aspirations of ordinary Americans. Three evangelists in particular, E. A. Fergerson, Andie Dolbow, and Bud Robinson, standing in the tradition of such actor-preachers as George Whitefield, Lorenzo Dow, Beverly Carradine, and W. B. Godbey, emerged as central figures in the three-month holiness assault upon Chicago. Each possessed a unique style and, like Chicago’s rapidly growing population, were products of different geographical regions. The three shared a common suspicion of elitist ministerial training and of the social ambitions of urban clergy and their affluent parishioners. They also had work experiences similar to the clerks, young immigrants, and lower middle-class workers who were attracted to the MCA message. They were “not schoolmen,” the Revivalist noted, but men of God who had been saved and sanctified “from the lowest ranks of life.” As a result they had the confidence of the lower middle-class residents of Chicago who felt increasingly indifferent to the theological speculation and sociological aspirations of urban and suburban Methodist clergy.6 E. A. Fergerson, the least distinguished of the three evangelists, was a littleknown locomotive engineer and sometime evangelist when the 1901 convention came to Chicago. A native of Mount Vernon, Illinois, Fergerson had been converted in 1893 and had experienced entire sanctification the following year. In typical Movement fashion, he immediately organized home prayer meetings at both ends of his Mount Vernon-to-Evansville, Indiana, freight run and was recognized as a local preacher in the Southern Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. A large man noted for his athletic prowess, Fergerson enjoyed the challenge of controlling local rowdies with both his quick wit and, when necessary, his imposing size and physical strength. His poignant testimony to the way in which God had saved a wicked railroad man and sent him home to his praying mother touched a powerful nerve in urban

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and small-town audiences that included both praying mothers and guilt-ridden sons and daughters. Fergerson was also noted for his vivid descriptions of hell, which were punctuated with scenes from his own experience on the railroad. As Henry Clay Morrison remembered, his sermons “were full of wrecked trains, shrieking whistles, clanging bells, breaking trestles, railroad accidents, roaring furnaces . . . crushed limbs, mangled bodies and cries of people for help and mercy.”7 In spite of a limited education, Fergerson preached from the Greek text of the New Testament even as he wove the experiences of everyday working people into the fabric of his messages. Typical of his evangelistic method was his vivid depiction of a 1 January 1901 explosion at a popular Madison Avenue laundry that had resulted in ten deaths and many injuries. In his final noon service, Fergerson reminded the audience that such tragedies were a daily occurrence in Chicago and death awaited all. The message resulted in numerous conversions. Fergerson gradually drifted outside of the MCA orbit. However, his success in the Chicago revival established his national reputation as an outstanding revival and camp meeting preacher whose tragic death from pneumonia in 1912 cut short a truly extraordinary evangelistic career.8 Unlike Fergerson, Andie Dolbow was an evangelist of note when he arrived in Chicago in the spring of 1901. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Dolbow preached endless variations of one message, his life story, interspersed with pithy quotes, shouts, somersaults, and handstands. An ex-prizefighter who had been given away in childhood by his alcoholic parents, Dolbow repeatedly recounted his addiction to liquor and tobacco, his brief sojourn in the Union Army, his subsequent attempt to find relief from his debilitating habits through marriage, and his discharge from employment by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. After regaining his old job with the railroad, Dolbow, in gratitude, sought salvation during revival services at the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington in 1873. Although he was illiterate when converted, through the tutelage of his wife and what he interpreted as divine intervention, he rapidly learned to read. After experiencing entire sanctification, he became a Methodist class leader and engaged in rescue mission work. Dolbow, employing a fervent, if highly unorthodox preaching style, entered full-time evangelistic work during the late 1880s. In a short time, he had initiated a series of spectacular revivals in Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.9 Dolbow’s irrepressible enthusiasm and his ability to express the evangelical message in the vocabulary of ordinary Americans had resulted in an estimated 15,000 conversions by 1901. Treated as an eccentric by the Chicago press and by the established leaders of Methodism, Andie Dolbow

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gave a testimony that touched a responsive chord among ordinary Americans who, like him, sought to have their names “on the payroll of the skies.”10 The revival, financed by Farson and managed by Rees, highlighted the preaching of many Holiness Movement notables, though the featured attraction was a virtually unknown Methodist preacher from Texas, Reuben A. “Bud” Robinson (1860–1942). Even for a movement given to the celebration of the eccentric, Bud Robinson was an oddity, or as God’s Revivalist noted, “a peculiar individuality,” whose evangelistic success demanded an explanation. The son of a Tennessee moonshiner, Robinson grew to adulthood in a poverty-stricken family afflicted by alcoholism. Following the death of the elder Robinson, the family relocated to Texas where Bud Robinson began a short career as a cowboy. Converted at a Texas camp meeting in 1880, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Although illiterate, he began immediately to prepare for the ministry. Seldom has there been a less promising ministerial candidate. His stuttering was so debilitating that at times he was unable to speak, and when he did speak it was with a severe lisp. To make matters worse, he suffered from epilepsy. In spite of these hardships, Robinson began a career as a lay preacher, circuit rider, and itinerant evangelist. His experience of entire sanctification in 1885 naturally caused him to become affiliated with the holiness faction in Texas Methodism. Convinced to attend college at Methodist-sponsored Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Robinson, inverting the purpose of the project, organized a holiness prayer group that in turn established a holiness camp meeting and a church ministering to the poor on Georgetown’s largely African American west side. He was granted a diploma after one year. His ministry among African Americans and his dating of and subsequent marriage to the daughter of a prominent Texas Methodist pastor may have contributed to his abbreviated academic career. Upon his acquiring a tent, Robinson began an evangelistic ministry that was interrupted by ill health and his expulsion from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the mid-1890s.11 Miraculously healed in 1896, Robinson was accepted into membership by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Initially, his evangelistic career faltered, but in 1898 he met Morrison at the Waco (Texas) Camp Meeting. Sensing Robinson’s genius, Morrison insisted that Robinson be allowed to address the camp meeting. To the amazement of many, Robinson’s simple reciting of Bible verses interspersed with pithy sayings produced an immediate revival. Through Morrison, Robinson was introduced to A. M. Hills, a Congregational minister and president of Texas Holiness University, in whose home he briefly resided. It was through Hills that Robinson came to the attention of the leaders of the MCA.

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When Robinson, popularly known as the “Walking Bible” because of his ability to quote a reported one-fourth of the Bible from memory, arrived in Chicago, his distinctive style of combining autobiographical narrative and Southern folk humor that would later make him the most important figure, with the possible exception of Morrison, in the twentieth-century Holiness Movement, which was still in its infancy in the Spring of 1901. Unlike Fergerson, who emphasized God’s judgment for sin, Robinson, drawing on his own conversion experience, taught that God loved even a person such as he had been: “a worthless, lawless, thieving cowboy” with “a pack of cards in one pocket, a pistol in the other [who] had always heard of God as hating sinners, . . . and in response he hated God.” Robinson told the crowds of believers, seekers, and the curious who packed the Chicago convention that for the first time, under the preaching of the Texas evangelist who had led to his conversion, he had heard that “Jesus loved a feller, and if he loves me, I love him, and I’ll shoot any feller that says anything against Him.” As he devalued the claims of the Chicago ministerial elite, Robinson confessed that his call to the ministry was not because of education, for he was uneducated, “not because he possessed the most talents, because he had none, but because he was the only man God could get in Texas.”12 Robinson’s style was distinctive. Unlike the shouting of Fergerson and the acrobatic styles of Dolbow, Farson, and Harvey, Robinson lightly gripped the pulpit and merely interspersed quoted Scripture with “striking illustrations” from his experiences, while moving his audience through the gamut of human emotions from laughter to tears. His messages were concluded with a simple “come on,” and seekers would invariably flock to the rail surrounding the podium. Interestingly, although the Chicago convention established Robinson’s national reputation, he seldom mentioned his sojourn with the MCA. Distancing himself from the Holiness Movement’s radical fringe, Robinson joined the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene in 1908. He spent the remainder of his ministry in the service of that body, securing more than fifty thousand subscriptions to the denominational periodical during his lifetime. Fittingly for a holiness evangelist, Robinson’s obituary reported that he had traveled more than two million miles, saw more than one hundred thousand seekers at his altars, and sold more than five hundred thousand copies of his fourteen books. Left unreported was his role in the Chicago revival and the profound changes that his ministry had undergone since that time. Significantly, at the time of his death, he was no longer known as the “Walking Bible,” as the accounts of his own experiences and witty sayings had come to dominate his messages. Regardless, he remains an important twentieth-century cultural and religious leader and a striking illustration

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of the continued importance of “preacher-actors” in the development of American Christianity.13 The climax of the convention was a spectacular ordination service on the afternoon of Sunday, 10 March, at the Metropolitan Methodist Church, which was as much a celebration of the radical Holiness Movement’s departure from Methodism as it was a service of consecration for Christian ministry. In fact, two of the candidates for ordination, Robinson and Dolbow, were already ministers in good standing with the Methodist Episcopal Church. A third, George B. Kulp (1845–1939) had been an important Methodist Episcopal Church minister in Michigan and was serving as the pastor of an IAHU-affiliated congregation in Battle Creek. Among the others ordained was Harvey; Rees delivered the charge. Rees, Farson, John Norberry, Fergerson, Knapp, A. H. Kaufman—an important IAHU minister from Port Huron, Michigan—and Edward Von Holz all prayed in turn while laying hands on the newly consecrated brethren. “Fervent prayers were punctuated by frequent interpolations from the bowed congregation,” the Tribune reported, even as “moans, shrieks, cries for mercy, and amens” filled the church. When the prayers were finished, the candidates arose. As if orchestrated, Andie Dolbow emitted his familiar laugh and “the evangelists, throwing their arms around each other and waving their handkerchiefs in the air, shouted blessings and hallelujahs” while the congregation repeatedly sang a song that had become the theme song for the convention, “The Pearly White City.”14 Written during the opening days of the convention, the lyrics of “The Pearly White City” captured the radical holiness alienation from the NHA, Chicago Methodism, and the optimism of Progressive Era America. Contradicting the Holiness Movement’s earlier perfectionistic hymnody, the song did not locate heaven, or a heaven-like experience, in the perfected lives of the saints on earth, but looked forward in anticipation to a heavenly “white city” without sin, death, and the devil. From the hymn’s powerful opening line, “there’s a holy and beautiful city, whose builder and ruler is God” through the poignant end of the second verse, “no parting words ever are spoken, there’s nothing to hurt and destroy,” to its concluding refrain, “in that bright city, that pearly white city, I have a mansion, an harp, and a crown; now I am watching, waiting, and longing, for the white city that’s soon coming down,” the hymn spoke to the tragic realities of the clerks, domestics, housewives, and workers, many of them immigrants, whose experiences in the all too earthly “white city” of Chicago had undermined any hope in a temporal social salvation as espoused by radicals, reformers, and elite clergy.15 In effect, the hymn confirmed the experiences of evangelists such as Fergerson, Dolbow, and Robinson, who intuitively understood that the social

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salvation promised to Progressive Era Americans was far different from the salvation that they believed was about to be inaugurated through the premillennial advent of the Prince of Peace. Recent historical scholarship notwithstanding, the radicals’ critique of middle-class evangelicalism, especially Methodism, was profoundly colored by their own non-Marxist preferential option for the poor. In the midst of Chicago, the vaunted “white city” noted for “her science, learning and trade,” Rees insisted that God, unlike man, chose the “weak, foolish, base, despised, and not-at-alls.” “Souls being saved today,” Rees observed, “are not in the steepled churches, but in the jungles and slums.” “Bums and harlots will go into the kingdom,” the Quaker evangelist sarcastically noted, “while the cloth is discussing affairs.” Following the logic of the “Pearly White City,” salvation would come not from the “dignitaries of church or state,” but from the “skies.” The new evangelists and their followers had few illusions. “Beulah land,” or the “land of milk and honey,” a metaphorical reference to the life lived by the sanctified, had ceased to be an earthly reality. The “blessed hope” of Jesus’ premillennial advent replaced the second blessing as the climax of the human experience. For the radicals, and for most individuals in the Holiness Movement, sanctification had ceased being the culmination of the Christian religious experience. “The fatal effort of making sanctification the end of Christian experience,” the venerable Godbey wrote, was that it distracted from the “necessary gospel pabulum,” the glorious coming of the Messiah.16 Exploiting the publicity its organizers had received in the Chicago press, the revival’s scheduled concluding date of 10 March was disregarded. Noon services continued at Chicago’s First M. E. Church while evening services were held initially in a largely German-speaking evangelical church on the city’s North Side and then for one week at the Elim Swedish M. E. Church. “The altars were too small to accommodate the seekers,” reported MCA evangelist John Norberry, who estimated that more than one thousand seekers had sought the “double cure” at MCA altars by late March. For Knapp, the MCA bore all the marks of the New Testament Church, including an affirmation of the fourfold gospel, freedom from “ecclesiastical restraint,” and, most notably, numerous conversions.17 Finally, on 25 March, the much-anticipated services began at the Sheffield Avenue M. E. Church. In the usual manner of the revival, sinners were converted, restitutions were made, and the doctrines of the radical Holiness Movement were boldly preached among the Methodist faithful. Holiness radicals were ecstatic. “Praise God for his mighty presence in Chicago,” wrote the young E. A. Kilbourne, an associate of Charles and Lettie Cowman and eventual president of the Oriental Missionary Society, “never anything like it in her history. Truly, these are the days of Wesley, Whitefield . . . and Finney.”18

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The growing radicalism of the Holiness Movement had not gone unnoticed or unchallenged. As early as August 1900, S. B. Shaw, a Chicagoan, began laying plans for a General Holiness Assembly to fight fanaticism and create a national holiness association free from side issues, supportive of evangelical denominations, and opposed to the increase in comeouter sentiment. From its inception, Holiness Movement moderates dominated the organization of the General Assembly. Shaw convinced the venerable George Hughes, the first historian of the NHA, the editor of the Guide to Holiness, and a key figure in an 1885 assembly in Chicago, to serve as chairman. Shaw assumed the role of chief fund-raiser, treasurer, and primary promoter for the Assembly. Among those signing the call for the Assembly were denominational loyalist and moderate Isaiah Reid, president of the Iowa Holiness Association; influential author and Movement loyalist J. A. Wood; and Free Methodist bishop W. T. Hogue. The only signer with ties to the radicals, A. M. Hills, was an avowed postmillennialist. In perhaps the major miscalculation of the enterprise, the Assembly was scheduled to convene on 3 May 1901 in the main sanctuary of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago, across the hall from the daily noon meeting of the MCA. In a fundamental sense, the General Holiness Assembly deeply disappointed its sponsors. Although endorsed by eight bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church and leaders of more than twenty evangelical denominations, the Assembly roll revealed a movement whose constituency comprised a series of fringe groups operating outside the institutional centers of turn-of-thecentury evangelical Christianity.19 Departing from the Assembly’s stated goal, the creation of a transdenominational coalition committed to Christian perfection and free from premillennial eschatology, comeouterism, and fanaticism, the Assembly’s statement of faith included clauses endorsing premillennialism and divine healing. Interestingly, even before the Assembly convened, holiness radicals forced the Christian Witness, one of the principal organs of the NHA and a sponsor of the Assembly, to endorse formally “the personal literal second advent” of Jesus and divine healing.20 Nevertheless, Knapp, Rees, and their allies in the MCA refused to endorse the “official call” for the Assembly. “We insist,” Rees wrote, “that it is grossly inconsistent to call it a ‘general assembly’ when the contents of the official call rule out more than two-thirds of the holiness people.” “If the committee wanted a general assembly,” Rees noted, “why did they not issue a call and leave the assembly to plan its work?”21 Even as the time for the Assembly neared, the MCA-inspired Chicago revival continued. By 1 May, on the eve of the Assembly, an estimated two thousand seekers had experienced salvation or entire sanctification at MCA-sponsored

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services. “This city [Chicago] has never been so stirred on holiness,” wrote the famed “Hoosier evangelist,” John T. Hatfield. “The fire still burns and souls are coming to Christ by the hundreds.” Hatfield, an ordained minister in the Indiana Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, represented the Holiness Movement’s growing frustration with the timidity of traditional NHA teaching. “There is little opposition to tame holiness in our conference,” Hatfield wrote, “but a red hot holiness that strikes at sin in the church, is not so much to be desired.” As if to prove Hatfield’s point, the Assembly was endorsed by the Northwest Christian Advocate, the primary publication of Chicago Methodism, and by John P. Brushingham, pastor of the host church, whose Masonic membership and ecclesiastical status had been satirized by Robinson as recently as March. As a further insult to holiness radicals, Brushingham was chosen to be one of the Assembly’s main speakers. In effect, the stage was set for the two rival factions, meeting in the same church, to contest for the hearts and minds of the heirs of the nineteenth-century holiness revival.22 Amid a circus-like atmosphere, caused in part by the presence of reporters from the Chicago daily press, the General Holiness Assembly was called to order by Hughes. C. J. Fowler, president of the NHA, was chosen president. In an attempt to appease the radicals, E. F. Walker was chosen first vice president and the seven-member Committee on Deliverances, which was assigned the difficult task of formulating a doctrinal statement, was constituted in such a manner as to assure an endorsement of premillennialism. Among the friends of the radicals named to this committee were Walker and W. E. Shepard, an associate of Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene founder Phineas Bresee and future theologian of the MCA. As a final sign of acquiescence to radical demands, Rees was invited to hold his noon meetings with the Assembly in the main sanctuary of the church. Rees, of course, declined.23 In spite of these concessions and much to the delight of the press, holiness moderates did not completely retreat from their early promise to use the Chicago gathering as a means of fighting fanaticism. Wisely avoiding an attack on the popular Rees, Assembly leaders circulated a pamphlet titled “Wild Fire” that detailed the excesses of the Farson-led “Chicago Convention,” and the Chicago Tribune quoted Assembly organizer Shaw as questioning Farson’s orthodoxy while insisting that there were enough denominations without the one the Chicago banker-preacher had established. Not to be outdone, Farson sarcastically noted that the General Assembly seemed “out of practice in the art of conversion.” This was an especially troubling accusation given the fact that the radicals’ convention had produced far more converts, a fact success-conscious evangelicals of that age, or any age, could not ignore.24

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The real intensity of the struggle between Rees’s and Knapp’s IAHU and the moderate-led Assembly should not obscure the fact that many of the holiness regulars, including leaders of some prominence, dutifully attended and supported both the General Assembly and Rees’s noon meetings. In fact, while the Assembly was unable to fill the spacious sanctuary of First Methodist Episcopal Church, the noon services were packed with Assembly delegates and curiosity seekers. One delegate who attended both meetings was B. S. Taylor who, speaking for many of the Assembly participants, drily noted that although some were saying that the holiness people were split, “Thank God, I am not split.”25 Others were more circumspect in their support of the radicals. Walker, the Assembly’s first vice president, quietly retired after the evening services to the Harvey household where he bitterly attacked the “cooled-off condition” of holiness moderates and, at least to Harvey, appeared “on the border line of leaving the so-called holiness crowd and getting right with the radicals in one great fight on a backslidden profession.” One of the most significant immediate results of the Assembly, although unintended by its sponsors, was the enlistment of a number of delegates in the radical cause. Among the noteworthy individuals attracted to the MCA during the General Holiness Assembly were Alma White (1862–1946), the nation’s first female bishop and founder of the Pillar of Fire Church, and Shepard (1862–1930).26 Shepard, in particular, would emerge as one of the most important formative influences in the MCA. Although Shepard was already an evangelist of considerable stature, his importance at the General Assembly rested on the fact that he was the personal envoy of Phineas Bresee, leader of the Los Angeles-based Church of the Nazarene, which was rapidly emerging as one of the most important holiness bodies. Not yet forty years old, Shepard had served as an associate pastor of Bresee’s church and was a contributing editor and regular columnist for Bresee’s widely circulated Nazarene Messenger. In many ways he typified the growing radicalism of the younger holiness evangelists. Arriving in Chicago as a delegate to the General Assembly, Shepard, a virtual stranger, was immediately attracted not to the moderate holiness message of the Assembly, but to that of the MCA. Sharing the radicals’ distrust of the older evangelical denominations, he was firmly committed to premillennialism and divine healing. “From my first Christian experience to the present,” Shepard wrote, “I have endeavored to get in warm meetings. The hotter the meeting the better I like it. One thing is certain. These men [Harvey, Rees, and Farson] are hot and getting people to God on uncompromising lines and they have no trouble getting a crowd.”27

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Nevertheless, Shepard refused to denounce the General Assembly. Actively using his influence to shape the Assembly’s statement of faith, he gleefully reported the enthusiastic response of the Assembly to the Committee on Deliverances report endorsing divine healing and the imminent Second Coming of Jesus. Downplaying the disparity between the radicals and their moderate critics, Shepard emphasized signs of Holiness Movement unity generated by the Assembly. Shepard joyfully celebrated some of the remarkable physical manifestations that accompanied Assembly services, including the sight of Hughes running up and down the aisles and that of Sarah Cooke, the aged Free Methodist responsible for introducing D. L. Moody to the higher Christian life, skipping back and forth in front of the altar rail. “Thank God for the spirit of liberty,” Shepard concluded, “that will not be held down by starchy conservatism.” Remaining in Chicago to assist Shaw in the publication of the Assembly proceedings, Shepard, the transplanted Californian, would only gradually see that it was impossible to be both a holiness radical and a supporter of the NHA.28 The formal radical response to the General Holiness Assembly contained none of the moderation of Shepard’s account. Dismissing the General Assembly as “one of the greatest failures we have known in the name of holiness,” Rees concluded that any holiness popular enough to be endorsed by eight Methodist bishops and invited into Chicago’s “backslidden pulpits” was not that of Pentecost. “No, brethren, do not deceive yourselves,” Rees concluded, “the ‘assembly’ was not much like Pentecost. There one hundred and twenty delegates had three thousand conversions in one day; here 150 delegates did not get one hundred conversions in ten days.” Noting the Assembly’s modest attendance, few conversions, and little demonstrative worship, the Quaker evangelist proposed a simple cause: the social, economic, cultural, and moral compromises of holiness moderates. As he observed, “There were lots of silk hats, but the fire never fell.” In effect, the holiness of seaside resorts and urban parlors, which as a matter of course had compromised with secret societies, extravagant dress, and other aspects of middle-class Gilded Age culture, was receding before the radicals’ advance.29 Others were forced to share Rees’s conclusions. As a discouraged Reid noted a year later, the preaching emphasis that had dominated the Holiness Movement since the days of Phoebe Palmer had been replaced by “other issues.” The new generation of holiness evangelists, whom Reid rightly observed “knew not Joseph,” or for that matter Phoebe Palmer, was forging a less optimistic faith more attuned to the experiences of the immigrants crowding cities such as Chicago. In effect, the new chiliastic perfectionism of the IAHU and the MCA, which looked for God’s direct intervention in history, had replaced the

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older teaching that had once urged the faithful to experience a foretaste of heaven this side of the millennial kingdom.30 The extent of the radicals’ triumph only gradually became evident. A permanent organization, although mandated by the Assembly, never materialized, and in October, the Guide to Holiness, the principal organ of the Assembly, ceased publication. These developments were, of course, only symptomatic of more fundamental changes that had predated the Assembly. The Chicago Assembly, called to defeat fanaticism in the Holiness Movement, had ironically vindicated much of the radical agenda. As a jubilant Godbey noted, the “Chicago Assembly had buried the hatchet by recognizing all the truth that any of us have been preaching.” In one decade, the faith of the Holiness Movement had been radically altered. Even among those such as Morrison, L. L. Pickett, J. L. Brasher, and the Quakers Walter and Emma Malone who remained in the old denominations, the new millennium-driven perfectionism had superseded the earlier realized eschatology of the NHA. The optimism of the nineteenthcentury holiness revival had given way to a new cynicism. Although unannounced, one Holiness Movement had been superseded by another.31 On 15 May, two days after the close of the General Holiness Assembly, the radicals formally ended their own Chicago Convention. Scheduled to run ten days, the spiritual outpouring had lasted more than two months. “For years we had been praying that God would send us a Pentecost,” an exhausted but triumphant Knapp wrote. “The prayer has been answered in a measure in different places, but, so far as we know, never so fully as in the recent great revival in Chicago.” Among the distinguishing signs of Pentecost identified by Knapp were the salvation of sinners, the sanctification of believers, divine healing, the preaching of the Second Coming of Jesus, the uncovering and rebuking of sin, especially among ecclesiastical leaders, and the preaching of women. “The position of the enemy, which was strong, was met by fire from the skies, which demonstrated the Divinity of the movement and the infernal birth of the opposition,” concluded Knapp, the author of Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies.32

4 The “Pentecostal Dancers” Invade Boston

Few evangelical leaders of the twentieth century were as honored as pastor, polished pulpit orator, evangelist, ecumenist, and social reformer Paul S. Rees (1900–91). A friend and colleague of Billy Graham, respected among Reformed as well as Wesleyan evangelicals, member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, and a president and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rees personified class and respectability. As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, Rees, a vice president and editor with the respected evangelical social service agency World Vision, moved easily into the orbit of the progressive young evangelicals who supported the presidential campaign of George McGovern and organized Evangelicals for Social Responsibility. Coincidentally, he was born on the campgrounds of the holiness camp meeting founded by his father, Seth C. Rees, on 4 September 1900, he served as his father’s biographer and early associate, and, indeed, this University of Southern California graduate was a radical of a very different sort. Although many suspected that Paul Rees believed in universalism, and he did indeed possess decidedly liberal political views, Paul Rees’s irenic personality stood in marked contrast to that of his imperious father. Yet in a real sense he remained one of the few literal heirs to the passion for social justice and respect for the aspirations of ordinary Americans that had characterized the early twentieth-century Holiness Movement. To understand this radicalism with a difference, one needs to look at the Boston revival of December 1901.

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“Holy Jumpers” in Boston.

The Boston revival was the natural culmination of a remarkable year of spectacular revivals for the IAHU and the MCA. During the summer of 1901 radical holiness evangelists fanned out across the North American continent speaking at the hundreds of holiness camp meetings that dotted the United States and Canada. Seth C. Rees, accompanied by his young wife and fellow evangelist Frida Marie Stromberg Rees and their infant son, Paul, maintained a particularly heavy schedule. Spreading the revival to Quaker communities in Iowa and Oregon, Rees concluded the summer, much as he had ended the spring, by joining E. A. Fergerson, Andie Dolbow, John Norberry, and F. M. Messenger to electrify capacity audiences, this time at the Portsmouth (Rhode Island) Camp Meeting. The revival continued as summer gave way to fall and then winter. In December, Rees concluded the most spectacular year of his ministerial career at the annual winter revival of the Portsmouth Camp Meeting Association in Boston amid a sea of publicity that made the Chicago revival pale in comparison.1 Reflecting the MCA’s new status in the radical coalition, the principal speakers in the Association’s “attack on sin and Satan in cultured Boston” were E. L. Harvey and Duke Farson, assisted by sixteen other holiness evangelists,

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including such heroes of the Chicago revival as Rees, Bud Robinson, Fergerson, Messenger, and Norberry. The Association rented Boston’s historic Park Street Congregational Church for ten days, and created an immediate sensation in the Boston press as the shouting and jumping of demonstrative worshipers made the church look and “sound like a session of the stock exchange” to the horror of the staid members of one of New England’s most distinguished evangelical churches. Drawing on the Chicago precedent, the evangelists bitterly attacked the city’s clergy. “You are now paying your minister $3,000.00 a year,” Rees sarcastically noted, “for preaching on Sunday, and providing a greased plank on which your children are sliding straight into hell.”2 On Tuesday, 9 December, Park Street’s pastor, John L. Withrow, with the support of the church’s prudentials committee, demanded that Seth C. Rees see that the worshipers refrain from “stamping, standing on pews, dancing about the aisles or on the platform.” Not satisfied with Rees’s evasive answer, the prudentials committee, with strong congregational support, terminated the radicals’ lease.3 Undaunted, and blessed with Farson’s ever-ready purse, the evangelists rented Mechanics Hall, one of the largest auditoriums in New England. On Thursday, 11 December, with an estimated seven thousand people in attendance, the convention’s prime speaker, E. L. Harvey, dubbed the “Chicago Whitefield,” and whose platform antics had made him the most notorious “pentecostal dancer,” retold the story of the prodigal son. “The modern preacher,” Harvey satirically noted, “goes through the theological seminary, comes out with a plug hat and a buttoned up coat, feeds his congregation on husks, and the whole crowd is going to hell.” In fact, Harvey charged, the “modern preacher,” was the prodigal son.4 On 7 December 1901, during the second day of the Boston revival, the participants received word from Cincinnati that Martin Wells Knapp had died unexpectedly. Although Knapp’s widow, Minnie Ferle Knapp, requested that Rees conduct the funeral, the fiery Quaker evangelist, in the midst of perhaps his greatest triumph, was unwilling to leave Boston. “My heart longed to fairly fly to the Mount of Blessings,” Rees later wrote in defense of his actions, “but in a Gettysburg I could not leave.” The revival continued unabated for nine days. “The people came in great numbers,” Rees remembered. “Hundreds sought the Lord: many were healed.” The services ended on Sunday, 15 December, with altars packed with shouting and weeping seekers. “I can hardly go to Boston,” Rees wrote years later, “without somebody telling me that he was saved in that meeting.”5 In spite of Knapp’s chronic ill health, the radical Holiness Movement was unprepared for his death. As the founder and editor of its primary periodical,

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its major publisher, architect of its quasi-denominational structure, the IAHU, creator of its first Bible school, and its principal theologian, Knapp had brilliantly directed the radical co-option of much of the Holiness Movement. As Seth C. Rees insisted, it had been Knapp who had discovered that “whatever Pentecost did for people two thousand years ago, it will do for us, if we really get it.” It was an insistence that would shape the religious views of two of the radical Holiness Movement’s most influential offspring: the MCA and Pentecostalism.6 It is hard to overestimate the influence of the MCA on Knapp at the time of his death. Firmly convinced that the Chicago church exhibited the qualities of the primitive church more fully then any other, Knapp had, in the months before his death, increasingly turned to Harvey for direction. In fact, only a week before his death Knapp had requested that Harvey assume temporary leadership of the Revivalist movement, including direction of the 1902 Mount of Blessings Camp Meeting, a plan terminated following Knapp’s death by the trustees of God’s Bible School. Regardless of the veracity of the MCA claims, Knapp’s sudden death, cremation (an unusual practice for turn-of-the-century holiness people), and the controversial selection of trustees for God’s Bible School, created an atmosphere conducive to the spread of rumors. Especially unsettling was the scant evidence—a piece of paper with three names on it— presented by the individuals claiming to be Knapp’s choices for trustees. Less troubling, given the radicals’ commitment to expanded roles for women, was the fact that the three were women: Minnie Ferle Knapp, the founder’s widow; Mary Storey, the school’s evangelist and an associate of Knapp since his arrival in Cincinnati; and, to the surprise of all, Bessie Queen, a young secretary who had worked closely with Knapp as an editorial assistant on God’s Revivalist. In one of their first actions, the trustees named Meredith G. Standley as teacher of Bible at God’s Bible School, a position previously held by Knapp.7 The situation was greatly complicated by the fact that Minnie Ferle Knapp, in spite of a strong endorsement from W. B. Godbey, was ill suited to assume leadership of her husband’s ministry. Formally designated as publisher and coeditor of God’s Revivalist, Mrs. Knapp allowed Bessie Queen virtually unrestricted authority in the direction of the periodical. M. G. Standley assumed direction of the Bible school. Mary Storey, a Methodist loyalist, had recently conducted revival services in Chicago under the auspices of the MCA. Storey, less radical in temperament than Knapp and critical of the radicals’ boycott of the General Holiness Assembly, was convinced that the radicals’ rejection of the Assembly had “quenched the fire, power and glory” that had accompanied the Chicago revival. Storey, in fact, had no desire to become, like Seth C. Rees, an employee of the MCA. For her part, Queen consolidated her position

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as Knapp’s successor as editor of God’s Revivalist by editing a series of articles designed to establish her credibility.8 In a clear attempt to distance the ministry from the radicalism that had characterized the founder’s last days, A. M. Hills, a supporter of the General Holiness Assembly, was commissioned to write Knapp’s biography, which he did in the short space of seven weeks. As Hills made clear in the introduction, the primary source of information, especially on Knapp’s last days, was Bessie Queen. Not surprisingly, the work validated Storey’s and Queen’s positions as heirs to the fallen publisher. As a means of confirming her intimacy with the founder, Queen even wrote a chapter describing the home life of the Knapp family.9 Among the many who were suspicious of Queen’s rapid emergence as a leader of the radical coalition was Knapp’s personal secretary Florence L. Potter. Described as an office girl in Hills’s biography, the incensed Potter eventually defected to the MCA where she worked as an aide to E. L. Harvey. As one might expect, Potter insisted that in joining the MCA she was obeying the wishes of Knapp who, she maintained, had requested shortly before his death that Harvey assume leadership of God’s Bible School and related ministries. She further suggested that Queen had used her position as Knapp’s editorial assistant to circumvent his plans. Potter also implied that Knapp’s death may have been the result of foul play and even suggested that the countermanding of Knapp’s wish for Harvey to assume leadership of the Bible school was in response to the ambitious advances of this “aggressive and unspiritual young woman.”10 To make matters worse, some interpreted an unfortunate article written by Queen shortly before Knapp’s death in which she asserted that she was married to the ministry of the Revivalist in a less than spiritual sense. This proved to be an especially troubling accusation since Queen had frequently traveled alone with Knapp during the last two years of his life. As if to add hypocrisy to her other sins, Queen’s sudden marriage to M. G. Standley at the close of the 1900–1901 school year, amid rumors of indiscretion, suggested, at least to her critics, that her much-vaunted exclusive spiritual union to the Revivalist had certainly been of short duration. In fairness, Potter, an obvious loser in the struggle for power that followed Knapp’s death, certainly should not be accepted as an objective witness. Her account of events certainly does give credence to the MCA position and help one understand the logic behind the ferocity of MCA attacks on the developments in Cincinnati following Knapp’s death.11 Although Knapp’s ministry included a limited denominational structure, the IAHU, a Bible school, foreign missions, an annual camp meeting, a publishing arm, and rescue missions, the key institutional expression of the radical movement was God’s Revivalist. The Revivalist had predated and, to a large

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degree, had created the IAHU, the missions, and the Bible school. It was through the columns of the paper that Knapp had forged the distinctive ethos, or movement culture, of the radical coalition. The Revivalist’s “Reports Column,” which to the uninitiated was a mere listing of the exploits of Holiness evangelists, served as an imprimatur to the particular ministries listed. Consequently, an editor of Knapp’s stature could easily determine the success or failure of a particular ministry. In effect, the Revivalist’s readers were the radical Holiness Movement, even as the editor was the single most powerful force in the shaping of the direction of the Movement. To the disgust of a her critics, Queen, as de facto editor, more than Storey, Standley, Godbey, or even Seth C. Rees, had inherited the mantle of the fallen leader. It was a remarkable coup for a young woman who three years earlier had cast her lot with the despised holiness people to the horror of her affluent parents.12 Queen, operating with the full support of Storey, Mrs. Knapp, and the influential Godbey, also a Revivalist corresponding editor, immediately moved to moderate the journal’s strong comeouter sentiment.13 Writers for the journal, such as Messenger, one of the earliest and most vocal critics of denominational loyalty, discovered that suddenly some of their writings were too controversial for dissemination, even as A. M. Hills quietly, but forcefully, suggested, in his life of Knapp, that there were two sides to the church question and perhaps the fallen editor had been on the wrong one. After first moderating Knapp’s explosive attacks upon compromise, editorials now warned of “thumping preachers” who omitted love. By April, Godbey was writing articles on “Fanaticism,” even as Bessie Queen warned of the “multitudes” of the saved and sanctified being “pushed into heresy and fanaticism.” At the same time, although still listed as a speaker for the annual Mount of Blessings Camp Meeting, E. L. Harvey had not received favorable mention in the Revivalist since 16 January, the date the journal had published his last article.14 To the surprise of many, the most obvious and immediate loser in the quest for power was Seth C. Rees. Remaining president of the IAHU, a largely ceremonial post given the group’s commitment to independent local congregations united only as readers of the Revivalist, and associate editor of God’s Revivalist, the Quaker radical was still an employee of the MCA. While Rees was certainly too powerful simply to be dismissed, the leadership in Cincinnati was clearly wary not only of his radical tendencies but also of his reputation as an ambitious autocrat. Not surprisingly, it was only after Queen, Standley, and Storey had consolidated power in Cincinnati, chosen a biographer for Knapp, and moderated the course of the Movement that they were willing to accept Rees, on their terms, as a partner in the Revivalist coalition. Interestingly, persistent rumors of Knapp’s growing disenchantment with Rees in the weeks

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preceding his death may actually have facilitated Rees’s transition from the most conspicuous champion of sectarian holiness radicalism to a leadership position in the chastened Revivalist movement of Storey, Queen, Standley, and Godbey.15 By early April 1902 Seth C. Rees had separated from the MCA and shifted his support to the moderate leadership of the IAHU. It is difficult enough to determine the chronology, to say nothing of the reasons, for Rees’s decision to break with the MCA. In part, it undoubtedly reflected the pragmatism that had characterized his evangelistic career. As he clearly understood by the spring of 1902, the choice before him was to remain an employee of the MCA or to play a supporting role in Cincinnati, and given the inexperience of Queen and Standley, possibly gradually assume Knapp’s mantle as leader of the radical movement. A second reason may have been more personal. Rees’s son Byron, who had recently returned from the much-publicized around-the-world evangelistic tour, resumed his studies at Harvard and subsequently dropped out of the Holiness Movement. The role, if any, his father’s leadership of the Boston revival and the possibly embarrassing publicity in the Boston press concerning the Boston revival may have played in the younger Rees’s decision remains unknown. Regardless, the Chicago and Boston revivals were arguably the two most successful campaigns of Rees’s evangelistic career.16 By mid-March 1902, however, Rees had begun to warn holiness radicals such as Messenger that all was not right in Chicago. However, such warnings were done with considerable discretion and most holiness radicals had only an inkling that Knapp’s carefully constructed coalition was on the verge of disintegration. Rees’s reluctance to break openly with the MCA was well founded. Among the most basic reasons was the fact that Farson, Harvey, and the rest of the MCA were in many cases the primary financial resources for the entire radical movement. They had been the largest contributors to the Stalker-Rees worldwide missionary tour and were important sources of funds for the recently established mission of Charles and Lettie Burd Cowman in Japan. Second, given Knapp’s identification with Harvey and Farson and the publicity of the Chicago and Boston revivals, the leadership in Cincinnati was aware that any open break with the MCA would undoubtedly result in a power struggle for the loyalty, financial and otherwise, of holiness radicals. Third, Rees understood the effect it would have on his image if he appeared to retreat from radical social positions.17 The concerns of Rees and the leaders in Cincinnati were not without foundation. In New England, the two most important centers of holiness radicalism, North Attleboro, Massachusetts, the Eastern office of God’s Revivalist, and North Grosvenordale, Connecticut, defected to the MCA. Among the leaders of

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the radical coalition in New England, only Norberry and John Pennington, Seth C. Rees’s assistant in Providence, remained faithful to the Revivalist, while three of the periodical’s most prolific writers, Messenger, Louis F. Mitchel, and Arthur Greene, defected to the MCA. Messenger’s defection was particularly costly. As a major financial contributor to the Revivalist ministry, he had given Knapp one-third of the money for the purchase of the Mount of Blessings property. Interestingly, many of the New England churches identified by Rees in the fall of 1900 as being the primary centers of “spiritual power” in that region became associated with the MCA. In Denver, Alma White aligned her Pentecostal Union with the MCA.18 On Sunday evening, 23 March 1902, Rees spoke for the last time at the Metropolitan Holiness Church. “It meant much to break with the mother Church.” Rees later wrote. “Our testimony was belittled, ridiculed, and people began giving us the cold shoulder, while God smiled as never before.” Only days before Rees’s last sermon, his associate S. H. Bolton had purchased a little green church in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s Far West Side. The Austin Holiness Church replaced the Metropolitan Holiness Church as the IAHU congregation in Chicago. S. Henry Bolton, “under God,” as Rees liked to say, became pastor.19 One of Rees’s spoken concerns revolved around his conviction that demonstrations had come to occupy a determinative rather than a subsidiary role in the ministry of the MCA. Already in Boston, where the MCA first became known as “pentecostal jumpers,” or simply “jumpers,” there were indications that jumping had been elevated to a special spiritual status. This is made clear in one of the few surviving quotes of Harvey from the Boston meetings. On Wednesday, 11 December, the Chicago Whitefield extolled his listeners, “Now I tell you brother that if you don’t get this jumping into you, you will not be saved.” In effect, Harvey had moved beyond the older evangelical notion that demonstrations were a natural, if often undesirable, byproduct of faithful preaching. Jumping had, in the Boston meetings, become an outward sign of divine favor. Rees, in the heat of a revival, was slow to distance himself from services that were resulting in hundreds of conversions. But by May he was less sure and began to publicly express his fears that excessive demonstrations were occurring in services conducted by the MCA. “Manifestations are many; they are various, they may come this way or that. Let us never suppose,” the evangelist contended before a sympathetic audience at God’s Bible School, “that the deepest spirituality [is] in demonstrations.” Ironically, a year after his greatest triumph in the Chicago revival, Seth C. Rees had become a spokesperson for moderation and decorum in holiness worship.20

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In fairness to the MCA, demonstrative worship had long characterized Methodism, the revivals of evangelists such as Charles G. Finney, and the Holiness Movement. In Boston, one of the primary jumpers was Deacon Morse, an NHA loyalist and New England mill owner, who, as a leader in the postmillennial Douglas Camp Meeting, had played an important role in the General Holiness Assembly. Among the radicals, both Seth C. Rees and Martin Wells Knapp had long insisted that a spiritual church “has always been a noisy church.” As Rees wrote during the summer of 1901, in an article aptly titled “Pentecostal Demonstrations,” “Pentecostal experience brings with it Pentecostal manifestations.”21 Even before the Boston campaign, some evidence suggests that some of the radicals were becoming uneasy with the extreme demonstrations, especially jumping, that accompanied their services. In November 1901, in an unsigned God’s Revivalist editorial, later attributed to Knapp, the writer warned that the “real spirit-born demonstrations, like everything else, have their counterfeits.”22 As the most notorious characteristic of the early Burning Bush Movement, and predating the Movement’s two other distinctives—communal ownership of property and muckraking journalism—it is especially important to explore briefly the function of physical exercises in MCA history and worship, and the group’s extensive defense of its unique worship style. Strangely, in spite of the notoriety of MCA jumping, and several newspaper sketches of pentecostal jumpers in action, few actual written descriptions of the practice have survived. One exception is an account by Jennie Arnold Jolley, a Free Methodist evangelist from Chicago and sister-in-law of renowned holiness evangelist E. E. Shelhamer. Jolley, who understood the internal logic of the MCA, and was certainly no opponent of demonstrative worship, realized that for the MCA jumping was not just one of a number of equally valid evidences of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” It was “the evidence.” As Jolley wrote, “The leader [probably referring to Harvey] jumped in every meeting, kicking his feet backward almost as high as his head as he held the pulpit with his hands, thus showing that he had a good case of ‘the baptism.’” Further, Jolley noted that MCA leaders insisted that those who were sanctified, or had, in the common language of the Holiness Movement, “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” demonstrated that baptism through jumping. In effect, MCA defenses of demonstrative worship were first and foremost defenses of their particular evidence of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” and only secondarily defenses of other demonstrative worship in general, which included such manifestations as shouting, dancing, and running up and down the aisles.23

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For the faithful, the church’s refusal to retreat from jumping and other forms of demonstrative worship, and the opposition it received as a result, provided ample proof, not of its fanaticism, although they noted that such activity was frequently misconstrued as such, but of the extent of its consecration. “Years ago as a church we came up to this question of demonstration,” wrote Henry L. Harvey, a graduate of Northwestern University, who was given to rational defenses of MCA worship. “Demonstration separated many of us from our friends. I got a glimpse of Hell and the judgment. It frightened me to think of going to eternity with a wasted life, when God had put me here to shout and shine and live for Him,” Harvey recalled. In essence, for a young university graduate such as Harvey, jumping illustrated his willingness to lay not only his mind but also his reputation on the altar. Responding to charges that MCAstyle worship would result in insanity, Harvey insisted that praise, including jumping, led to physical and mental health.24 In fact, as faithful heirs of Methodism, MCA defenses of jumping were drawn from Scripture, tradition (i.e., history), reason, and expediency. Especially favored verses were Luke 6:21–23, which tied leaping and persecution, 2 Samuel 6:14, which spoke of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant and of the fact that David’s wife “despised God’s true demonstrations,” and Acts 2, which described the joy of the apostles at Pentecost. Using the interpretation of E. F. Walker, the MCA argued that a portion of Luke 6:23 should actually read “jump up and down many times.”25 Additional defenses of demonstrations, especially jumping, looked to reason and experience. Drawing on his own conversion experience, Henry L. Harvey, in an article aptly titled “A Reasonable Faith,” argued that anyone who has been freed from the “shackles of sin” will praise God. Contradicting popular stereotypes of the Holiness Movement, Harvey insisted that “a Holiness meeting where the saints are praising God is the most reasonable place in the world.” Others emphasized the evangelistic value of jumping. “The young folks at Chicago open air meetings do not need drums,” the Burning Bush observed during the summer of 1902. “Their shining faces . . . and a few holy jumps soon bring a crowd of onlookers, and in five minutes conviction seizes the crowd.”26 The most important MCA defenses of demonstrative worship were drawn from history. Arguing that “religious demonstrations have been a disturbing factor among formalists and religious pretenders of all ages whenever and wherever they have appeared,” the MCA created a literal pantheon of representative jumpers from Israel, the early church, the First and Second Great Awakenings, early Methodism—including such Americans as Benjamin Abbott, Peter Cartwright, and J. B. Finley—the Holiness Movement, and African American Christianity.

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Reflecting the MCA’s dependence on history, the primary written defense of the MCA’s demonstrative worship consisted of the republication of a relatively obscure nineteenth-century defense of spiritual manifestations that had accompanied the Second Great Awakening in western New York. This work of blind Methodist lay preacher G. W. Henry (1801–88) was published under the arresting, if somewhat cumbersome, title of History of the Jumpers; or, Shouting Genuine and Spurious: A History of the Outward Demonstrations of the Spirit. Going through three MCA editions by 1909, the work was presented as a veritable textbook on the history of physical manifestations in Christian experience. Fittingly, the work began with the author’s own spiritual experience, followed by the similar experiences of the faithful from Exodus to the Second Coming of Christ. Henry’s obvious point was that in spite of Satan, John Calvin, and modern America’s desire for respectability, full salvation demanded a joyous response. As late as the 1930s, the jumping at the MCA camp meeting continued to attract hundreds of curiosity seekers, even as MCA editorials were still arguing that “all true religion stirs the emotions. No one can read the Bible or accept the teachings of it without realizing that truth.” Nevertheless, in spite of the continued presence of demonstrative worship in the MCA, the appearance and gradual radicalization of the group’s new periodical, the Burning Bush, would give holiness moderates a completely new set of objections to the MCA. With the appearance of the first issue in May 1902, a new chapter not only in MCA history but in religious journalism was about to begin.27

5 “A Standard for the People” The Burning Bush and the Organization of Mission in the MCA

The Burning Bush’s unique combination of investigative reporting, biting sarcasm, and pictorial depictions of its opponents made it one of the most discussed holiness periodicals of its time. From its earliest days one holiness figure in particular boldly confronted the MCA leadership and the “censorious spirit” of its periodical. Leander Lycurgus Pickett (1859–1928), better known as L. L. Pickett, was not known for moderation or compromise. “L. L. Pickett,” his friend and business associate H. C. Morrison wrote in 1901, “is an intense man.”1 Pickett began preaching in Baptist and Methodist churches in Texas as early as 1877. Because he seldom shied away from theological controversy, Pickett’s career as a Methodist Episcopal Church, South, pastor ended in 1885 when he was denied reappointment for refusing to follow the local Baptist-inspired tradition of administering baptism by immersion. Embarking on a career as a gospel songwriter, evangelist, and publisher that culminated in the establishment of the Pickett Publishing Company—later the Pentecostal Publishing Company of Louisville, Kentucky—by the early twentieth century Pickett had become the largest publisher of Bibles in the South. As coeditor with Martin Wells Knapp of one of the most popular and widely circulated gospel songbooks of the period, Tears and Triumphs, Pickett was by inclination and associations attracted to the MCA and the radical cause. As early as June 1902, shortly after

Cartoon of Asbury College founder John Wesley Hughes being replaced by B. F. Haynes as president of the college. L. L. Pickett holds key to the college in his hands.

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the appearance of the first issue of the Burning Bush, Pickett attended the summer convention of the MCA. In spite of his sympathy for the radical cause, he was shocked not only by the physical demonstrations accompanying the services, but by what he termed the “censorious spirit” of the convention’s principal speakers: Alma White, E. A. Fergerson, Charles Stalker, E. L. Harvey, and Duke Farson. Pickett, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was further dismayed that convention attendants were told, in no uncertain terms, that no one could experience entire sanctification without promising to separate from existing non-holiness churches. Returning to his home in Louisville, Pickett published the first explicit Holiness Movement criticism of the MCA.2 In spite of his criticism of the MCA, Pickett remained sympathetic to many of its most radical teachings. He shared the MCA’s view that authentic conversion required a change in one’s actual behavior, especially economic and business practices. Like the MCA, Pickett had little patience with the notion of the sanctity of private property. As he wrote in 1896, the person with “two houses, needless horses, or extra farms” would have such property confiscated and redistributed during the millennial reign about to be inaugurated by Jesus. Insisting that the meek would truly inherit the earth, Pickett wrote in 1903, “[The] wealth and power of the world is very largely in the hands of those who use it for selfish purposes. . . . But on the day of His triumph, the humble-hearth poor shall be the possessors of the kingdom, the glory, the honor and wealth of nations.”3 Three years later, ignoring the conventional wisdom that attacks on the Burning Bush only publicized its dubious journalism, Pickett dedicated an entire issue of his King’s Herald to an attack upon the Burning Bush. As he wrote: Truly this is a strange age and the paper bearing the title at the head of this article [the Burning Bush] is an anomalous sheet. No surer index of a demoralized religious national life could be asked than the spirit and circulation of this sheet. It has perhaps never been known to condemn a bad man. It deals in the most bitter, vindictive, vituperative language to condemn churches, preachers, evangelists and especially “holiness folks.” It is particularly severe on such men as evangelists [Henry Clay] Morrison, [Beverly] Carradine, [Charles J.] Fowler, Joseph H. Smith, E. A. Fergerson, C. F. Weigele, Seth C. Rees, W. B. Godbey and others of like spirit. Now these men are all noted for preaching holiness and are men of clean and exemplary life. Bro. Godbey is one of the humblest, holiest, most Christly men to be found.4 The Burning Bush itself began as a virtual clone of Knapp’s Revivalist. Adapting such standard features of the Revivalist as cartoons, articles critical of evangelical denominations, and even an occasional exposè of a ministry that

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failed to meet the editor’s understanding of orthodoxy, the Burning Bush defended its ministry in terms virtually identical to those adopted by Knapp for the Revivalist in the 1890s. As Knapp had written in 1890, drawing on the call of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:9–10), “In every age the true gospel-herald must ‘root out’ error, ‘pull down’ formality, worldliness, and sham religion, ‘destroy’ the works of the devil and ‘throw down’ all that persists in standing in the way of revival truth.” In similar language, the first editorial of the Burning Bush noted that “sin must be ferreted out. Wrong most be exposed. . . . Let the X-Rays be turned on. Lift up a standard for the people.” In 1910, drawing on Jeremiah’s commission, A. C. Bray insisted that the ministry of the Burning Bush was “to root out and pull down, to destroy and throw down everything that is against him [God] and his kingdom.”5 As a publication founded as a result of the Revivalist’s alleged retreat from holiness radicalism, the Burning Bush recruited its earliest writers from the pool of regular correspondents for the Cincinnati publication. Although failing to entice such important Revivalist writers as W. B. Godbey, A. M. Hills, Seth C. Rees, and Abbie Morrow, the Burning Bush did induce several writers with popular followings to defect to the new publication. Among them was E. L. Harvey who, along with Duke Farson served nominally as editors.6 The paper’s actual editor was office manager W. E. Shepard, who was aided by an energetic young railroad engineer turned preacher from Kentucky, A. G. Garr. Assisting Shepard and Garr was the latter’s wife, Lillian Anderson Garr, the daughter of a prominent Methodist minister from Arkansas who had met A. G. Garr in 1898 when both were students at Asbury College in Kentucky. Shepard, an ideal choice for editor, was an author of note and an experienced journalist. As a respected evangelist with ties to both holiness radicals and moderates, Shepard had been actively courted by the Revivalist leadership in Cincinnati and the IAHU congregation in Chicago. However, in spite of his ties to holiness moderates such as Phineas Bresee, S. B. Shaw, and Morrison, Shepard had by 1902 come to share the MCA’s strong ecclesiastical comeouterism, or as he preferred to call it “come-inism,” that is, separation from apostate denominations and affiliation with other holiness radicals. As he observed in his regular column in the Nazarene Messenger in May 1902, “Many who once were real firebrands have toned down and cooled off. . . . God pity the person who is one whit back of the best experience he ever had.” Shepard’s decision to assume a leadership role with the MCA should have surprised few.7 In his opening editorial, Shepard described the agenda of the paper and of the radical movement. The purposes included exposing sin, preaching the full gospel (i.e., salvation, entire sanctification, the imminent return of Jesus and divine healing), celebrating demonstrative worship, and insisting upon

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personal sacrifice. Promising that the paper would not be subservient to wealth, Shepard insisted that “the bread and butter question” would not interfere with the paper’s war on sin.8 Shepard established editorial offices for the Burning Bush in the heart of Chicago’s loop and began the difficult task of developing a subscription list. This was done through the purchase of several struggling holiness newspapers, through publicity generated by MCA supporters and evangelists, and, most important, through the defection of Knapp’s secretary Florence L. Potter, who arrived in Chicago with a list of Revivalist subscribers’ mailing addresses. However, the Burning Bush was not totally dependent on subscribers or advertising for its financial base. In fact, it, like other radical holiness papers, refused to accept commercial advertisements. It was able to do this because it had one advantage that other holiness papers lacked: the seemingly unlimited financial resources of Farson. Under Shepard’s direction, the Burning Bush experienced rapid growth. Relocating to larger quarters three times in its first five years, the weekly doubled its size to sixteen pages, while its staff grew from four to fourteen workers. Even as other holiness periodicals struggled to survive or ceased publication altogether, the MCA established a fully equipped publishing plant in the fall of 1903, which, besides printing the Burning Bush, published books, pamphlets, a widely circulated calendar, and a series of immensely popular songbooks. In response to a fire that destroyed the printing plant in 1906, the MCA modernized its printing operation and expanded plant capacity. Although circulation figures are difficult to determine, especially because of the church’s practice of wide distribution of sample copies, it is estimated that the Burning Bush had more than one hundred thousand readers in 1912.9 Many factors contributed to the remarkable success of the Burning Bush, including the work of superior editors such as Shepard and his immediate successor Messenger, Farson’s wealth, and the continued growth of the Holiness Movement. But these factors fail to account adequately for the rate of growth and the deep feelings, either positive or negative, engendered by the Burning Bush. Ultimately, the publication’s success was a direct product of the MCA’s mastery of the techniques of Progressive Era journalism, its capacity to capture the anger ordinary Americans felt toward the emerging professional bureaucratic elites in church and society, and its ability to articulate a communitarian vision of holiness radicalism that resonated with the spiritual traditions and aspirations of individuals outside the cultural mainstream. As scholars have only begun to realize, the genius and strength of American evangelical Christianity lies, in part, in its ability to adapt to popular cultural trends, especially in the marketplace. This was certainly evident in the Burning

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Bush’s ready acquiescence to emerging trends in journalism. Imitating the success of the developers of mass circulation periodicals, such as S. S. McClure and Frank Munsey, the Burning Bush almost inadvertently discovered a nearly insatiable market for stories concerning ecclesiastical scandal, self-aggrandizement, and compromise. The ease with which the MCA adopted journalistic exposé, the chief weapon of Progressive reform, may surprise those who continue to understand evangelicalism and the Holiness Movement primarily as expressions of a cultural retreat from modernity. However, as heirs, with the muckrakers, to a common Protestant cultural legacy, the MCA shared the common view of Progressive Era journalists that while exposé was not an end in itself, it would naturally lead to repentance and conversion. As the Burning Bush editorialized in 1904, “If exposing sin is ‘opposing everybody’ then they [the MCA] are guilty and we are glad they are. Let the truth be told if every holiness (?) movement must die as a consequence.”10 In spite of the Burning Bush’s initial promises to expose sin, the periodical only gradually adopted a full-fledged muckraker format. Opening its first named attack on a holiness ministry, God’s Bible School, in September 1902, the Burning Bush began a steady drift toward a tabloid design that included such standard muckraking features as the printing of private correspondence, the naming of names, and the use of cartoons. In October 1902, even as the popular muckraking magazine McClure’s was publishing Ida Tarbell’s exposé of Standard Oil, the Burning Bush commissioned its first cartoon critical of American Christianity, an attack that depicted worshipers departing a simple church structure for ornate, steepled churches designated Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian. In December 1902, the Burning Bush commissioned its first caricature of holiness evangelists, the four principal editors of the Christian Witness, who, in an obvious criticism of holiness radicals, had promised to stand “midway between formalism and fanaticism.”11 On 29 January 1903, the Burning Bush, employing a professional cartoonist whom critics claimed was not an evangelical Christian, began its most notorious feature: full front-page cartoons caricaturing prominent evangelical leaders, especially holiness evangelists. Among the prominent religious figures lampooned in “the Church Situation” were Rees, Presbyterian E. F. Walker, NHA President C. J. Fowler, and John D. Rockefeller, whose sin was his refusal to give up his wealth. For individuals immersed in Holiness Movement personalities and ideas, the cartoons made written text redundant. In a typical early cartoon, aptly titled “Captured by Babylon,” a triumphant Rees was depicted riding a chariot named “the International Apostolic Holiness Union” with Mary Storey, Mrs. Knapp, and Bessie Queen chained and in tow. In perhaps the most familiar early cartoon, “The Elder Brother,” the Burning Bush asked its readers

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to choose which of seven caricatured holiness evangelists best typified the elder brother described by Jesus in the story of the prodigal son.12 The cartoons caused an immediate sensation. In part, their genius, similar to the disclosures of the crimes and human foibles of political and social elites in the muckraking journals, rested on the celebrity status of the subjects under scrutiny, a status many holiness evangelists had masterfully cultivated in an age when Protestant evangelists such as D. L. Moody and Sam Jones were major cultural figures. Even many people who had never attended a holiness revival or camp meeting had seen pictures of the Movement’s celebrities thanks to holiness publisher Shaw (not an infrequent target of the Burning Bush himself) who had in 1901 issued a 20 inch by 24 inch picture of movement notables suitable for framing. The picture featured sixty evangelists and was titled “Leaders of the Modern Holiness Movement.” Many were also frequent Burning Bush targets.13 For their part, the leaders of the MCA never denied that the source of the inspiration for cartoons was the secular press, although they did insist that Old Testament prophets such as Ezekiel and Jeremiah employed similar pictorial images and that the ideas behind their cartoons were not the inventions of clever minds but were given by God to Farson, Harvey, or Messenger who, after the fall of 1903, increasingly assumed editorial direction of the Burning Bush. Individuals with appropriate skills were then employed to translate “God’s” messages into Burning Bush cartoons. “It seemed to the mind of the Lord to present these teachings through the prophet in the most striking manner possible,” the Burning Bush editorialized in 1906, “and the ambassador of the Lord had to put himself in uncomfortable positions . . . , draw rough illustrations and preach in such a manner that it often so angered kings and princes that he suffered imprisonment, torture and even martyrdom.” Even as the prophetic impulse of the Hebrew seers shaped the more secular crusades of Progressive Era journalists, holiness radicals turned to the same ancient texts in their attempt to create their own New Jerusalem.14 The Burning Bush was the most prominent evangelistic tool of the MCA, but it was not its only important ministry. Closely linked to the Burning Bush in the web of institutional structures that came to constitute the “Burning Bush Movement” was the annual camp meeting. Even as the periodical served as an instrument of recruitment, shaped Movement ideology, and helped forge community memory and identity, the annual summer encampment emerged as the central agency for spiritual renewal, the creation of group solidarity and, occasionally, the introduction of new doctrinal emphases or the radicalization of existing teaching.15

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Especially noteworthy in the last two regards was the 1902 MCA Camp Meeting at Buffalo Rock. As attendees at the first camp meeting after the MCA’s separation from the IAHU, the holiness radicals who gathered at Buffalo Rock were keenly aware that their community faced new challenges and a degree of uncertainty. Prominent fixtures of past MCA conventions and camps such as Rees, Fergerson, and Bud Robinson, who had returned to the Methodist Episcopal Church, were no longer identified with the MCA. In their stead were relatively unknown evangelists A. G. Garr, Alma White, and John Wesley Lee. Although few making the journey to Buffalo Rock, including E. L. and Gertrude Harvey, would have anticipated the extent of the commitment they were about to make, most eagerly awaited the preaching of Harvey, Farson, Arthur F. Ingler, and especially the polished oratory of Shepard. Shepard, who as the current star attraction of the MCA and its emerging theologian, was planning to share a version of one of his most popular messages, “How to Get Sanctified.”16 From the opening service on Thursday evening, 28 August, through the conclusion of the camp meeting on Sunday, 7 September, two themes dominated the meeting: separation from apostate churches and the life of faith. The former teaching was one of the distinctive characteristics of the MCA, that unapologetically insisted that to receive the experience of the “Baptism of the Holy Ghost,” one must separate from apostate denominations and join remnant communities of holiness radicals modeled after the book of Acts. Ministers, in particular, were informed that to receive “the baptism” one must place one’s denomination on the altar; that is, surrender denominational affiliation as well as the increasingly common salary, which was gradually replacing freewill offerings as the source of ministerial income, especially in urban churches. In fairness, although no one designated the MCA or White’s recently organized Pentecostal Union as the only faithful churches, it was clear that other bodies, even self-acknowledged holiness churches, failed to meet the high standards of the radical evangelists. In fact, one minister left the self-consciously radical Free Methodist Church to join the “little society [the MCA] designed by the Holy Ghost to stay small and true and have corn when the famine is raging.” Other ministers left the Methodist Episcopal and Congregational churches for the MCA.17 The latter teaching, the life of faith, was, in the minds of holiness radicals, logically linked to the first. “If you are living by faith,” evangelist Lee informed the crowds gathered at Buffalo Rock, “you are weaned away from everything: from the family, the church, the preacher, the holiness people, and the evangelist.” As a common evangelical teaching, the life of faith was certainly not the unique property of the MCA, but was rooted, in part, in evangelicalism’s profound ambivalence toward the market economy. Many, in fact, had deep

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reservations concerning such staples of the burgeoning market as annual salaries, insurance, and savings accounts. To accept such securities, some evangelicals insisted, violated the fundamental principal of the life of faith in which one should trust God for food, clothing, shelter, and sustenance in old age. Following evangelical models that dated at least to the time of British orphanage founder George Müller (1805–98), faith workers were not to receive salaries or, in most cases, solicit funds. In the logic of the faith ministry tradition, God, in often the most remarkable manner, would provide necessities of life for those following divine direction. This doctrine, popular among both Keswick and Holiness Movement adherents who linked the faith concept with the doctrine of entire sanctification, was promoted by holiness evangelists who insisted that God would in fact provide for the temporal needs of the sanctified. The basic economic understanding behind the faith principal was clearly stated by Lee at Buffalo Rock: “Satan will put his foot on that part of your soul that is not surrendered to God. Satan says, ‘How are you going to get your car fare? How are you going to get your clothes?’ O, glory to God, it’s none of the devil’s business.” The messages of Lee and of White were replete with accounts of how God met the personal needs of those who in faith rejected the comforts and securities of a middle-class lifestyle to follow Jesus.18 Little in the messages by Lee and White was unusual. The life of faith was a common theme for holiness radicals, which, when preached under everyday circumstances, might yield money, jewelry, or acceptance of a call to the ministry or mission field. But the faithful gathered at Buffalo Rock were not given to ordinary acts of consecration. Even before the messages of Lee and White, E. L. Harvey, reducing the conversion experience to a quantifiable financial transaction, suggested that “it cost hard cash to get converted.” Radicalizing the traditional evangelical tenet that faithful Christians should commit 10 percent of their wealth to support the mission of the church, Harvey argued that without such a commitment, one would not be saved. Further, Harvey insisted that the “price” for entire sanctification was even greater: one must place all one’s possessions on the altar. The businessman turned evangelist had reduced the two deepest spiritual experiences in the Holiness Movement to financial transactions. Interestingly, many of the individuals gathered at Buffalo Rock found nothing unusual in such a proposition. “If you give all to God,” Harvey sarcastically, but effectively, concluded, “some undertaker would not get the price of your coffin.”19 As the services moved toward their culmination, the themes of the life of faith and consecration were brilliantly united in a single message by Shepard. As with the messages of Lee and White, Shepard’s sermon “How to Get Sanctified”

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broke no new ground. It was, in fact, a message he had given many times and would, in variety of forms, use throughout his evangelistic career. Nor was the content of the message original with Shepard; it followed the simple logic made famous by Phoebe Palmer and was alluded to in virtually every message of the camp meeting, that one could by faith receive the gift of entire sanctification through the placing of one’s all on the altar. If Shepard’s message was commonplace, his combination of drama and effective use of visual imagery turned routine ideas into a deeply powerful religious experience. As a means of illustrating the nature of the sacrifice required to experience entire sanctification, Shepard placed a series of objects on the pulpit, which, for purposes of the illustration, he had designated as the altar. These representations of hands, feet, ears, eyes, tongue, brain, talents, and dress, each commonly understood as idols that might stand between an individual and entire consecration, were in order surrendered to God. Finally, Shepard approached the conclusion of the service. “Put your purse on the altar,” he concluded. “All your property, houses, lands, money, all that you call yours.” “Some people,” he drily noted, are “too stingy to get religion.” At the General Holiness Assembly this message had resulted in eighteen conversions. At Buffalo Rock, the yield was more tangible as more than $100,000 worth of property, including homes, stocks, a farm, and several buildings, was deeded to the trustees of the MCA. Included in the property was the home of E. L. and Gertrude Harvey, which Gertrude publicly surrendered to the MCA in a deeply moving service during the early morning of Saturday, 6 September. It was the last private home the Harveys would own. Returning to Chicago, the Harveys sold their home with proceeds of the sale going to support the growing ministry of the MCA. The Harveys took up residence in the recently established Metropolitan Holiness Training School, commonly known as the Bible School, where they would remain residents for most of their married lives. While few of the holiness radicals gathered at Buffalo Rock, including Shepard himself, would have insisted that the ownership of personal property was inconsistent with full obedience to Christ, the stage was clearly being set for such a claim, especially given the radicals’ tendency to turn to the second chapter of Acts.20 On Monday, 22 September, two weeks after the conclusion of the camp meeting, the Metropolitan Holiness Training School opened in Chicago. The opening was less then auspicious. Putting the best face possible on an enrollment of five students, the school’s administrator and lone faculty member Shepard insisted that the institution was more interested in the quality of students than the quantity. Noting that the object of the school was not to teach dead languages or “finish the student to the point where he can quit at any time and get a chair in a university,” the Burning Bush defined the school’s mission

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as to save, sanctify, and train men and women in the use of “God’s dynamite and break up sin and darkness everywhere.” To accomplish this objective, the school required only three prerequisites: a sense of divine call to the ministry or mission field, a refusal to compromise, and the ability “to stand strong meat and red hot meetings.” Insisting that the intent of the school was not to belittle education, the Burning Bush did remind its readers of the inability of education alone to prepare ministers for the nation’s pulpits. As an institution following the faith principle and committed to training the poor for Christian ministry, no tuition or room and board was charged. Growth, although unspectacular, was steady, with the school’s enrollment exceeding fifty students by May 1903.21 Never attracting the notoriety of the Burning Bush or the curiosity seekers who would flock to MCA camp meetings, the Bible School rapidly emerged as a key institution for the nurture of the faith of recent converts and for the training of future leaders. Central to this process was the institution’s unique curriculum. Established by Shepard, the three-year course of study, which emphasized basic Christian doctrine, homiletics, elocution, Bible, Christian biography, music, and considerable practical fieldwork, would remain in place for nearly fifty years.22 Inseparable from the educational mission of the Bible School was the institution’s secondary function of providing a safe haven for young converts, away from the demands, temptations, and frequent familial hostility to holiness radicalism that confronted those who experienced conversion in MCA services. In fact, many believed that the primary function of the Bible School was as a place of refuge. “How often when the Metropolitan Church was newly established in Chicago,” Mrs. M. J. Ewald wrote in 1914, “some person, perhaps a young girl, would, after a terrible struggle, come weeping to the altar.” The young convert’s joy was not infrequently interrupted, Ewald remembered, by a friend or relative who would on occasion even drag the convert, if underage, from the altar. It was not uncommon for converts to be beaten and locked up at home. In such an environment, without a place of refuge, even the bravest convert would frequently weaken and abandon the radical movement. In part, the Bible School served to preserve converts and train them for roles in the Burning Bush Movement.23 Ewald’s observation was well founded. From its beginnings in 1894, in a heavily Scandinavian and German immigrant area on Chicago’s Near Northwest Side, the Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church focused its ministry upon the children of immigrants. As a result, most of the church’s early converts were children and teenagers who frequently endured strong parental opposition to their newfound faith. As the MCA’s message became increasingly

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radicalized and more and more teenagers and young adults abandoned the formal and liturgically centered Lutheran and Catholic worship for the emotionally exhilarating services of the MCA, the already strained relationship between the church and its largely immigrant neighbors further deteriorated. As in other revivals, reports indicate that teenage girls and young women were especially susceptible to the emotionally charged worship of the MCA. In the fall of 1902, even as the Bible School was beginning instruction, an estimated fifty neighborhood women between the ages of fourteen and sixteen had become, in the words of the Sunday Chronicle, “infatuated with the Holiness Movement.”24 Especially noteworthy was the case of Annie Jacobson, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a German Lutheran widow who was a primary financial supporter of her family. Converted in the fall of 1901, Jacobson increasingly spent her evenings either at the Metropolitan Holiness Church or in open-air MCA-sponsored evangelistic forays. When she felt a call to the mission field, Jacobson’s mother responded by locking her up at home. In response, Farson promised to provide Mrs. Jacobson with $6 a month if she would allow her daughter to enter full-time service with the MCA. When the widow refused Farson’s offer and continued to hold her daughter at home, the MCA responded by bringing formal legal charges against Mrs. Jacobson. The case was referred to juvenile court where Mrs. Jacobson, much to the disgust of the neighborhood and the press, was ordered to allow her daughter to attend the services. Several weeks later, Annie Jacobson was back in court, having been detained overnight at the West Chicago Avenue Police Station after a police officer, acting on her mother’s request, had her arrested while she was testifying, according to the Chicago-American, in a “religious frenzy,” at the Metropolitan Church. As always, the Burning Bush, reveling in controversy and persecution, simply noted that “Annie Jacobson is a sweet-faced, innocent girl, filled with the Holy Ghost. She talks with God, and like the apostles, creates consternation.” Released to her mother’s custody, Annie Jacobson, unable to attend the Bible School, gradually lost interest in holiness radicalism.25 As time passed, it became clear that those who entered the Bible School upon conversion were much more likely to remain in active Christian ministry. One of the most remarkable illustrations of this was the case of Charles Hollingsworth, the fifteen-year-old son and primary financial supporter of his widowed mother, Anna Hollingsworth. A native of Danville, Illinois, young Hollingsworth supported his family as a bottler of beer at a local brewery. In early November 1902, during an MCA-sponsored evangelistic campaign in Danville, evangelist Alma White boarded at the Hollingsworth home. Converted during the services, Hollingsworth resigned his position and turned his

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last weekly paycheck over to his mother. Leaving Danville with the MCA evangelists for the Bible School in Chicago, Hollingsworth experienced entire sanctification and eventually became an MCA missionary to Great Britain. His entire adult life was spent in the ministry of the MCA.26 Following a common Holiness Movement pattern, the MCA also established an orphanage at Buffalo Rock in the fall of 1902; while back in Chicago, the church organized a home missionary department staffed by uniformed young women. Adapting models commonly associated with the Salvation Army, home missionaries specialized in so-called “rescue work”; that is, ministry among prostitutes. In an obviously negative reference to Rees’s much publicized rescue work, the MCA insisted that no photographs of “rescued women” were to be taken and all such work would be the exclusive responsibility of “sanctified women.” The MCA’s orphanage and rescue work never received the attention that was lavished on the Burning Bush, the camp meeting, and the Bible School. In the area of social welfare the MCA’s work was certainly less noteworthy than similar ministries of other holiness groups such as the Salvation Army and the Free Methodist Church.27 More significant was the Movement’s attempt to organize foreign missions. Established at the height of the missionary movement of the late nineteenth century, the MCA placed a high level of importance on foreign missions. The church had supported Methodist missions, such independent missionaries as Charles and Lettie Cowman and the highly publicized Stalker-Rees around-the-world missionary trip. The MCA’s first actual foreign missionary was Gustaf Swenson, a product of the MCA’s ethnic outreach in Chicago. Swenson’s spring 1903 missionary sojourn to his native Sweden produced considerable consternation among his own relatives, who considered him “too radical, cranky and fanatical,” and no apparent converts. Not easily discouraged, the MCA sent a second missionary contingent to India in the fall of 1903. Although one of the three missionaries left the party before reaching India, two missionaries, Ella Hanson and Susie Kraft, arrived in India in the spring of 1904. Initially a failure, the India mission work would prove to be one of the MCA’s great success stories.28 Early efforts to establish independent holiness congregations were as important as foreign missions. Initially concentrating on northern Illinois, the MCA established its first congregation outside Chicago in Rockford during the spring of 1902. By the end of 1902, congregations had also been established in Danville, Illinois, and in Racine, Wisconsin. Itinerant preachers were frequently dispatched to hold services in small towns and rural locations in the Midwest. On occasion, such services resulted in the establishment of churches or missions. However, the most common MCA church planting strategy was

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the convention. Modeled after the Chicago and Boston conventions of 1901, conventions were scheduled in rented public halls. Although the meetings were initially publicized in the Burning Bush, the ability of MCA evangelists to draw large crowds, which in turn produced converts from which a nucleus would establish a church, rested on more then the magazine’s wide circulation. The MCA, masterfully using the marketing skills that Farson and Harvey had learned as Progressive Era entrepreneurs and had refined in the Chicago and Boston revivals, would rent a hall. A team of evangelists would publicize the services through a series of noisy open-air street meetings. Exploiting the press coverage of the controversies that frequently followed such meetings, the MCA was virtually assured of large crowds for its services. A series of four conventions in the fall of 1902 resulted in arrests, publicity, converts, and congregations in Racine and Danville where, according to newspaper accounts, the crowds exceeded five thousand people. Other conventions were held in Rockford and in the northern Illinois community of Kewanee. At Rockford and Kewanee, the crowds were so great that police had to be employed to prevent overcrowding the large public halls that had been reserved for the meetings. Attendees were seldom disappointed. At Rockford, ridiculing the claims of established clergy, E. L. Harvey insisted that the world was not getting better. “Refinement, education and culture” were merely satanic ploys that kept people looking away from the salvation that would come through the premillennial advent of Jesus, the businessman turned preacher noted. Equally effective was Farson’s populist defense of the traditional doctrine of eternal punishment. Following Harvey, who had earlier indicated that most of the clergy in the Rock River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church had ceased believing in a literal hell, Farson announced that such clergy and many of the members of their congregations would be “roasted to a frazzle.” “Drop your creed and throw your prayer-book in the alley and study your Bible for awhile,” Farson concluded to the delight of the press and the crowds of evangelical sympathizers who shared the preacher’s populist hermeneutic and suspicion of the claims of secular educators and their allies among the clergy.29 The expansion of the MCA was not limited to the Chicago area or Illinois. Even as the Chicago radicals sought to absorb elements of the IAHU in the Midwest, Harvey, Farson, and Shepard actively sought to unite holiness radicals in other parts of the country. Although not always successful, such efforts did on occasion produce surprising results. Especially noteworthy was the success of the MCA in New England. Holiness radicalism had deep roots in New England, where Methodist opposition to the doctrine of Christian perfection had contributed to the formation of independent holiness churches as early as the 1880s.

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At the time of Knapp’s death, important centers for holiness radicalism existed in Providence, Rhode Island; Springfield and North Attleboro, Massachusetts; and Putnam and North Grosvenordale, Connecticut. Deeply committed to the establishment of independent congregations, New England radicals, such as Messenger, had actively resisted the moderation of comeouter sentiment in Revivalist editorial policy.30 In spite of his active participation in the Chicago and Boston revivals of 1901, Messenger, perhaps influenced by his friend Rees, remained wary of the MCA. It was not until the fall of 1902, after attending the Mount of Blessings Camp Meeting and contributing more than $1,000 to the Revivalist ministry, that Messenger, in retaliation for the Cincinnati publication’s rejection of one of his articles, organized a six-week, five-convention MCA evangelistic foray into several important centers of holiness radicalism in New England. Beginning in Springfield, Massachusetts, on 30 November, the New England conventions were led by five evangelists, “the sanctified hotel man [E. L. Harvey], the sanctified banker [Duke Farson], the greatest woman preacher in the West [Alma White], the sanctified composer [A. F. Ingler], and God’s hottest young man [ John Wesley Lee],” who, with Gertrude Harvey and Anna Hoffnagle, were dubbed by the local press as the “white horse riders.”31 In Springfield, services were held in Evangelistic Hall, a mission of the Christian Worker’s Union, a New England-based holiness group headed by evangelist S. G. Otis. In spite of wide press coverage of the previous year’s Boston Convention, Springfield proved ill prepared for the white horse riders. Angering local authorities to the point that White, Hoffnagle, and Harvey were arrested for disturbing the peace, the eight-day convention became the talk of Springfield, as wide coverage in the press attracted large crowds and resulted in a number of conversions. A deeply appreciative Otis deeded Evangelistic Hall and all the property of his Christian Worker’s Union to a small board of trustees and promised to follow the narrow and uncompromising preaching of the MCA.32 Leaving Springfield for Hartford, Connecticut, the Burning Bush evangelists encountered a far more troubling response: indifference. Noting that the “lambs were scarce and those found were badly mixed with goats,” the Chicago evangelists dismissed Hartford as “a very rich worldly city” where “true religion was a strange thing.”33 The indifference of Hartford notwithstanding, the MCA’s sojourn in New England, which was still an important center for NHA loyalists, produced consternation and, on occasion, division among local holiness adherents. Shocked by press reports and pressured by NHA leaders and a chastened Rees, Holiness Movement leaders in Manchester, New Hampshire, canceled a scheduled

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convention. In fact, the pressure placed on local leaders by the NHA and IAHU was considerable and the price exacted on the disobedient was great as Arthur Greene, the pastor of an IAHU-affiliated congregation in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, discovered when he chose to host the Chicago evangelists in spite of the warnings of holiness moderates. Resigning his position as the Eastern representative of God’s Revivalist, Greene, even though he quickly broke with the MCA, never regained his leadership role in the IAHU.34 Messenger was also forced to confront the consequences of his actions when his decision to bring the white horse riders to his own congregation in North Grosvenordale, Connecticut, resulted in division and the resignation of the pastor, John Norberry, a veteran of the Chicago and Boston revivals. Nevertheless, in spite of the opposition of the NHA and IAHU, Messenger, Otis, and Greene were not the only prominent New England holiness leaders to endorse the Chicago radicals. Among the other regional holiness figures who supported the MCA were D. S. Curtis, an associate of Messenger and an early critic of denominational loyalty; Louis F. Mitchel, a prolific writer for holiness periodicals and professor of music at Pentecostal Collegiate Institute and Bible Training School in Saratoga Springs, New York, now Eastern Nazarene College; and the region’s own answer to Bud Robinson, the colorful Susan Fogg, a native of Lowell, Massachusetts.35 To a remarkable degree, “Black Susan” Fogg personified the controversial elements in the MCA invasion of New England. As a laundry worker at Pentecostal Collegiate Institute, Fogg had become an important spiritual leader on campus and a popular holiness preacher throughout New England. Noted for her pithy sayings, Fogg had an exuberant worship style that was highly controversial. At times, she remembered, her shouting and jumping were dismissed as the worship of an “emotional negress.” An uncompromising jumper, Fogg enthusiastically endorsed the MCA. “When she met our band, she said she nearly died,” the Burning Bush reported. And when Alma White, Harvey, and Hoffnagle were arrested for similar emotional excesses, the overjoyed Fogg told her new friends that she considered them to be sisters.36 After immediately joining the Burning Bush evangelistic team, Fogg was not disappointed with the physical manifestations that accompanied MCA services. Especially notable was the final service at the Peniel Holiness Church in North Grosvenor, Connecticut. In Messenger’s account the scene beggared description: “Elderly ladies, with faces radiant, and uplifted to heaven, waving handkerchiefs, cloaks or anything at hand, leaping, shouting, and praising God; young ladies who would grace any drawing room, prostrate under the power, with holy shouts and praises; middle aged men doubled up like jack-knives, holding their sides with holy laughter.”37

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Leaving New England with the MCA, Fogg spent most of 1903 as the MCA’s star preaching attraction. Feeling a call to the mission field, Fogg left Chicago for India in the fall of 1903. Her short sojourn with the MCA ended abruptly when she left the party in London, thereby terminating the meteoric evangelistic career of one of the MCA’s most memorable characters.38 The most important person to join the MCA as a result of the New England conventions was the convention organizer Frank M. Messenger. In a sense, Messenger’s joining the MCA was the natural outcome of his evolution from a spiritually indifferent New England textile mill superintendent to one of the region’s most avid holiness enthusiasts. Few, including Messenger himself, would have guessed in December 1902 that the agitation surrounding his religious commitments would end his truly remarkable career as the general manager of the Grosvenor-Dale Textile Mills. As the supervisor of 1,800 workers at a salary of $15,000 per year, Messenger had been general agent of the Connecticut firm for nearly twenty years. With virtually unrestricted direction of the company’s affairs, he had increased plant capacity by one-fourth while maintaining high worker morale and a nonunion shop. Not surprisingly, reports persisted that he was one of the most sought after mill superintendents in North America.39 Initially a nominal member of the North Grosvenordale Baptist Church, Messenger became a member of the company-sponsored Methodist Episcopal Church in the early 1880s. Although remembering himself as a “rank backslider,” addicted to tobacco and unedifying conversation, upon assuming management of the mill, Messenger immediately embarked upon a campaign to rid the company town of liquor, violence, and sexual immorality. In fact, Messenger discharged unrepentant employees who violated the city’s strenuous moral code. By the turn of the century, Messenger, who had been converted in 1893 and sanctified at the Douglas Camp Meeting, had turned North Grosvenor into a remarkable anomaly, an industrial town without liquor, pool halls, or even a drug store. Rapidly losing all confidence in Methodism, Messenger organized an IAHU-related congregation in North Grosvenor in 1899. Messenger, an avid supporter of God’s Revivalist who had met Harvey and Farson during the 1901 Chicago Revival, only gradually discovered that at least in the company’s eyes his decision to bring the white horse riders to New England had brought unfavorable publicity and notoriety the company found embarrassing. On 28 March 1903, Messenger, now the acknowledged leader of holiness radicalism in New England, had his employment with the Grosvenor-Dale Mill terminated by the company’s principal owner William Grosvenor. The first casualty of Messenger’s change in employment was his decision to establish a Bible school in

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North Grosvenor, which he had hoped would serve the converts in New England as the MCA’s Chicago Bible school served those in the Midwest and Alma White’s Bible school in Denver served the West.40 In spite of other offers of employment in the textile industry and, as Mrs. Messenger remembered, a decided hostility to the MCA doctrine of surrendering one’s possessions, following a deeply moving service at the 1903 Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting, the Messengers chose to sell their property and begin life in the increasingly crowded MCA community in Chicago. Messenger, a successful businessman like Harvey and Farson, immediately assumed a prominent role in the life of the MCA. Rapidly replacing Shepard as the de facto editor of the Burning Bush and principal daily director of operations for the MCA, Messenger became the primary architect of the MCA’s implementation of a full-scale utopian community in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Messenger’s experience as the leader of a company town (North Grosvenor) would amply prepare him to organize the Waukesha community. Ironically and perhaps appropriately, given his experience in corporate management, Messenger organized the community around the production and distribution of wall mementos, greeting cards, and what was to develop into the most popular religious folk art expression in twentieth-century North America: Scripture text calendars.41 Remarkably, in the thirteen months following Knapp’s death, Harvey and Farson, with moderate success, gathered a remnant of the former Revivalist coalition into a revitalized radical movement that was on the verge of challenging more than prayer books and Progressive Era optimism. Drawing on their holiness heritage, they were about the challenge a cornerstone of the Progressive Era: private property.

6 “Forsaking All for Jesus” F. M. Messenger and Burning Bush Communalism

“Young converts should be taught that they have renounced the ownership of all their possessions. . . . If they have not done this they are not Christians,” the famed evangelist Charles G. Finney observed in one of the most widely read how-to books in American history. Often reduced to the lead role in the creation of an obedient urban proletariat, Finney was profoundly ambivalent about capitalism’s central feature: the market economy. To transact business merely upon “the principles of commercial justice” constitutes “apostasy,” Finney wrote in 1839. As the Oberlin divine insisted, slavery, “treating a man as a piece of property,” speculation in government land, and merchants selling an item “for all that it will bring on the market” were prime examples of “rebellion against God.” Given such views, it is hardly surprising that the very success of his Rochester, New York, revival among lawyers and the male business elite was an oddity that inspired frequent comment. As Whitney Cross observed five decades ago in his unsurpassed social history of Upstate New York, the revival’s natural product was not in giving free rein to the invisible forces of the market but in the creation of utopian communities, new communal religions, such as Mormonism, and the radical reconstruction of racial and gender relationships.1 In effect, the MCA’s position that God owned all and required one to surrender all property upon conversion rested on logic familiar to any evangelical Christian. It also suggests how little evangelicals differed from other Americans. Holiness Christians and evangelicals in general shared the Progressive Era’s widespread support for economic panaceas, socialist schemes, communal

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experiments and America’s general mistrust of concentrated wealth and its openness to social experimentation. In fact, Progressive Era evangelical communal societies have had a deep and lasting impact on twentieth-century religious and cultural life. Showing remarkable longevity, such communal societies as Zion, Illinois; the Kingdom at Shiloh, Maine; and the MCA nurtured a generation of leaders who would play a not inconsequential role in the spread of premillennial eschatology, faith healing, and the rapid growth of two of the twentieth century’s most significant new Protestant denominations, the Church of the Nazarene and the Assemblies of God.2 Between 1870 and 1917 dozens of evangelical communal societies flourished in the United States. As one of the largest and most enduring of these societies, with more than one thousand members at its height and lasting more than fifty years, the MCA experiment in communal living certainly warrants scholarly attention and provides a convenient window for the exploration of evangelicalism’s contradictory attitudes toward wealth and private property.3 The MCA’s doctrine of “giving up all” was neither a radical doctrinal innovation nor unprecedented in the history of Christianity. Beginning with the church’s earliest historical documents (e.g., the book of Acts), Christian history is replete with examples of experiments in communal living. In a case of special relevance for the MCA, John Wesley, who briefly toyed with the idea of

Fountain Spring House, Waukesha, Wisconsin, home to the MCA from 1906–1956.

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establishing a community of propertyless reformers in the 1740s, suggested late in his life that communities in which Christians held all things in common would become usual before the millennium. Given that communal activities tend to be more common during periods of millennial expectation, it is hardly surprising that all of the evangelical communal groups of the Progressive Era were radical millenarians actively involved in preparing the earth for its coming king.4 Millenarianism was not the only doctrinal basis for the MCA’s decision to embrace communalism. Equally important was the seemingly innocuous evangelical teaching that all one’s property was merely held in trust for its “supreme Proprietor,” God. Known as “stewardship,” this unique “American contribution to theological thinking,” had first been formulated as a means of financing recently disestablished churches in the Early Republic. As members of a movement that tended to reduce Christian doctrine to soteriological considerations, evangelicals, such as Finney, radicalized the doctrine of stewardship, insisting that one’s salvation was dependent on at least a theoretical renunciation of private property. Even earlier than Finney, British orphanage founder George Müller refused his salary, sold his possessions, and began to trust God for his sustenance. In the hands of Keswick holiness champions such as R. A. Torrey, Müller’s example and adherence to the principle of surrender became the way to receive the “fullness of power,” as the experience of entire sanctification was known in the vague language of the Keswick Movement.5 As committed evangelicals, holiness evangelists enthusiastically affirmed the doctrine of the divine ownership of all. In 1877, when answering the question “What is our immediate duty?” Methodist evangelist John Parker stated that it was “an immediate and complete surrender of all our possessions and possibilities.” As millennial expectation radicalized holiness leaders, it also intensified the doctrine of divine ownership. As Martin Wells Knapp wrote in 1898, “New Testament stewardship is not like renting a farm, or paying the owner a per cent. It acknowledges the proprietorship of Jesus Christ, labors solely under His instructions, and renders all to Him.”6 Left unanswered in the early writings on stewardship was the question of exactly how much money, or perhaps what quantity of nonmonetary goods, one should commit to the ministry of the church. Equally vexing, in an environment with numerous competing churches and benevolent societies, was the question of who should receive the gifts of the steward. During the years following the Civil War, as money replaced barter as the everyday means of exchange, Christians began reviving the Old Testament practice of bringing a tenth of one’s produce, now defined as monetary increase, to the “storehouse,” conveniently designated as one’s local church. Known as “tithing” or, more

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exactly, “storehouse tithing,” the doctrine financed the explosion in evangelical missions, colleges, benevolence, and church construction that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.7 Tithing rapidly won adherents among church leaders in Methodism and in the Holiness Movement, and emerged as a sacrosanct principle. Assured that the tithe was a divinely instituted fiscal plan, holiness authors, such as S. B. Shaw, promised temporal prosperity to tithers and, as the doctrine became more firmly entrenched, economic disaster to those who refused to give the church its share of their wealth. Among members of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, Free Methodists, holiness adherents in Methodism, and especially Nazarenes, tithing became a foundational doctrine. In fact, among the holiness faithful few dared even acknowledge that there had been a time when tithing had not been practiced.8 The very rapidity with which many holiness leaders embraced the doctrine of storehouse tithing did not mean that the doctrine was easily or universally accepted. The militantly sectarian Church of God Reformation Movement, now Church of God (Anderson), dismissed tithing as a portion of the Old Testament law abolished by Christ. “The law had specified the per cent that every man should give,” Church of God evangelist William Schell wrote, “but the law has been abrogated, leaving every man to give ‘as he purposed in his heart.’”9 Among the MCA and other holiness radicals, who were suspicious of what they considered to be the antinomian tendencies of the Church of God Reformation Movement, opposition to the doctrine of storehouse tithing was rooted in the internal logic of three of the most dynamic religious movements of the period: holiness, millennialism, and restorationism. Brilliantly weaving the Wesleyan and Keswick notion that entire consecration demanded a surrender of one’s possessions, chiliastic concerns that the hoarding of possessions was especially wrong on the eve of the second advent, and a restorationist reading of the teachings of the Lukan Jesus and portions of the book of Acts, the MCA created a cogent argument that one should surrender one’s property and accept the discipline of the faith community. As popular hymn writer F. M. Lehman, drawing on the teachings of the Lukan Jesus (i.e., Luke 14:33), sarcastically wrote in 1905, “S. B. Shaw’s financial plan (one tenth) will not do. It is not God’s financial plan. God’s financial plan is all the tithes, ten tenths.” Especially compelling for members of the MCA were the examples of the community’s leaders. The fact that the Harveys, Messengers, and especially the association’s president, Duke Farson, had given up considerable wealth in obedience to their understandings of the gospel proved a powerful incentive for those who had far less to surrender to give up their possessions.10

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The MCA’s rejection of the ownership of private property was not instantaneous. Moving gradually beyond the position that possessions could be idols that might threaten one’s sanctification experience, the Bible School did not fully implement the “apostolic” practice of “having all things in common” until the summer of 1904. In August 1904, the Burning Bush was insisting that “while people who do not have the Holy Spirit may give, those who do give all.” By November of that year, E. L. Harvey, Gertrude Harvey, and F. M. Messenger had gone on record as saying that God, in these last days, was calling out a people willing to lay “down their money and their reputation and their lives.” Forced to admit that the actual surrender of one’s wealth might not be an immediate possibility, especially given the greatly overcrowded Bible School, the Burning Bush continued to insist that those remaining in temporary management of God’s possessions must not be tempted to think that the tithe was even temporarily valid. As the Burning Bush editorialized in July 1905, “The reader probably well knows, we preach that we must sell all and follow Jesus. If God permits in this dispensation, for a man to remain on a farm or business, he must give all his earnings to the Lord. The old ‘ten per cent’ is now done away, and ‘all’ is the amount to be given to Jesus. Hallelujah, the property once given to Jesus, all Hell is enraged. The Prophet said, he that departed from evil is accounted mad.”11 Although the task of moving from a rapidly growing, but in many ways conventional, evangelical denomination of five hundred adult members scattered over six states and three continents to a centralized utopian religious community appeared daunting, the MCA was remarkably well equipped for such a transition. The growing theoretical commitment to communal living was aided by a pressing need to relieve overcrowding at the Bible School and an equally desperate need to expand the overtaxed printing plant in Chicago. Further, unlike many budding communal groups, the MCA was not without capital. After raising money through the sale of E. L. Harvey’s eleven hotels and the liquidation of the Messenger family’s fortune, the MCA possessed considerable financial resources. In addition, the strong sales of the Burning Bush, the Movement’s popular songbooks, and the recently established line of Scripture calendars provided not only additional revenue but employment for individuals and families willing to “forsake all” and move to a denominational center that, unlike Chicago, provided adequate space for the Movement’s present and future needs.12 As early as the summer of 1904, the MCA realized that expansion in the city of Chicago was impractical. Under Messenger, it began laying plans to move the Bible School, MCA headquarters, and Burning Bush publishing operation to its camp and orphanage at Buffalo Rock. However, Messenger soon

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concluded that it would require more than $1 million to establish an adequate facility there, so he suddenly reversed plans, canceled the 1905 Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting, and sold the Buffalo Rock property. Messenger then engineered the purchase of a large abandoned resort hotel, the Fountain Spring House, in Waukesha, Wisconsin.13 Located nineteen miles west of Milwaukee, Waukesha was a city of seven thousand people, easily accessible to Milwaukee on interurban trolley lines. Fond of boasting about the mineral springs that had made it known as “the Saratoga of the West,” Waukesha had been a favorite vacation spot in the years following the Civil War. The Fountain Spring House, the city’s most famous resort, had opened its doors in 1874. Following a fire, its owners reconstructed it in brick in 1879. The gigantic four-story structure had 450 rooms, could accommodate 850 guests and the dining room could seat 500 people comfortably. The hotel was located on a 150-acre tract that included a golf course, stable, racetrack, bathhouse, artificial lake stocked with trout, and one of Waukesha’s famous springs. Following intense negotiations, Messenger purchased the property, which had been valued at $400,000, for $80,000.14 During the winter of 1905–6, following a deeply moving farewell convention at the Metropolitan Holiness Church in Chicago, the MCA began to transfer its varied operations to Waukesha. Among the first to arrive were the orphans who occupied a section of the Fountain Spring House with ample space for playgrounds. In the weeks that followed, the dining room was transformed into a church while rooms previously dedicated to instruction in dancing became classrooms for the Bible School. Finally, in March 1906, the editorial offices of the Burning Bush, along with the church’s printing plant, relocated to their new home in Wisconsin. The move signaled a fundamental shift in the ministry and a challenge to the conventional understanding of ecclesiastical structure. The MCA was no longer content with urging Christians to organize independent congregations. Now faithful Christians, following the apostolic precedents established in Acts 2:44, were “to have all things in common.” Although the church continued its tradition of aggressive evangelism, including the operation of urban missions and the dispatching of evangelistic teams wherever requested, it had ceased to be a traditional Protestant denomination.15 Unlike many communal societies, the MCA never became a personality cult. Its president, Farson, although frequently present in Waukesha, continued to live in Chicago. The community’s other two trustees, E. L. Harvey, vice president, and Gertrude Harvey, treasurer, left the actual direction of the community in the experienced hands of Messenger as superintendent, especially during the crucial formative years. Besides managing daily operations,

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Messenger served as director of personnel. His wife, Mary Young Messenger, assigned rooms in the Fountain Spring House and resolved disputes among the residents. The character and personalities of Farson and the Harveys did continue to shape the MCA. In spite of the radical views, hellfire and brimstone sermons, and acerbic editorials of the founders, interviews with children raised in the Fountain Spring House presented a uniform picture of kindness, generosity, and humor. In particular, Farson was remembered as a rotund, jovial, grandfatherly figure, while Harvey was remembered as being a softhearted man welcoming any orphan, alcoholic, or penniless family into the Waukesha community. Interestingly, MCA members were in awe of, not Farson or Harvey, but of the community’s organizational genius Messenger.16 The community experienced steady growth in spite of occasional defections. Beginning with 266 adult members in 1906, it had grown to 350 members by January 1909. In 1911, the Burning Bush reported that 46 families were in residence. By Thanksgiving 1912, the once ample space at the Fountain Spring House was crowded with more than five hundred residents.17 Although families lived in individual apartments, all meals were served in the community’s two large dining halls. Appropriately, given the community’s radical commitment to the ideal that all were to share God’s bounty equally, members, regardless of their roles in the community, shared the same food and had similar living accommodations. To clothe all equally well, the community once made a single purchase of more than one thousand yards of sheeting and six hundred yards of gingham. Seemingly simple tasks, such as providing food, demanded considerable planning. In 1909, three bushels of potatoes and one hundred pounds of meat were needed for a single meal, while each day the community was consuming fifty pounds of sugar, three hundred loaves of bread, and more than fifty gallons of milk. Decades after they left Waukesha, community members nostalgically remembered the aroma of more than one hundred pies being baked for a single meal.18 A normal day at the Fountain Spring House began at 6:30 A.M. with prayer and the reading of Scripture. After breakfast, there was time for prayer, study, or perhaps a walk. As in any factory town, a whistle signaled the beginning of the workday and all members of the community, including students of the Bible School, reported to their assignments. Jobs were allocated based on skill, age, and experience. Work responsibilities included kitchen duties, sewing, printing, secretarial work, maintenance, farm work, day care, and teaching. Everyone in the community was both a worker and a student in preparation for some potential ministry. Consequently, lunch was followed by a class for the entire community, usually based on a book such as the MCA’s own Bible

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Lessons. After this class, the workers returned to their jobs while the Bible School students reported for afternoon classes. A second class for the entire community, normally on a theological topic such as faith, was held before the evening meal. After dinner there was a time of rest. On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, the day ended with a religious service attended by community members, as well as visitors and Burning Bush sympathizers from the Waukesha area. Worship included singing, leaping, shouting, testimonies, and a sermon, climaxing in a time of prayer for salvation, entire sanctification, and rededication.19 Although the structure remained fixed, the community was in continual flux. Even during periods of relative harmony, individuals and families were constantly coming and going. Further, the composition of the community was continually being altered by administrative decisions, with individuals and families frequently being reassigned as home or foreign missionaries. To complicate matters further, the church maintained a policy of providing free ministers, upon request, to conduct funerals, while teams of students, accompanied by ordained MCA ministers, were being continually dispatched to conduct evangelistic campaigns wherever requested. The community offered great opportunities for leadership development and advancement. Bible School students who excelled in the classroom and at preaching were ordained as ministers. Most members of the community learned several skills. The case of Charles L. Capsel (1881–1957), an unskilled and propertyless organ factory worker from Ottawa, Illinois, was representative. He was converted at the Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting of 1900 and initially served as a waiter in the dining room. Then Capsel was promoted to the MCA publishing facility where he became a skilled typesetter and printer. In 1914, he was ordained to the ministry, and he later served as manager of the printing operations of the MCA, editor of the Burning Bush, and a member of the MCA’s board of trustees. In fact, similar to Capsel, many MCA men became skilled printers, an occupation many would pursue if they chose to leave the community.20 In addition to communal dining, life in Waukesha revolved around corporate worship. The indispensable ingredient in the community’s worship experience, as well as a point of special emphasis in the Bible School curriculum, was music. Music was essential to creating the atmosphere necessary for the community’s joyous and demonstrative worship. “Our experience of years, as a church,” William T. Pettengill wrote, “is that hardened hearts break up under the effect of song rendered in the Spirit.” As if to prove Pettengill’s point, the course of study for all students included piano lessons and special training in music. The community included a women’s string band and a men’s brass

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band. Services included solos, singing by families and married couples, and a seemingly endless variety of male and female quartets. In such an environment, virtually everyone was a potential lyricist or composer. The community’s five songbooks, published between 1902 and 1913, contain the works of community leaders such as F. M. Messenger, E. L. and Gertrude Harvey, as well as those of converts such as Charles Hollingsworth and Flora Lucas Palmer, and the children of the community such as Bernard, Warren, and Duke Farson Jr. Highly prized outside the community, Burning Bush songbooks were aggressively marketed at between ten and twenty-five cents a copy. They remained a significant source of revenue for the Movement for nearly six decades.21 The central importance of music in the Movement predated the group’s communal phase. Beginning as early as the Chicago revival of 1901, joyous songs of divine deliverance for God’s poor became characteristic features of MCA worship. A remarkable cadre of MCA songwriters and musicians made significant contributions to twentieth-century gospel hymnody. Most notable was Arthur F. Ingler, editor of the MCA’s first two songbooks, and author of the theme song of the Chicago revival, “The Pearly White City.” Other gifted Holiness Movement hymn writers associated with the MCA were F. M. Lehman, author of such popular gospel songs as “The Love of God” and the “Royal Telephone,” and I. Guy Martin, editor of one of the earliest Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene songbooks.22 The primary shapers of Burning Bush music were Louis F. Mitchel (1854–1935) and William T. Pettengill (1873–1956). Mitchel, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, had studied at the Paris Conservatory and the Kalak Conservatory in Berlin. Upon returning to Providence, he had taught the children of the city’s wealthiest residents while holding, he recalled later, “the finest music position” in the city. Converted in 1878, Mitchel experienced entire sanctification at the Douglas Camp Meeting. Deeply committed to premillennialism, he wrote for such holiness periodicals as God’s Revivalist and the Beulah Christian. In 1900, he joined the faculty of Saratoga Bible Institute. Mitchel first met the MCA at Putnam, Connecticut, in December 1902, and was instantly attracted to the group’s fervent worship style. He returned to Chicago with the MCA without even bothering to go home for his clothes and became professor of music while at the Bible School. There he developed into one of the fiercest defenders of demonstrative worship while at the same time insisting on the centrality of music in ministerial training. He surrendered his earthly possessions at the Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting of 1903 and thereafter served the community as a teacher, preacher, songwriter, composer, and editor of the Burning Bush songbooks. Mitchel’s hymns are a virtual compendium of Burning Bush theology, celebrating the joys of salvation,

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sanctification, life in Christian community, divine healing, the special place of the poor in the ministry of Jesus, and the promise of life together in an eternity inaugurated by the premillennial advent of Jesus.23 The second key musical figure was William T. Pettengill, a native of Maine who was converted in the same schoolhouse as were his father and grandfather. He experienced entire sanctification at Saratoga Bible Institute, where he was a student of Mitchel. Pettengill then served as pastor of an Association of Pentecostal Churches of America congregation in Maine from 1902 to 1906. He became a regular reader of the Burning Bush, and, with his wife, Clara Libby Pettengill, joined the community in Waukesha in 1906. Profiting from the renewal of his association with Mitchel, Pettengill began writing hymns in 1907. Like Mitchel’s hymns, Pettengill’s hymns illustrate the MCA’s distinctive doctrines and life in the community of faith. As he wrote in his 1913 hymn “Pentecostal Power,” “Those possessed of lands and houses, sold them, and the prices laid at the apostles feet. No one’s needs were slighted, God supplied them. They had pentecostal power.” After the death of E. L. Harvey, Pettengill became vice president of the MCA and served at MCA missions in Detroit, New York, and Toronto. His last post was as pastor of an MCA-affiliated congregation in Leeds, Maine.24 In spite of its radicalism and separatist tendencies, the MCA was not an inconsequential force in the growing gospel music industry of the early twentieth century. Especially noteworthy was the MCA’s support of and longtime relationship with African American songwriter, composer, and publisher Thoro Harris (1874–1955), who is best known as the author of such notable hymns as “Give Me Oil in My Lamp” and “All That Thrills My Soul Is Jesus.” Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, Harris relocated to Chicago from Boston, an early gospel music mecca. In Chicago, he established the Windsor Publishing Company and for a time operated a mission on Lake Street. Drawn into Chicago’s thriving holiness community, he worked closely with the Free Methodist Church, which became one of the first denominations to liberally sprinkle its hymnal with Harris tunes, and he became a close friend of E. L. Harvey and Farson.25 Like other struggling gospel music artists, Harris supported himself by selling his work to established gospel publishers like Henry Date, founder of Chicago’s Hope Publishing Company. Frustrated that many of the tunes that he had sold Date never appeared in the Hope Publishing Company’s widely used Pentecostal Hymns series, Harris asked E. L. Harvey to intercede with Date and perhaps use MCA funds to reacquire literary rights for Harris. While unsuccessful in their efforts on behalf of Harris, the MCA did regularly employ Harris to write tunes for Burning Bush songs. Harris, a real mentor to MCA

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songwriters such as William T. Pettengill, played an especially significant role in the production of the MCA’s 1907 songbook, The Highway and the Way, or Burning Bush Songs, No. 3. The MCA, in turn, provided important financial support for Harris during his first decade in Chicago.26 As might be expected, not all of those involved in the ministry of the MCA were willing to surrender their possessions and accept the discipline, however benevolent, of Messenger. Among the first casualties were the Lehmans. Upon arrival in Waukesha, both F. M. Lehman, who had been assigned to a construction team, and his wife, who was given the task of scrubbing floors, vigorously objected to their work assignments. Lehman, although an early and spirited champion of forsaking all, immediately began to explore other career options and eventually left the community. Upon leaving, Mrs. Lehman caustically noted that “it was not necessary for every one to be put to scrubbing floors to find out whether they were sanctified.” As with many individuals, the Lehmans found it easier to give up their property than to live in community. The most notable early loss to the community was W. E. Shepard. The case of Shepard was especially ironic. As the author of the MCA’s basic doctrinal handbook whose 1902 Camp Meeting sermon had initiated the giving up of personal property, Shepard prided himself on his radicalism. As someone who clearly believed that some might need to surrender property to experience entire sanctification and who was personally willing to live without a salary at the Bible School, Shepard’s understanding of surrender remained metaphorical. Upon inheriting $700 in the spring of 1906, he separated from the MCA. Shepard resumed his evangelistic career, this time as an expert on fanaticism. One hundred years after its initial publication, a modified form of his book, Bible Lessons, retaining the MCA emphasis on forsaking all, is the only one of his eight books that remains in print.27 The communal theology of the Burning Bush Movement did not remain static. Initially employing the language and logic of consecration and surrender, E. L. Harvey wrote of sanctification in 1904, “You think [holiness] is the nicest thing in the world, and it is, but it costs everything you have and that is what you do not know.” Gradually, however, the language and logic of consecration was supplemented by other reasons for Christians to sell all and join the faith community in Waukesha. As early as December 1904, the MCA was insisting that in the normative church, as described in Acts 2:44–45, Christians were to surrender all worldly possessions. Further, employing the humanitarian approach, the Burning Bush insisted that “any man having wealth, who loved his neighbor as himself, would soon get rid of his property, endeavoring to relieve the needs around him.” Other voices, in typical Holiness Movement fashion, asserted that the MCA teaching on possessions faithfully represented the teachings of John

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Wesley. In defense of Wesley, although the holiness faithful tended to think that the Oxford divine needed little defense, F. M. Lehman turned to the Lukan Jesus’ demand that anyone wishing to be a disciple “forsake all” (Luke 14:33).28 As the Lukan text assumed primacy in the defense of their distinctive doctrine, the MCA began to subordinate the logic of consecration to the example of Jesus and the teaching of Scripture. As Jesus had voluntarily given up his special status in heaven, becoming homeless in the process, his followers, the MCA insisted, would do the same. As Charles Hollingsworth argued in 1909, “Giving all is but a natural consequence of getting a glimpse of Jesus.”29 Increasingly, Burning Bush writers turned to the substantial body of New Testament teaching that denounced wealth, those who possessed it, and the false illusion of security it provided. Among the favorite Scripture defenses of their position were the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13–21), the story of the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18–30), the example of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10), the widow’s offering (Luke 21:1–4), and attacks upon wealth and the wealthy in 1 Timothy, James, and 1 John. In marked contrast to the more established denominations and significant elements in the NHA, the MCA insisted that no rich person could be saved and further radicalized their demand by defining riches as more than the necessities and conveniences of life. Although acknowledging that on rare occasions one might meet a rich person who was generous, the Burning Bush insisted that “you will find they never have salvation.” With biting sarcasm, the Burning Bush, in an editorial aptly titled “Millionaires Praise the Lord,” reminded its readers that the only rich person Jesus depicted in eternity was unfortunately lodged in hell (Luke 16:19–31). “Rich Methodists are going to find, when it is too late, that there is a dire and fearful punishment that lasts throughout eternity,” the editorial concluded. Jesus did have a message for “the rich”: they could not “enter the kingdom of Heaven any more than a camel can go through the eye of a needle.” The rich did have an option. They could obey such Scripture passages as Matthew 19:29, Luke 14:33, and Luke 19:8–9, give up their wealth, and, ideally, join “the Lord’s poor” in Waukesha.30 The MCA never romanticized poverty, however, and it explicitly rejected the notion of giving one’s wealth to the poor indiscreetly. It distinguished between at least two classes of poor: the “poor in spirit” or attitude and the economically dispossessed or “poor in this world’s goods.” The MCA called “the poor in spirit” the “Lord’s poor,” arguing that of necessity the “Lord’s poor” should become poor in this world’s goods. The MCA in the tradition of other holiness radicals, such as Free Methodist founder B. T. Roberts, insisted that the poor had a special place in the divine economy. Following Roberts, the MCA maintained that preaching the gospel to the poor was according to Jesus

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the distinctive mark of the Messianic reign (Luke 7:22) and was a definitive characteristic of all faithful Christian ministry. Going beyond mere rhetoric, free issues of the Burning Bush were sent upon request and Burning Bush ministers conducted free funeral services upon request. A simple summary of the centrality of the poor in the ministry of the MCA, “For the Poor,” appeared in most issues of the Burning Bush. “We are followers of Jesus. . . . We live by faith in God,” the Burning Bush argued, “and the poor are provided by His special providence.”31 The MCA practice of forsaking all was fundamentally a religious doctrine. Drawing on such cardinal Christian beliefs as divine providence and on their own experience, the MCA leaders believed that receiving a salary or having savings accounts, houses, land, and even insurance policies were indications of a lack of faith in God’s ability to provide for Christians. “God can take care of His preachers,” E. L. Harvey stated as early as 1903. “Show me a preacher who takes a salary and I’ll show you a backslider,” he concluded.32 Indeed, the Movement’s position on property, although frequently couched in negative terms, had a positive dimension. It drew special comfort from Jesus’ promise that those who had left houses, families, and land to follow him would receive one hundredfold in this life and in heaven besides (Matthew 19:27-29), and it reminded its critics that although MCA members held no personal property, God met all their needs. “Believing the Lord would fulfill His promises,” as Donald S. Lundin wrote in 1912, “the leaders [the Harveys, Farson, and the Messengers] gave over all their property . . . for the kingdom of God’s sake [and] . . . God has blessed [them] both spiritually and temporally and added an hundred fold.” Frequently persons expressed concern about who would assume responsibilities for aged parents or children if one gave up all possessions. In response, in 1915 Aaron E. Mokstad, an early convert of the MCA’s ethnic outreach in Chicago, observed that the New Testament church provided food and shelter for any dependents of early Christians. “It is even so today, where people have forsaken all,” Mokstad concluded. Noting that while the family of the recently deceased evangelist E. A. Fergerson was begging for support in holiness periodicals, widows, orphans, and the children of “God’s poor,” who had forsaken all, were fed, clothed, and educated in dignity at the Fountain Spring House. Mokstad spoke from personal experience. His own widowed mother was among those living at Waukesha.33 The practice of giving up all had one dimension that might surprise those unfamiliar with holiness radicalism: one idol the person of faith was asked to surrender was modern medicine. Rooted in the tradition of the fourfold gospel and drawing on James 5:14-15, the MCA preached that Christ had provided physical as well as spiritual healing in the atonement. Consequently, it viewed

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visiting physicians, using medicine, and having vaccinations as indicative of a lack of faith. “It is the plan of God,” the MCA stated, “that His children should trust Him for healing of their bodies, as well as salvation for their souls.” Even when forced to acknowledge that not all cases of sickness among church workers resulted in healing, Messenger reminded the Movement’s critics that the health record of the MCA was excellent by any standard. “God does not heal all cases of sickness,” Messenger said, “[but] when God decides to take a person to the next world no earthly power, not even great wealth can stay His hand.” The MCA ridiculed holiness periodicals, such as the Pentecostal Herald and the Christian Standard, that carried ads for patent medicines, suggesting that salvation included not only deliverance from sin but also from possessions, physicians, and patent medicines. As the rampant growth of alternative healing, including Christian Science and faith healing evangelistic ministries, during the period suggests, the MCA’s search for physical as well as spiritual healing in prayer and the community of faith struck a responsive chord with the many Americans alienated from the promises of an increasingly professional and elitist medical establishment.34 Although the Movement increasingly concentrated its resources on the development of the community in Chicago and later in Waukesha, Burning Bush evangelists continued to find responsive audiences across North America. In 1903, in perhaps the most powerful early revival outside Chicago, Burning Bush evangelist R. L. Erickson led virtually the entire population of the rural southern Connecticut community of Quakertown into the experience of entire sanctification. Confronted with the radical claims of the MCA, more than forty members of the community surrendered property, in many cases farms that had been in their families for generations. Among the most significant additions to the community in Waukesha was John Samuel Whipple (1884–1930), the Quarkertown schoolmaster who would spend fifteen years as an MCA missionary in India.35 In July 1906 a second spectacular revival began in the northern Wisconsin community of Crandon. Someone had sent a subscription to the Burning Bush to a local judge, Alfred Smith. Smith, a leader in the Methodist Church, although angered by the Burning Bush’s content, kept reading. Observing that his own congregation had not had a conversion in years, Smith eventually requested that an evangelist be sent. The MCA sent two evangelists, Mokstad and D. F. Deright. They faced threats, rotten eggs, drawn guns, homemade bombs, and angry husbands—a common experience for holiness evangelists whose message seemed more palatable to women than to men. Denied access to the city’s churches, Mokstad began services in a rented public hall. Helga A. Stabell, a member of the evangelistic team sent to aid Mokstad, later recalled

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“Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics and all kinds of sinners knelt at the altar, and many prayed through to victory.” Overcoming all obstacles, the MCA established a permanent work in Crandon. Among the converts were three Methodist elders and two trustees and an elder from the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian elder, W. S. Hitchcock, would become the third president of the MCA in 1926.36 Not everyone who opposed the revival employed physical threats. In a thoughtful 1908 letter, elderly Crandon resident George W. Barker wrote that he found that the Burning Bush Movement resembled the Millerites he had encountered as a child. Noting similarities in both movements, such as the expected end of the world and the practice of urging members to sell their possession, Barker reminded the MCA that in the earlier chiliastic movement “the victims dressed themselves in especially prepared garments ready for the heavenward flight.” “Deluded people I said at that time and I was only a small lad, now I say it again,” he said with reference to MCA converts in Crandon. Barker ridiculed the MCA on two counts: its notion “that the Lord would provide” food and clothing for those who gave up all and the MCA’s practice of rejecting medical treatment. In his conclusion Barker spoke for many, “I am willing to abide my time, till judgment day when the great book shall be opened, and the Great Judge of all shall render judgment, and not be judged while still on earth by fanatics.”37 Other revivals were slower to bear fruit. In 1904, a revival in Bothwell, Ontario, resulted in one penniless convert, Charles B. Fordham. Sixteen years later, there were nineteen members of the Fordham family in the MCA fold, including a brother of Charles Fordham, Ernest Osborne Fordham, who gave the MCA his large farm in Saskatchewan. Other important revivals in Boston; Chicago; Pittsburgh; Milwaukee; Urbana, Illinois; Newport, Tennessee; Louisa, Kentucky; and Hopewell, Ohio also resulted in significant additions to the community. Such successes did not go unnoticed. In the years after 1906, holiness journals that had studiously avoided any mention of the Burning Bush began a seemingly spontaneous discussion of the pivotal scriptural passages concerning property that were employed by the MCA. Especially noteworthy was a series of articles published in the unofficial organ of the NHA, the Christian Standard. In 1909, aged NHA leader Daniel Steele insisted that life insurance and savings accounts were acceptable for Christians. At least in his case, the scriptural passage against laying up treasures on earth did not apply, Steele asserted, since he did not consider money “a treasure.” As a product of another age and a different movement, Steele rejected the literalism of the MCA’s reading of Luke 14:33. In his metaphorical reading of Scripture, the perfection

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demanded of the Christian required no literal transfer of property. Christians were, the postmillennial Steele argued, children of a spiritual kingdom. Unlike the holiness radicals who flocked to the services of the MCA, Steele would have found the sentiment of William T. Pettengill unintelligible. “It became very disgusting to him,” Pettengill remembered, “to hear pastors and evangelists urge seekers to ‘give up all,’ all to Jesus; to consecrate everything from a plantation to a pocket-knife when it was universally understood that no property would change hands.” In the increasingly literal world of the new century, holiness people looked for a literal coming of Jesus while many literally trusted Jesus for the healing of their bodies. It is hardly surprising that in such an environment the surrender of property became, for many, the normative consecration required of all Christians.38 In spite of repeated external attacks upon the Burning Bush Movement from holiness moderates, the greatest threats to the MCA were internal. In part, the very success of the Movement’s evangelists, often operating with considerable independence, made them resent the emerging leadership of relative newcomer Messenger. The community was especially vulnerable during the time of its relocation to Waukesha in the winter of 1905–6. In short succession the MCA faced revolts led by two of its most successful evangelists, Alma White and A. G. Garr. In part, the conflict with White was a natural product of the fact that the MCA and White’s Pentecostal Union had studiously avoided defining their relationship to each other. Initially, no clarification seemed necessary, as White, deeply moved by her contact with the MCA at the General Holiness Assembly of 1901, adopted MCA-style worship and readily accepted Burning Bush publicity and MCA financial support for her ministry. From 1902 to 1905 the two bodies functioned as virtually interchangeable parts of the same machine. To the public at large, the two groups of jumpers were indistinguishable, as they used each other’s speakers, and the MCA provided White with an experienced printer and proofreader and the services of their cartoonist. Indicative of the close relations between the two groups was a united evangelistic foray into the British Isles in the fall of 1904, headed by White and her husband, Kent. The eight-person mission attracted the attention and ridicule of the British press. The revival was such a success that the original party was supplemented by the Whites’ sons and two of her top American assistants, John Wesley Hubbart and A. C. Bray.39 In retrospect it appears that at some point during the British campaign relations between the two groups began to sour. However, relations were still close in late February 1905 when Erickson introduced Carolyn Garretson of Bound Brook, New Jersey, to the Burning Bush message that one should sell all and

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follow Jesus. Apparently accepting Erickson’s message, Garretson wrote a letter to MCA president Farson indicating her desire to give her farm to the MCA, and she completed an application for admission to the Bible School in Chicago. In response, Farson suggested that she either immediately sell the farm or execute a deed giving possession of the property to the MCA. Later in the spring of 1905, when Erickson and Messenger returned to Bound Brook for meetings, Mrs. Garretson expressed concern that the maximum return for her property would not be realized if it were sold suddenly. Later she claimed that she had immediately written Erickson, in February, canceling her gift. To add confusion to her story, she would later maintain that she had decided by 1 July 1905 that she would not give her property to the Chicago group. In spite of her indecision, Burning Bush leaders seemed surprised when they learned in the fall of 1905 that Garretson intended to give her property to White’s Pentecostal Union.40 Undoubtedly, three issues played central roles in the MCA’s anger concerning the loss of the Garretson property. First, the timing could not have been worse. White’s co-option of property valued at $10,000 seemed a conscious attempt to undermine the immediate goals of the MCA, which was desperately attempting to raise funds to purchase the Fountain Spring property. Second, White’s action seemed ungrateful, especially given the significant financial and logistic gifts of the Burning Bush Movement to the Pentecostal Union. Third, the MCA was convinced that White, who had a letter of introduction to Garretson from Erickson, had either conveniently scheduled an eastern evangelistic campaign to acquire the property or had diverted the campaign to accomplish this end. To add insult to injury, the MCA became convinced that White was consciously attempting to lure key Burning Bush evangelists, especially Erickson and Garr, into the ministry of the Pentecostal Union. By midJanuary 1906, the MCA concluded that White’s ultimate goal was far more than the acquisition of the Garretson property; it was rather an attempt to establish a permanent Pentecostal Union base in the East, an area that the MCA, on the basis of Messenger’s long association with the region and Erickson’s success, considered its territory. In addition, the MCA suspected that White was instituting an insidious plot to encourage mass defections from the Burning Bush to the Pentecostal Union. Especially troubling to the MCA was the fact that White’s eastern campaign, which had begun in New York City, had almost immediately relocated to Bound Brook, New Jersey.41 The MCA’s immediate response was to dispatch Erickson and Messenger, later joined by E. L. and Gertrude Harvey, to resolve the conflict and, it was hoped, to regain the property. Changing the subject, White refused to yield on the property and charged the MCA with attempting to steal her ministry. Perhaps as a result of the MCA’s transition to Waukesha, the Burning Bush

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response seemed uncharacteristically indecisive. In spite of insisting otherwise in her autobiography, White, on the other hand, acted quickly. Keenly aware of dissent in the Burning Bush Movement through C. K. Ingler, a member of the Pentecostal Union and brother of Arthur F. Ingler, White struck at the Burning Bush Movement rapidly and in one of its most exposed locations: Los Angeles. White released her acerbic pamphlet Burning Bush Exposed as the first public explanation of the dispute, and forced the MCA into the unusual and unenviable position of reacting to charges not of their own making. White’s decision to release Burning Bush Exposed in Los Angeles was equally well made. As she suggests in her autobiography, she was aware that the leaders of the Los Angeles mission, Shepard and especially Garr, were disgruntled with the direction of the MCA. Although her preemptive strike did not sway Shepard or Garr, on 21 January 1906, twenty-one workers in the Los Angeles mission, including the editor of the highly successful Burning Bush songbooks, Arthur F. Ingler, defected to the Pillar of Fire, as the Pentecostal Union was popularly known.42 To add insult to injury, White announced that she had established a refuge (ironically in a home secured for White by the MCA) for the “oppressed” who wished to flee the Burning Bush. According to the MCA, the home, near Lafayette, Indiana, had been secured for White by E. L. Harvey. Even more serious in the eyes of the MCA was the Pillar of Fire’s attempt to acquire the Burning Bush subscription list. Writing from Los Angeles to a member of the community in Chicago, Arthur F. Ingler, claiming to speak for White, promised fare and moving expenses if the family would join the Pillar of Fire in Denver. “We would be much pleased,” the letter concluded, “if you could procure a copy of the B. B. subscription list.” Relieved to have discovered a plot that the MCA considered far more nefarious than an earlier Pillar of Fire attempt to hire Burning Bush cartoonist C. W. Rosser, the MCA, abandoning any hope of reconciliation, took the offensive. By employing cartoons, correspondence, and a point-by-point response to White’s charges, the MCA managed to stop the hemorrhaging. It highlighted the fact that eighteen Pillar of Fire workers in Great Britain, including Hubbart and Bray, had joined the Burning Bush Movement. The results were mixed. The Pillar of Fire did establish a Northeastern base on the Bound Brook property while Hubbart and Bray would become two of the most important MCA leaders.43 The conflict with the Pillar of Fire exposed the most vulnerable aspect of the Burning Bush doctrine of forsaking all: to whom should the sanctified deed their worldly possessions? Ironically, the first great crisis of the communitarian phase of the Burning Bush Movement was for all intents and purposes a dispute over property. Unfortunately, it was merely the first of many far less publicized property disputes to mar the history of the MCA. The doctrine of

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giving up all for God and laying up one’s treasures in heaven proved quite profitable to the law firms handling MCA cases. In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, E. L. Harvey and Farson had not really taken the message of Charles G. Finney to heart. On behalf of the MCA, they continued to manage property. They remained American businessmen who were tied to an economic order that rewarded acquisitiveness.

7 The MCA and the Making of Modern American Religious Culture

“I can truthfully say that I am not backslid—but am having one of the greatest times of power preaching that I have ever had in all my life. . . . In the Calcutta meeting the power of God was on me in a way that I have never known before. Men fell like dead,” A. G. Garr wrote his friend and old Burning Bush associate, MCA missionary to India Henry L. Harvey, in May 1907. This letter, written during Garr’s maiden Pentecostal missionary trip to India, is a rare firsthand account by one of the original participants of the Azusa Street Revival. It also reveals something of Garr’s continuing fondness for his old MCA comrades and the pain of broken relationships with the body that had given him his first ministerial opportunities.1 As one of the many significant religious figures to begin ministry with the MCA, Garr deserves special recognition. He has often, and probably incorrectly, been identified as the first white person to speak in tongues during the Azusa Street Revival. He did play a key role in the spread of the Pentecostal message to Asia, the evolution of Pentecostal thought, and the growing prominence of faith healing in Pentecostal life and experience. A Kentucky railroad engineer turned evangelist, Garr had attended Asbury College and married Lillian Anderson, the daughter of a prominent Methodist pastor.2 Joining the MCA after the 1901 Chicago revival, Garr rapidly assumed prominence in the Burning Bush Movement, serving first as an assistant editor of the Burning Bush under the supervision of W. E. Shepard. By the fall of 1902, he was a featured speaker at the third annual MCA

Burning Bush cartoon illustrating the central emphasis of the MCA revival campaign in Los Angeles, especially the Nazarene practice of allowing church membership for those who had been divorced and remarried.

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camp meeting at Buffalo Rock. During his early years in Chicago, he was a frequent traveling companion of Duke Farson. Dubbed by Farson “the Lobo and Blanco Club,” the two traveled the American West buying and selling the municipal bonds that funded the MCA and, seemingly incongruously, spreading the MCA message that Jesus required all. Sometime in 1903, the Garrs began a highly successful ministry in Danville, Virginia. Meanwhile Garr’s old associate in the Burning Bush office, Shepard, was encouraging the MCA to expand its ministry in the West. In the late spring of 1904, with high expectations, the Burning Bush Movement began its ill-fated assault on sin and holiness moderation in Southern California. The plan included the establishment of a mission and a Bible school under the direction of Shepard. Shepard, an experienced leader of the Holiness Movement in California and a former assistant pastor in Phineas Bresee’s Los Angeles-based Church of the Nazarene, had an intimate knowledge of both the city of Los Angeles and the California Holiness Movement. In true Burning Bush style, Shepard began an immediate campaign to expose to his churches in California Nazarene compromises with secret societies, divorce and remarriage, and Bresee’s policy of welcoming holiness evangelists, such as Joseph H. Smith and Henry Clay Morrison, who remained active in traditional denominations. The immediate results of the efforts were, by MCA standards, disappointing. Not only was no Bible school established, but Shepard was forced to report that only a few people were being converted in MCA services. In July, in spite of good attendance, a carefully planned series of tent meetings in the heart of the city, directed by Alma White, Shepard, and Louis F. Mitchel also produced few converts. In September, leaving Mitchel and a handful of converts to continue the battle alone, Shepard returned to Chicago to resume his responsibilities with the Metropolitan Bible School.3 In spite of its initial failure, the MCA remained determined to succeed in Southern California. In December 1904 A. G. and Lillian Garr were dispatched to Los Angeles to continue Mitchel’s work. The Garrs seemed ideally suited to the ministerial challenges of Southern California. Their extended and successful ministry in Danville, where they had created enormous conflict and publicity with an all-out war on tobacco, the basic staple of the local economy, had demonstrated the couple’s mastery of the Burning Bush strategy of direct confrontation. As in Virginia, the Garrs chose to concentrate on a social problem that, although national in scope, was particularly prevalent in California: divorce. At issue was the Church of the Nazarene’s practice of allowing the remarriage of the so-called “innocent party” in a divorce. Initially, the response seemed gratifying. Herbert Buffum, a young Nazarene minister who had vigorously opposed MCA preaching, was one of the first

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converts. “Rev. A. G. Garr from Danville, Va., is in Los Angeles firing brimstone,” the Burning Bush enthusiastically reported. “We are praying for God to demolish completely this old Nazarene factory of divorce and remarriage, or capture it for the saints.” Sensing victory, Shepard returned to Los Angeles to head the mission. Among those assisting Shepard and the Garrs was a converted former arsonist, Glenn A. Cook.4 For some in the MCA the issues of divorce and remarriage were personal. This was especially true for MCA president Duke Farson. Following the birth of their third son, Duke Jr., Annie Butcher Farson, suffering from perhaps what is now identified as postpartum psychosis, was hospitalized at the State Hospital in Kankakee, Illinois. She would remain institutionalized for the rest of her life. There is no evidence that Duke Farson’s personal tragedy ever led the MCA to reconsider its position. Rejecting Methodist and even the NHA practice of allowing the innocent party in cases of adultery or other unusual circumstances to remarry, the MCA insisted that remarriage while a spouse was living constituted adultery. In fact, even after leaving the MCA Duke Farson continued to carry out a relentless campaign exposing holiness compromises on the divorce and remarriage issue. In spite of its controversial nature the MCA’s radicalism on the divorce and remarriage question was part and parcel of its appeal to many and would find a prominent, if now ignored, place in the Azusa Street Revival that it helped shape.5 In spite of their initial success, A. G. and Lillian Garr found Los Angeles a far more challenging venue than the tobacco country of southern Virginia. Although the mission experienced modest growth, it continued to struggle. Further, the gradual radicalization of the MCA commitment to forsaking all, occurring as it did tangentially with the replacement of Shepard by F. M. Messenger as the principal director and key advisor to Harvey and Farson, appears to have unsettled both Shepard and Garr. In fact, White suggests in her autobiography that Garr’s frustration with the restraints placed upon him by MCA leaders was well known by the fall of 1905. Nevertheless, in spite of his disappointment with the MCA, Garr seems to have had little desire to exchange a master for a mistress. In early 1906, the Garrs rejected overtures from White and chose to remain with the Burning Bush. In May, the mission faced a second crisis: the resignation of its leader Shepard. Garr, rejecting an MCA offer that he assume directorship of the Los Angeles mission, locked the doors of the mission and directed the remaining faithful to a mission in a renovated church on Azusa Street. As Garr remembered a year later, Duke Farson had asked him to not attend the Azusa Street services unless he receive MCA approval. When Garr seemed to resist, Farson had condescendingly told him, “No you are not [going to attend the meetings], you are going to be a good boy and drop this

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foolishness.” On 16 June 1906, Garr, obviously ignoring Farson’s admonishment, became one of the first white people to speak in tongues at the Azusa Street Mission. In the weeks that followed, the MCA closed its Los Angeles mission. The Burning Bush Movement’s Los Angeles campaign had come to an unexpected conclusion.6 Unlike Shepard, Garr had little desire to abandon the MCA for a ministry in a conventional holiness denomination. Convinced that the tongues they had spoken were Indian and Chinese dialects, A. G. and Lillian Garr immediately laid plans for a trip to India by the seemingly circuitous route of Chicago and Danville, Virginia. Writing ahead to Danville, Garr requested that the furniture in the MCA mission be confiscated for his use. In a failed attempt to draw the MCA into Pentecostalism, the Garrs met briefly, and from all accounts halfheartedly, with MCA leaders in Chicago. “From the close study of the man and his experience,” the Burning Bush wrote concerning A. G. Garr, “we are forced to inform our readers that, instead of having an advanced experience and more power as he thinks, the light has left the eye, the fire is gone and we can see clearly that he has lost the Holy Ghost.”7 Unsuccessful at winning converts among the MCA remnant in Chicago, the husband-and-wife team departed for Danville. Here the results were more gratifying, as Garr reported that “nearly all the members of the old Burning Bush band” had been “reclaimed, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost.” However, one month later, in an insightful and less optimistic report, Garr expressed disappointment at the “feebleness of the so-called sanctified.” He did rejoice in his and Lillian’s deliverance from “sectarianism.” Already in the fall of 1906, the primary meaning of Pentecost for A. G. and Lillian Garr was not the gift of a missionary language; it was freedom from ecclesiastical hierarchy. Deeply committed to leading members of the Burning Bush in Los Angeles, Virginia, and India into the Pentecostal experience, the Garrs had little desire to remain subservient to human institutions.8 As historian Grant Wacker has insightfully noted, the gift of “personal autonomy” accompanied by occupational mobility was a conspicuous and frequently celebrated manifestation of Pentecostalism. Echoing the father of Methodism John Wesley, Garr was quoted in 1916 as saying, “It was like beginning life over, a new ministry . . . not limited to a small fraction of the Holiness people, nor to one country . . . but the ‘World parish.’” In effect, like others in the Holiness Movement, Garr longed for spiritual power to enable him and others to meet the spiritual challenges of worldwide mission. In Wisconsin, Burning Bush leaders saw the central mission of the church differently. It was the restoration of the apostolic church’s practice of having “all things in common.” Pentecostalism would take its cue from Garr, not the MCA.9

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Unable to converse with Indians in their own languages, the Garrs’ initial effort to convert natives and MCA missionaries in North India ended in disaster. According to later MCA sources, this failure of the Garrs resulted in the MCA’s work in India becoming virtually immune from Pentecostalism. Undeterred, the Garrs simply redefined the meaning of “tongues.” It became a heavenly language signifying that one had received the “Baptism of the Holy Ghost.” In a March 1907 article aptly titled “Tongues: The Bible Evidence for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost,” Garr, quoting 1 Corinthians 14:2, answered that no one understood those speaking in tongues because they were not speaking an “earthly language.”10 Beginning in Calcutta in January 1907, the Garrs had very different results. Moving into South India, even as Garr wrote Harvey, the Garrs took up residence at Pandita Ramabai’s famous school and orphanage where a remarkable revival had been in progress since 1905. After spreading the Pentecostal message and experience among Ramabai’s faculty and students, the Garrs ministered in other Indian cities, Ceylon, and finally Hong Kong. The Burning Bush mission in India remained unaffected.11 Now defined as “initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” the gift of tongues demonstrated in a way that holy jumping could not one of the deepest spiritual longings of the age. This was the desire for physical proof that one had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In defending his Pentecostal experience to Harvey in May 1907 Garr said nothing about the gift of tongues as a missionary language. “Some of my most worshipful experience is when God is filling me through and talking through me in a foreign language,” Garr wrote. “I wish you could believe me . . . I can see why God gives tongues to the church. Power, Joy, Unction, O, the preciousness of the real baptism.” As his ministry matured, glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, receded into the background. Primarily a faith healer, Garr employed the strategy he had learned in his early days in the Burning Bush Movement. In faith, dependent on no organization and receiving no salary, he would rent public halls or simply pitch a tent. Garr financed his ministry through freewill offerings, demonstrated an unusual ability to attract attention for his meetings, and presented a message of divine healing that proved especially successful in the West and in the tobacco country of the Southeast. In 1930, continuing his old war on tobacco, he established a permanent base in Charlotte, North Carolina. Following the death of Lillian Anderson Garr, he married Hanna Erickson (1897–1986), daughter of his old MCA associate R. L. Erickson. She succeeded him as pastor of the church he established in Charlotte, the Garr Memorial Tabernacle.12 It is difficult to assess the MCA’s losses to Pentecostalism because they came amid the consolidation of Messenger’s leadership of the Burning Bush Move-

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ment and the related radicalization of its position that faithful followers should sell their possessions and relocate to Wisconsin. Although it lost members in California and Virginia, the Chicago and Waukesha branches seem to have been little affected, while the Garrs’ embarrassing visit to the MCA work in India made that mission virtually free of Pentecostalism for several generations. The real significance of the Burning Bush Movement’s encounter with Pentecostalism was not Pentecostalism’s impact on the MCA but the MCA’s determinative role in the shaping of the Azusa Street Revival and, in turn, the worldwide Pentecostal Movement itself. First, it is not inconceivable that refugees from the Burning Bush Movement played a decisive role in the igniting of the Azusa Street Revival. Especially pivotal was A. G. Garr’s decision to close the Burning Bush Mission and lead its remaining members to the Azusa Street Mission. All evidence suggests that when Garr arrived at Azusa Street the early enthusiasm of the revival generated in the wake of the San Francisco earthquake had subsided. In fact, the arrival of the Burning Bush contingent and Garr’s Pentecostal experience on 16 June seem to have reignited the revival. Most elements of the revival, including demonstrative worship, its interracial character, and the Azusa Street Mission’s formulation of the fourfold gospel, coincide with Burning Bush practice and teaching. Central elements of the MCA’s ill-fated California campaign appear in Azusa Street publications and in the Pentecostal denominations with actual roots in the revival. Further, it should be noted that the Burning Bush did not reject Pentecostal experience, but Pentecostal theology. Unlike many others who responded to the Azusa Street Revival, the MCA did not object to its interracial character or to the physical manifestations accompanying its services. After all, both were regular features of Burning Bush services. Insisting that the Burning Bush Movement affirmed the Acts of the Apostles and First and Second Corinthians, the MCA argued that according to Scripture “tongues are an evidence of the baptism.” However, they could not be considered the evidence. Especially telling is the fact that the doctrinal emphases of the Apostolic Faith Movement, in its formative period, are virtually identical to Burning Bush teachings in 1906. These include identical teachings on divorce and remarriage. These teachings, the particular emphasis of the MCA’s Los Angeles campaign, remained prominent features of the Azusa Street Revival. This is not coincidental. William J. Seymour, the African American leader of the revival, shared the MCA’s roots in holiness radicalism. Having attended God’s Bible School and, on his way to California, having stayed in Denver at White’s Pentecostal Union, he was a part of the radical network. But unlike the evolving God’s Bible School tradition, Seymour’s emphasis on the divorce question and on restitution, both special emphases of the Burning Bush

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Movement but not of the God’s Revivalist tradition, tie Pentecostalism especially to the MCA’s California campaign. In fact, the message propagated by Seymour was, with the exception of his teaching concerning the gift of tongues as the evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and a more clearly articulated interracialism, identical with MCA teaching. Incidentally, one finds the same similarities in the first Pentecostal group to break with Seymour during the Azusa Street Revival, Florence L. Crawford’s Apostolic Faith Church of Portland, Oregon. It should be noted that the prominence given to restitution in both the Azusa Street and Calcutta revivals also suggests links to the MCA and one of the earliest of the century’s pentecosts, the Chicago Revival of 1901. Regardless of the appeal of its other doctrines, as the twentieth century would demonstrate, the MCA’s most prominent doctrinal distinctive, “forsaking all for Jesus,” would find only lukewarm support in the burgeoning Pentecostal Movement. Although both movements turned to the book of Acts, Pentecostalism would take its cue from Acts 2:4, the Burning Bush Movement from Acts 2:44–45.13 If familiarity breeds contempt, the MCA and their Pentecostal adversaries were destined for combat. They simply shared too much for mutual coexistence. During the next decade, the “tongues movement” would be excoriated mercilessly in the pages of the Burning Bush. Fittingly, as muckraking-era journalists, the editors of the periodical wasted little time in beginning a full-scale investigation of Pentecostalism and its principal adherents. In January 1907, the Burning Bush published the first of several devastating exposés of the new religious phenomenon. Drawing on extensive investigations in Los Angeles, Topeka, and Zion City, Illinois, where MCA leaders interviewed Charles Parham, the early leader of the Apostolic Faith Movement, the MCA, noting with considerable glee a dispute between Seymour and Parham, charged the latter with doctrinal irregularities and ethical lapses. Among the heresies identified were Parham’s belief in the annihilation of the wicked, opposition to demonstrative worship, and support for tithing. The ethical lapses appear to have been of a financial nature. Taking special pleasure in Parham’s attacks on the Azusa Street Revival and in his descriptions of the emotional excesses of Glenn A. Cook, the Burning Bush noted that Parham’s actions and words bore an uncanny resemblance to those of the “fanatical” prophet from Maine, Frank Sandford.14 Other exposés followed. Especially significant for the history of Pentecostalism was a September 1907 issue of the Burning Bush that reprinted a Zion’s Herald account of the arrest of Parham on a charge of sodomy. Because it reached a different audience than the Zion’s Herald account, the Burning Bush story, which was published during the crucial period when the Holiness

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Movement was coming to terms with Pentecostalism, was certainly a factor in the Holiness Movement’s rejection of the new religious experience. During the next several years, the Burning Bush vigorously opposed any signs of Holiness Movement compromises with Pentecostalism, especially holiness periodicals carrying reports of avowed Pentecostals or of Pentecostals speaking at holiness camp meetings. In fact, as years passed and other holiness periodicals joined the attack, the Burning Bush Movement took special pride in its early and vigorous war on Pentecostalism. Left unreported was the saga of the Los Angeles mission, the Burning Bush Movement’s own contribution to the origins of Pentecostalism.15 As the defections of two of the Movement’s most successful evangelists, White and A. G. Garr, demonstrated, not everyone was satisfied with the role of Messenger in the community. But the greatest test of Messenger’s leadership did not come from within the community. It came from the city of Waukesha. The occupation of the Fountain Spring House, the largest taxable property in the city and the pride of Waukesha, by what many considered to be an eccentric cult of religious fanatics was treated as both an embarrassment and a civic tragedy. For its part, in typical Burning Bush fashion, the Movement made a flamboyant entry into Waukesha that did nothing to foster good relations between the MCA and the community. On Sunday evening, 11 March 1906, before a large crowd, which included many civic leaders, Duke Farson introduced Burning Bush-style evangelism to Waukesha by denouncing conventional Protestant churches and their overpaid clergy. Although many had been warned about the MCA’s exuberant worship style, newspaper accounts suggest that few were prepared for the extent of the shouting and jumping that took place throughout the service. One of the newspapers accused the “Holy Jumpers” of “bad manners,” and of being devoid of “culture,” and it reported that church ushers seemed particularly skilled at restraining those attempting to disrupt the service.16 In May, the Milwaukee Sentinel, in a sarcastic but informative article, posed the question “Will Waukesha ‘the city of springs’ eventually be ruled by a band of holiness workers headed by Duke Farson?” Undeterred and intent on “Christianizing” Waukesha, the MCA embarked upon an intensive outdoor evangelistic campaign that unfortunately coincided with the beginning of the summer tourist season. Rotten eggs initially greeted the evangelists, and the response turned uglier on the evening of 7 July when a crowd of more than two thousand people attacked three MCA workers in the heart of the city.17 Tension remained high in mid-August as MCA workers gathered for the group’s first Wisconsin camp meeting. On the evening of 23 August, a gang of about 150 juveniles throwing rocks, rotten eggs, and an assortment of other

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missiles attacked the MCA services, eventually forcing the Burning Bush faithful to retreat to the Fountain Spring House. The chief victims of the attack, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported, were women tourists whose expensive gowns were ruined by the eggs.18 When the next tourist season began in 1907, Waukesha’s city fathers, determined to protect the safety of the MCA members and save the city’s tourist industry, were intent on curtailing Burning Bush street preaching. The MCA remained defiant and continued to hold regular services on the city’s streets. On the evening of 28 May, a contingent of Bible School students, under the direction of C. T. Hollingsworth and Arthur C. Bray, began services at their usual location, Waukesha’s “five points” in the heart of the business district. The students refused an order to moderate their worship, and authorities arrested seventeen male members of the group, including Hollingsworth and Bray, for disturbing the peace. When the young men continued the worship service in jail, guards beat them and drenched them with water. Shortly thereafter, they were convicted of disturbing the peace, and spent ten days in jail. Other arrests followed. On 19 June, two female street preachers, Elizabeth Blinn, the mother of two small children, and Elizabeth Meinung were arrested for disturbing the peace and spent four days in jail. The city attorney seemed determined to suppress “jumper” enthusiasm and promised to arrest the MCA leaders. The city council passed an ordinance that prohibited jumping, shouting, beating drums, or other disturbance of the peace in public streets. On 26 June, John Wesley Hubbart, Messenger, R. L. Erickson, and three students were arrested for violating the new ordinance. Charges were dropped against Erickson for lack of evidence, but Messenger and the three students were convicted. Following three months of legal maneuvering, all charges against the four were dropped. Feeling vindicated, the MCA continued to hold street meetings. Gradually, the city of Waukesha came to tolerate its new residents, although it never fully accepted them. This situation is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the earliest converts were members of two of the city’s least respected ethnic groups, Italian Americans and African Americans.19 Surviving the internal and external crises of 1906 and 1907, the Waukesha community experienced steady growth while sending missionaries throughout North America, Great Britain, India, the Virgin Islands, and East Africa. The Burning Bush Movement established regular presences in Chicago; Boston; Pittsburgh; Urbana, Illinois; Crandon, Wisconsin; Amy, West Virginia; and Fort Dodge, Iowa. At the same time, the community in Waukesha grew so large that overcrowding became a serious problem. Perhaps most remarkably, the community’s financial basis, at least to outsiders, seemed strong.

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To insiders, economic matters seemed to be growing in importance, often, in fact, overshadowing other work. A telling, and early illustration of the MCA’s looming fiscal crisis was an ill-fated evangelistic foray into the south-central Nebraska city of Red Cloud. In May 1910, W. C. Dixon wrote to E. L. Harvey inviting MCA representatives to hold meetings in Red Cloud, a town he described as “lodge and church cursed.” The following month, two other residents of the Red Cloud area, Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Parsons, wrote that they also would be “awful glad” if the missionaries came their way.20 The MCA assigned a married couple, Martha and Arthur C. Bray, and Ed F. Deright to Red Cloud. A niece of Gertrude Harvey, Martha Dammarell Bray was a native of Chicago in her mid-twenties. Her husband, Arthur C. Bray, an ex-newspaper reporter, had been converted in 1903 in joint MCA–Pillar of Fire services in Colorado Springs. After attending White’s Bible school in Denver, he served as a missionary in England. In 1906, when the Pillar of Fire and MCA ceased collaborative ministry, Bray joined the Waukesha community, where he taught in the Bible School. Ed F. Deright, a former salesman and addicted gambler, had been converted at the 1899 God’s Bible School camp meeting in Cincinnati. Joining the MCA about the time it relocated to Waukesha, Deright served as an evangelist whose business experience made him a particularly valued member of the community. The missionaries’ arrival in Red Cloud was not auspicious. They had telegraphed ahead and expected to be met by Dixon. However, Dixon, an elderly man who appears to have been dependent on the kindness of his friends and neighbors, was living with the Parsons family on a farm about nine miles from Red Cloud and did not receive the telegram. When the missionaries arrived at 10 P.M. on a Wednesday evening, it was pouring rain, they had no other contacts in town, and the $1 they had, which had been raised by canvassing while waiting for a train in Kansas, was not enough to secure a hotel room. Finally, they were directed to the home of Catherine Reed, an elderly widow who supplemented her meager income by taking in paying guests.21 The missionaries began meetings on Saturday evening in a tent that the MCA had shipped to Red Cloud, but the weather continued to be a problem. At times two of the missionaries had to hold up the tent poles to keep the tent from blowing down, while the remaining missionary conducted the meeting.22 The meetings drew respectable numbers, which increased as the days passed, and the missionaries became hopeful of many converts.23 It is evident from Martha Bray’s first letter to Waukesha after her arrival in Red Cloud that the missionaries also hoped that in addition to converts, they would be able to

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acquire property for the MCA.24 As the meetings proceeded, a few people began to express interest in committing themselves to the MCA’s ministry by turning their property over to the Association. Among these people were Mrs. Reed and the Parsons family. Initially, Mrs. Reed proposed giving a third of her property to the MCA and the other two-thirds to her children, but according to Deright, the missionaries “dealt with her kindly yet had to tell her that Jesus demands all.”25 Apparently, she was convinced and signed her property over to the Burning Bush Movement. The missionaries then acted quickly to get title to the property because, as Deright wrote, “3 sets of children . . . want their little share of the property and as soon as Mrs. Reed was [sic] ready to give it to the Lord, of course, the Devil will get busy.” As soon as they got the deed, they started to attempt to sell the property, as well as Mrs. Reed’s “brindle Jersey cow” and chickens.26 Deright had been correct about the Reed children, and shortly after Mrs. Reed signed over the property, her daughter Rosa arrived to deal with the situation. Rosa promised her mother “a nice home and to take her traveling and let her read all the Burning Bush literature she wanted to.” Martha Bray warned Mrs. Reed that her daughter was buying her off, but the missionaries admitted that it appeared as if the Reed property might be lost to the MCA. The transfer of the property not only elicited the objections of Mrs. Reed’s children, but it turned many in the community against the missionaries. Violence flared. One of the local newspapers, the Red Cloud Advertiser, reported that at night, after the meetings, “some one, or more” had cut the ropes of the revival tent and attempted to set it on fire. Failing that, they had slashed it, and thrown the fragments of material into some water.27 Deright and Bray sent a telegram to Waukesha stating: “Fierce battle in tent. Persecution over deed. Town stirred. Tent cut down after meeting tonight and partly burned. Mob with tar and feathers was said to be waiting.” In the midst of all this turmoil, the missionaries were, however, according to the same telegram, able to report that three souls had been “brightly saved” and that Mrs. Reed was holding firm.28 The response from Waukesha to Deright’s and Bray’s telegram read: “Unless strong sentiment in your favor, Matthew ten twenty-three.”29 But in spite of possible danger, Burning Bush missionaries were not easily discouraged. While Deright left Red Cloud for Chicago, probably because with the tent destroyed and meetings no longer being held there was no need for three people in Red Cloud, the Brays remained to “shepherd converts.” Two days after the destruction of the tent, Arthur Bray went to town with Mr. Parsons. In front of the post office, he was introduced to Parsons’s brotherin-law who, when the Burning Bush magazine was mentioned in conversation,

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flew into a rage and shouted that the Burning Bush was “set on fire by wildfire fanaticism.” Then he advanced on Bray shaking his fist and threatening to pull Bray out of the wagon in which he was sitting and “smash” his face. Parsons quickly jumped into the wagon and the two men trotted off.30 One probable reason that the missionaries stayed in Red Cloud in spite of potential danger was that the Parsons family was also considering deeding their farm over to the MCA. Parsons told Bray the morning after the burning of the tent that he and his wife were taking “a definite stand for God to go through on the rugged line and pay the price.” Parsons even helped the Brays ship the remains of the tent back to Chicago, thereby publicly showing his allegiance to the Burning Bush.31 The Parsonses were particularly interested in the welfare of their children and felt that they would be better off at the Bible School in Waukesha than they would be in the public school. However, Mr. Parsons wavered when it came to giving up his farm. When word got around that Parsons was considering deeding his property to the MCA, friends, relatives, and neighbors began to try to talk him out of it. Finally, legal action was brought by Parsons’s brother-in-law, Frank King, and Parsons was served with papers summoning him to court to prove his competence to manage his affairs. Arthur Bray and Parsons immediately decided to wire Waukesha for instructions. To do this, they drove fifteen miles to a telegraph office in Kansas because, according to Martha Bray, “The telegraph forces in Red Cloud hate us and once held a message for twelve hours. Then whatever was said over the wires was known all over town.”32 Since the Parsonses were not sending their children either to church or to school, there was concern that there would be an attempt to remove the children from their parents’ control. Consequently, on 5 October, Mrs. Parsons and the children left for Waukesha by train so the children could enroll in the Bible School.33 By 6 October, at least three suits had been filed in the Reed case, and the MCA decided that it was in their best interest to return the property to the Reed family. This was done as soon as the matter went to court.34 Parsons continued to vacillate on his decision to give his property over to the MCA. When he refused to hire a lawyer to fight the incompetency charges, claiming he could not afford to do so, Deright was sent back to Red Cloud.35 Shortly after Deright’s arrival, Frank King dropped the lawsuit, but this did little to encourage Parsons to sell his property. Mrs. Parsons returned from Waukesha and attempted to convince him to sell, but while he did begin to sell off a few items piecemeal, he maintained that he needed to get a price

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for his land that was about 40 percent more than his neighbors had received for selling theirs. He finally admitted that while he wanted his children to benefit from life at the Bible School and did not want his wife separated from the children, he was wary of going somewhere where “there were so many people.”36 In a letter to her aunt, Martha Bray said that it made her “heartsick to realize that you dear folks were having a strain in regard to finances and the situation looks so slow here for bringing relief.” The Brays and Deright remained in Red Cloud until the end of October, but, as far as can be determined from available records, Parsons never did give up his farm and move to Waukesha. The missionaries finally left Red Cloud where, in spite of their efforts and no little expense, they had been unable to deliver the much-needed financial aid to Waukesha.37 Still, to a large degree, the success of the community was a direct result of Messenger’s leadership. The mill superintendent turned holiness evangelist forged an economic foundation for the community, based, perhaps ironically for a group that rejected material possessions, on the production and marketing of the Burning Bush, songbooks, calendars, gospel text cards, wall mementos, and even gospel stamp books. Adults were urged to sell all, while the Burning Bush urged boys and girls to earn extra money by marketing the Burning Bush, cards, stamps, and calendars among friends and door to door. Messenger’s pride and joy was the Scripture Text Calendar, first published in the fall of 1903, featuring a carefully chosen Bible verse for each day. Messenger was convinced that the calendar could be a powerful evangelistic tool. It soon evolved into a multicolor production that included a different picture each month, usually depicting an episode from the life of Christ. The MCA aimed at an audience that reached well beyond holiness circles as Scripture texts were chosen to coincide with the ecumenically, and largely Protestant, International Sunday School Lessons. Although Messenger claimed that God had given him the idea for the calendar, the source of the inspiration may have been closer to Cincinnati, since in 1902 God’s Revivalist had circulated a similar calendar, which it had advertised as the last idea God had given to Martin Wells Knapp. Regardless of who had originated the idea, the calendars proved immensely popular. In fact, calendar production and distribution became the primary work of the Waukesha community.38 As time passed some members, especially the Harveys, came to resent the time and effort expended on what was clearly a profit-making endeavor. In early 1913, E. L. Harvey unexpectedly informed Messenger that the community would discontinue the calendar. As a consequence, in late March 1913, the Messenger family left the Fountain Spring House for Chicago. The once wealthy

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mill superintendent was virtually penniless. He rejected several offers to return to his work as a textile mill superintendent, and instead organized the Messenger Publishing Company in Chicago. Spiritually, he returned to the holiness circles he had once so bitterly attacked and joined the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. In a signed letter published in that denomination’s official periodical, he apologized for his self-righteous attitude and mistaken views, especially the doctrine of forsaking all. The indefatigable Messenger then hired some of his best workers from the MCA printing operation, and over the next two decades turned the publishing of the Scripture Text Calendar into a $4 million business. Ironically, Messenger, the once bitter foe of holiness moderation, would become the first board chairman of the Church of the Nazarene. In 1919 when the Church of the Nazarene adopted a church structure modeled after corporate America, Messenger, who had once denounced life insurance and old-age pensions, founded and administered the church’s first pension plan. When dissident Nazarenes attacked the plan as violating the faith principal, Messenger defended his actions by saying that in the last days before Christ’s return one had to make plans for one’s own retirement. The onetime exponent of the life of faith was managing an insurance plan.39 An initial feud, complete with competing lawsuits, erupted between Messenger and the MCA. By the early 1920s, the conflict had subsided. Feeding his old associates with information for the Burning Bush, Messenger was a fixture at the annual Burning Bush camp meeting, and even regarded his years in Waukesha fondly and as part of God’s plan to put the Scriptures in homes around the world. Few Nazarenes knew that he had been more than the victim of Burning Bush fanaticism. He, along with the Harveys and Farson, had been one of its principal architects. In fact, it is a tribute to his managerial skill that, in spite of a series of costly blunders, the Waukesha community remained in the Fountain Spring House for more than forty years and the Messenger years would be regarded as the golden age of the Waukesha community. As students of popular religious expression have long known, material expressions of religious devotion frequently do not receive the attention they merit. The Messenger or Scripture Text Calendar is such an item. By the end of World War I it was becoming a standard feature in middle- and lower middleclass evangelical homes across North America. The calendars, complete with the dutifully affixed addresses of their sponsors, were marketed to churches and businesses, which used them as Christmas gifts. Even outside of North America, the calendars proved remarkably popular. In February 1918, John S. Whipple, head of the MCA India Mission, reported that he “hardly knew how we could have got through” without the $100 raised from Burning Bush

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calendar sales. In fact, the very survival of MCA missions required that the meager funding received from the United States be supplemented with locally raised money earned through the sales of religious knickknacks and especially calendars.40 By the 1940s the success of the Messenger calendar inspired imitation by the Gerlach and Barklow Company, one the nation’s primary printers of art calendars, based in Joliet, Illinois. As major producers of cigarette advertising calendars and pin-up calendars featuring drawings of attractive young women, the Gerlach and Barklow Company was in a certain sense an odd competitor to the Messenger Publishing Company. The art depicted in the early Messenger calendars included works of nineteenth-century German artists, such as Fugel and Voght, eighteenth-century British poet and artist William Blake, and the Italian master Raphael. By the 1930s, the works of late nineteenth-century German artists Bernard Plockhorst (1825–1907) and Heinrich Hofmann (1824–1911) dominated Messenger calendars. During World War II Messenger calendars made significant changes. Perhaps as a result of anti-German sentiment, contemporary American artists became responsible for many of the pictures. Although the works of some nineteenth-century German artists, such as Hofman, still adorned the calendars, many of the images, such as a depiction of a hauntingly Aryan looking Pilate, appeared starkly modern. In fact, Paul Tillich, the most astute theological interpreter of contemporary art and also the first non-Jew dismissed from a German university after Hitler’s seizure of power, interpreted the “beautifying naturalism” of Hofman as creating a “nostalgia” for an idealized past easily exploited by modern totalitarian states.41 In 1944, Warner Sallman’s iconic “Head of Christ” made its first appearance on a Messenger calendar. While the depiction was already being widely circulated among servicemen, its use on Messenger calendars helped solidify its status as a cultural icon on the home front. During the next three decades, Sallman’s depiction and the Messenger calendars would become inextricably linked through the marketing genius of the American funeral industry. By skillfully distributing calendars to churches with ads for funeral homes and then using Sallman’s image on funeral cards, the funeral industry hoped that a comforting and familiar image during one of life’s most impressionable times, the death of a loved one, would draw the grieving family to its parlors. As commercialization spread, a new term of derision entered elite discourse, “religious calendar art.” In one example, evangelical educator Frank Gaebelein lamented that there were some people “who cannot distinguish a kind of religious calendar art from honest art.” More than sixty years after its inception, the Messenger calendar had itself gained iconic status.42

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In 1916, smarting from the success of the Messenger calendar, the MCA introduced its Gospel Art Calendar. Unlike the colored pictures on the Messenger calendars, the MCA calendars were in black and white. Far more apologetically oriented, the MCA calendar originally contained a quotation for each month that emphasized some distinctive MCA doctrine, such as Christian perfection or faith healing. By 1924, the calendar included a full page of Bible verses that supported key MCA teachings. These features were dropped by 1930. The 1950 MCA calendar included colored pictures from Plockhorst and several more modern artists. While slightly less contemporary in design than the rival Messenger calendar, in most regards it closely resembled its competitor. Interestingly, in the early 1950s, the MCA ceased production of its own calendars and MCA door-to-door sales representatives turned to selling the Messenger calendar. The Scripture Text Calendar, still known as the “Messenger calendar,” is published today in Auburn, Indiana, where the company relocated in the 1930s. Following Messenger’s death, his son Harry Messenger assumed direction of the company. In the 1940s, the Messenger family lost control of the company. Today the company is a subsidiary of Norwood Promotional Products, manufacturer of promotional items, such as golf balls, magnets, caps, mugs, pens, and calendars with corporate logos. The primary market for the Scripture Text Calendar remains funeral homes and churches. The company still advertises its Auburn-manufactured products as “the Messenger line.” A product inspired by a community dedicated to having all things in common and longing for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth had become a promotional tool for the American funeral industry.

8 The Fire Wanes and Is Rekindled The Burning Bush Movement, 1913–1931

Edwin F. Harvey, nephew of the founder, and for many in the MCA the spiritual successor of his uncle E. L. Harvey, never tired of recounting the scene from his uncle’s 1926 funeral of an aging African American from Chicago “broken-hearted . . . stretched out full length beside the coffin, sobbing out his heart.” The man, whom E. L. Harvey had visited years earlier in the Cook County jail, had been on trial for murder. Harvey had become convinced of his innocence and was instrumental in providing legal counsel that had led to his acquittal. As Edwin F. Harvey recalled, the man softly repeated, “No one ever loved me like that man.” It was a sentiment shared by many who, seventy-years after Harvey’s death, would remember their years in the Fountain Spring House as the most meaningful of their lives.1 Regardless of the feelings E. L. Harvey engendered among the faithful of the MCA, the years following the fateful decision to cease publication of the Scripture Text Calendar were very difficult for the MCA. Among the most costly and unfortunate moves was the establishment of a second intentional community on a 1,500-acre tract of land in the rich fruit-growing region near the East Texas community of Bullard. The new community had a threefold intention: to reduce the population in Waukesha, to establish an MCA presence in the Southwest, and to create a self-supporting Christian utopian community.

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Duke Farson and sons.

Unlike the Waukesha community, the Bullard community would attempt to be self-sufficient. The property, which was acquired by Duke Farson in the fall of 1912 in exchange for property west of Chicago, a hotel and brickyard in New Mexico, and a tract of land in Idaho, included extensive peach and plum orchards along with considerable acreage in pecans, strawberries, and asparagus.2 In January 1914, Henry L. Harvey and thirteen associates arrived from Wisconsin to lay foundations for the Bullard community. By July, the community had grown to about 150 members. Although the property included a plantation-style mansion, most of the community’s residents lived in hastily

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constructed cottages. Among the first projects were the building of a cannery and a sawmill. The construction of other buildings followed, including a tabernacle for religious services, a two-story house with guest rooms and a dining hall, and separate houses for single men and women. The mansion was converted into an administration building that also housed a Bible school. Remarkably, the community had running water, a sewer system, and electricity produced by a steam-powered dynamo. Such luxuries, coupled with the use of innovative agricultural methods and farm machinery seldom seen in East Texas, such as tractors, cultivators, threshers, and binders, made the community an immediate sensation. The high point of Bullard’s fascination with their unorthodox neighbors from the North occurred in April 1915 when a specially chartered train from Waukesha made up of five coaches and three baggage cars brought more than 175 new residents to the East Texas community.3 In the end, the Bullard community never succeeded in becoming financially self-supporting, in part because it lacked the administrative genius of Messenger. Converts continued to give up all, but few of them had the wealth necessary to make a go of the community. Sales of surplus agricultural commodities and funds raised by the cannery and the sawmill never proved sufficient to keep the community going. The community was forced to buy on credit staples such as clothing, flour, sugar, lard, coffee, and tea from Bullard businessman J. L. Vandever and remained dependent on continued subsidies from Wisconsin, ultimately depending on the resources of Farson. In reality, the banker, who had made his fortune in the municipal bond business, was now investing other people’s money in a highly speculative farming venture in East Texas.4 In spite of the growing indebtedness caused by the high initial start-up costs of the Texas community, the MCA seemed remarkably stable in the summer of 1916. In fact, the MCA membership continued to climb even with the transfer of more than two hundred people from Waukesha to Bullard. By 1916, the Wisconsin community had more than five hundred residents while the Southwestern division had grown to four hundred members. Both branches operated Bible schools and the institutions’ respective day schools had approximately three hundred students. The Waukesha community continued to operate a maternity hospital, a home for orphans, and separate homes for older indigent men and women. The church employed fifty-three evangelists and fourteen missionaries in India, England, and the Virgin Islands. It sponsored urban missions in Boston, Chicago, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and Milwaukee, but its most successful evangelistic work was occurring in the Appalachian Mountains and in small and mid-sized cities in the Midwest such as Paynesville, Minnesota, and Fort Dodge, Iowa. It paid no salaries, and evangelists and missionaries were expected to be self-supporting.5

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As historian Grant Wacker has argued, women were prominent in all features of the “radical evangelical” subculture that gave birth to the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. In fact, the 1926 religious census reported that 68.2 percent of the MCA’s members were women. From its inception women preachers, including Alma White and Susan Fogg, had been some of the most effective MCA evangelists. However, unlike the Pillar of Fire, which was led by White, the MCA leadership would remain predominately male. This seems not to have troubled the women who flocked to the MCA banner. The young women attracted to the ministry of the MCA during the second decade of the twentieth century were inspired by the courage, joyous testimonies, and fortitude of Burning Bush workers. Women converts, such as Edna Hounshell, who was converted in services in a country schoolhouse near Big Stone Gap, Virginia, were not infrequently forced to choose between family and the gospel workers from Wisconsin. For men, the choice often had profound economic consequences. In West Virginia and Kentucky, Burning Bush converts who refused to join unions or, more controversially, enter coal mines on Sundays, lost their jobs. In the more prosperous farming states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, the Movement’s demonstrative worship continued to create curiosity while the group’s opposition to private property engendered ridicule, rotten eggs and tomatoes, and frequent threats of violence.6 In the area surrounding Bullard, A. C. Bray estimated that eight hundred people were being ministered to by twenty-three preachers who conducted thirteen separate Sunday church services. As the summer of 1915 came to a close, an estimated three to four thousand people attended the final service of the second annual Bullard Camp Meeting. “Southerners” the Burning Bush noted, “[did] not seem to be so easily frightened by holy demonstration as the people of the North.” Regardless, in spite of evangelistic successes in Texas and in the neighboring states of Oklahoma and Arkansas, the Bullard community remained a continual financial drain on the Burning Bush Movement.7 By the summer of 1915 the Movement’s seemingly relentless evangelism continued, but close observers of the MCA noticed a slight waning of evangelistic fervor and a decline in the frequency of critiques of popular religious figures in the Burning Bush. In the fall of 1916, as the debt mounted in Texas, the MCA, determined to balance its budget, revived its briefly dormant Scripture Text Calendar. It was an immediate financial success, and the decision to reintroduce it brought the community’s simmering conflict with Messenger to a head. In the wake of the announcement that the MCA was resuming calendar production, it was warned by one of its principal paper suppliers that rumors were being circulated that large lawsuits were pending against the MCA and that suppliers should immediately collect all money owed them.8

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Meanwhile, Messenger attempted to arrange a private meeting with Harvey. The MCA leaders were convinced that Messenger’s real goal was to strike a deal with Harvey in which the MCA would print Messenger’s calendars in exchange for his dropping the legal action against the MCA. In December 1916, on the basis of testimony by Messenger and his close associate E. F. Deright, formerly director of marketing for the Burning Bush’s Scripture Text Calendar and now director of sales for the Messenger Publishing Company, a Cook County, Illinois, grand jury indicted Harvey and the MCA for defrauding a widow out of a $10,000 inheritance.9 Farson, in a series of articles in the Burning Bush, accused Messenger and Deright of self-interest and hypocrisy. As Farson observed, the transaction in question had occurred in 1911 with Messenger’s full knowledge and support. In fact, Farson charged that as an MCA leader in 1911, Messenger was as responsible as Harvey for the dealings of the Waukesha community. “We submit to our readers,” Farson wrote, “as to whether or not Messrs. Messenger and Deright are not more interested in locking up Mr. Harvey . . . so that he could not raise the funds with which to print a 1918 calendar.” Among the community members quick to defend Harvey was E. W. Smith, a former dry goods merchant from Centralia, Washington, who had joined the Movement in 1911 and who had worked closely with Messenger until Messenger’s departure in March 1913. Smith reported that Messenger, who had introduced him to the MCA doctrine of forsaking all, had always expressed complete confidence in Harvey and had urged him to remain with the MCA even when Messenger left the Movement. Ultimately, the case came to naught, as charges against Harvey and the MCA were dropped in the summer of 1917.10 Surviving the lawsuit intact, the MCA was far less fortunate in the second crisis it faced in 1917: World War I. With other holiness radicals, the Burning Bush Movement opposed war and the taking of human life. The MCA drew its inspiration from the teachings of Jesus, especially the Sermon on the Mount, and from the views of such millenarian holiness radicals as L. L. Pickett that war would cease during the millennial reign of Jesus. In the fall of 1914, the Burning Bush, in a series of articles about the advent of war in Europe, ridiculed Methodists and Salvation Army members for serving as soldiers. “Would to God,” it editorialized “that one could be found to stand in the gap to refuse to move at the command of these ungodly kings.” However, when the United States entered the war, the Burning Bush’s tone became far more moderate. As the voice of a movement in which virtually all men of draft age were either ordained ministers or theology students, Burning Bush editorials urged loyalty to the United States government. Given the community’s mounting debt and widespread shortages of fuel and food, the MCA’s timidity was hardly surprising.11

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As the war ended in November 1918, the MCA faced the future deeply in debt and without its greatest financial asset: Farson’s wealth. His municipal bond business had collapsed due to the war, as patriotic investors liquidated their holdings in municipal bonds to invest in war bonds instead. He declared bankruptcy, but remained MCA president through the year. As the MCA’s finances foundered and the communities in Waukesha and Bullard struggled to survive, tension began to develop between the Harveys and Farson and his sons Duke Jr. and Warren. Adding to the financial woes, the Waukesha community was struck by the influenza pandemic that occurred as the war was ending. It became necessary for the MCA “at the time of this contagion to take some steps for protection as well as being under restrictions by the health board.” They were not permitted to hold meetings, and they kept people who were not residents of the Fountain Spring House away, including children from the Waukesha community who attended the Bible School. In a statement that might seem unusual for someone who believed in divine healing, Gertrude Harvey wrote to a couple who lived outside the community: “You must pray for us because we don’t want the contagion to get into our midst as we consider it very dangerous and it would be a real hardship on us to have cases.”12 Initially, the MCA thought that it had been spared from the pandemic, but a national resurgence of the flu following the celebrations of the end of the war on 11 November struck the Waukesha community. A little over half of the approximately 400 residents of the MCA community contracted the disease, and the community mobilized to care for them. The Bible School was turned into a hospital and the dining room was divided into two sections— one for the ill and recovering and one for the healthy. Forty-five people at a time devoted themselves to caring for the sick. Within three weeks the pandemic had passed and Mrs. Harvey was able to “thank the Lord that we had no deaths.” She further wrote that “surely the Lord did put His hand on it and say ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no farther,’ for a good many of us who were right around in it a good deal, feel thankful that the Lord spared us from having it.”13 On 21 December 1918, E. L. and Gertrude Harvey became aware that president Duke Farson and his sons Duke Jr., and Warren, along with former White associate John Wesley Hubbart, were contacting key figures within the MCA about the need for internal reforms. The Farsons’ so-called “reform movement” seemed highly unlikely to succeed given the fact that the MCA’s three-member board of trustees included Duke Farson, and E. L. and Gertrude Harvey. On 24 December, E. L. and Gertrude Harvey removed Farson as president and, fearing a Farson takeover of the MCA’s Chicago property, received a court injunction

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ordering Duke Farson and Hubbart to vacate the MCA’s East Congress Street Mission in Chicago. By 28 December, the Farsons and a handful of Chicago supporters had left the MCA and organized their own Immanuel Church on Chicago’s Near West Side. The church established a periodical, a publishing house, a mission, an annual camp meeting, and the Immanuel Souvenir Calendar, later Christian Service Calendar. In 1927, Duke Farson relocated to Los Angeles where he and the Immanuel Church expired together in 1929. Among the most significant immediate results of Farson’s bankruptcy was the MCA’s reluctant decision to abandon the Texas community. Responding to the MCA pullout, in February 1919, Vandever, the major creditor of the Metropolitan Institute of Bullard, Texas, brought suit against the Texas community for $17,353.98 in principal and interest. With MCA members abandoning the property, the land was sold to Vandever for $1,000 at a public auction in April 1919. In spite of the community’s short duration and the fact that none of the MCA’s buildings remain standing, memories of the ecstatic worship and innovative agricultural practices of the “Order of the Burning Bush” remain deeply embedded in this East Texas community, a testimony to the power, vision, and character of their utopian experiment.14 In Wisconsin, the effects of the war, chronic overcrowding, and, worse, the community’s mounting debt were taking a serious toll on Harvey and the Movement he had founded. The Burning Bush’s fiery cartoons and attacks on so-called “holiness compromisers” became less frequent. Harvey’s own writings, and the writings of others in the community, took on a nostalgic tone. A contemporary holiness periodical mockingly noted, “You had better put on your shoes, boys, the Bush has lost its fire.” To the embarrassment of Harvey, several key members (including Aaron Mokstad, a former missionary to India and a hero of the Crandon revival) joined the Messenger Publishing Company and also became ordained ministers in the Chicago Central District of the Church of the Nazarene. The MCA’s frequent attacks on the Church of the Nazarene became increasingly shrill and defensive in nature even while it insisted that the “Bush still burns.” “You take a man who holds a 3rd or 4th or 5th or 6th position in the Burning Bush, if he will join the Nazarene Church [he] is given prominence immediately,” the Burning Bush complained in the fall of 1919.15 A year later, in an imaginary interview of a member of the MCA aspiring to become a part of the Nazarene Church, Harvey reminded his followers that such a person would have to compromise with labor unions, wealth, dress, and divorce and remarriage. “Do you understand that you hereby renounce your honest convictions—that you will allow us thus to pull out your spiritual teeth,”

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Harvey wrote in the mock interview, “[while] abstaining from rebuking, reproving or exhorting people to quit the before-mentioned sins [divorce and remarriage, laying up treasures on earth, etc.] and those things which lean toward the world.” In the late fall of 1921, Harvey was again bitterly complaining that ordinary Burning Bush backsliders were instantly given prominence in the Church of the Nazarene. “The Bush is the same as when these compromisers were here,” Harvey concluded, in a defense that would have been unnecessary several years earlier. “It is burning with eternal glory and proclaiming a full salvation. This is holiness. Less is Nazareneism and compromise.”16 Still the MCA’s passionate evangelism continued. In the 1920s its greatest successes continued to occur in rural areas and small and mid-sized towns in the upper Midwest. Especially noteworthy, in part because of the Burning Bush Movement’s militant opposition to labor unions, was the Movement’s considerable evangelistic success in the iron mining regions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Here MCA evangelist Leslie Ingram, who learned Finnish to facilitate communication with the region’s largest foreign ethnic group, spent the decade of the 1920s as a self-supporting itinerant evangelist. “It is farthest from Mrs. Ingram and me to want to settle down,” Ingram wrote in 1929, “if it is God’s will to scatter the gospel elsewhere.”17 W. S. Hitchcock, whose productive service in West Virginia had made him one of the Movement’s undisputed leaders, established a rigorous itinerancy in Minnesota and North Dakota. Ranging from the southeastern Minnesota community of Spring Valley to New Salem, North Dakota, Hitchcock’s ministry resulted in a number of remarkable converts, including an educated and prosperous Minnesota farmer, George Bitzer. Bitzer’s sons Howard and Warren would become important MCA leaders. In New Salem, Hitchcock’s ministry, which began in the community’s Presbyterian church, led to the formation of an independent MCA congregation in 1921. The climax of Hitchcock’s ministry in the Upper Midwest was the establishment of a successful mission in Minneapolis. Vying with Hitchcock for leadership of the MCA was John T. Johnson. A native of downstate Danforth, Illinois, Johnson, and his wife, Hattie Roemer, a product of the church’s early evangelism in Chicago, established the Movement’s most successful urban missions of the period in Milwaukee, Waterloo, Iowa, and Detroit. Arriving unknown in Detroit in the early 1920s, the Johnsons pitched a tent and, after drawing crowds with the singing, shouting, and leaping of MCA worshipers, created a thriving congregation. As the Johnsons’ daughter Lillian Johnson Harvey fondly recalled, life was never dull for her as the daughter of a man whom E. L. Harvey referred to as the Movement’s “warhorse.”18

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Despite these small victories, the MCA’s revivals were, as its faithful knew, pale imitations of similar campaigns from the Movement’s glory days. Unlike the thousands who attended the Chicago, Boston, or even Danville, Illinois, meetings of 1901 and 1902, the crowds were modest and the converts few. By contrast, conventional holiness churches, such as the Church of the Nazarene, were among the fastest-growing denominations in North America during the 1920s and 1930s. Quite simply, the MCA’s rejection of private property found fewer takers in the years following World War I. Nevertheless, on occasion the MCA still spawned revivals of unusual power. One such erupted during the winter of 1919–20 in the scenic southwestern Wisconsin community of Boscobel, where in 1898 a couple of traveling salesmen had formed the Christian Commercial Association, now Gideons International. The Boscobel revival began modestly in response to an urgent prayer request from a mother who wanted the MCA to send someone to pray with her ill son. Henry Anaman, an African attending the Bible School in Waukesha, was assigned. While waiting to change trains in Madison, Anaman was arrested for disturbing the peace after his street preaching offended the sensitive ears of the city’s police. While in jail, he happened upon a songbook with the name and address of Louis Goetz, a Presbyterian minister from Boscobel. Following his release from jail and the completion of his assignment in Boscobel, Anaman decided to visit Goetz.19 A graduate of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Goetz had recently returned to Boscobel following a sixteen-year pastorate at a German Presbyterian Church in Nebraska. Impressed by Anaman’s account of the work in Waukesha, the entire Goetz family, including a niece, Esther Stein, who was a student at Moody Bible Institute, visited the Burning Bush community in Waukesha. Goetz found himself deeply moved by the work of the Waukesha community and responded positively to the Burning Bush message. Soon he and his immediate family joined the Burning Bush Movement.20 In April 1920, E. L. Harvey and Arthur C. Bray were sent to continue the earlier ministry in Boscobel. The results were electrifying. Farmers gave up farms and young people abandoned secular singing and music. “These farmers,” Harvey wrote “[know] that there is no way around it, a man must give up all if he wants to be saved. That is all there is to it.” Concerning one convert Harvey wrote, “He is a regular Burning Busher, shouts and prays out loud, and runs across the room praising the Lord, and has glorious victory.” Thirtyseven people, including Louis Boebel and Charles Zimmerman and their families, and Esther Stein, joined the Waukesha community as a result of the revival. Affirming the MCA teaching of “giving up all for Jesus,” Stein, who was reported to have organized the first Christian Endeavor Society in the

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Presbyterian Church, would spend twelve years as a Burning Bush missionary in Africa.21 Despite such successful revivals, along with a steady stream of converts and donated property such as farms and even a small chain of Milwaukee butcher shops, the Movement’s debt grew to more than $200,000.22 All this took its toll on Harvey. In 1922, at the age of fifty-seven, he was stricken with a heart attack while preaching at the MCA camp meeting and never fully recovered. He insisted valiantly that the debt would be canceled by the imminent return of Jesus, and he attempted to maintain morale while the financial situation worsened. The question of economic survival came to overshadow all other concerns, such as those of a generation of young people, many raised exclusively in the sheltered environment of the Fountain Spring House, who were on the verge of open rebellion. Increasingly, Harvey’s critics within the MCA became convinced that the primary cause of the Movement’s financial crisis was his generosity. In 1925, as the emergency deepened, Hitchcock, perhaps Harvey’s most vocal critic, proposed a radical reduction in the communal features of the Burning Bush Movement. He suggested that all able-bodied people not needed to carry out the educational, publishing, and farming needs of the community in Waukesha be sent out to support themselves. His proposal offered the seeds for solving the MCA’s financial dilemma. In October, at a hastily called meeting of the Church’s ordained ministers, E. L. and Gertrude Harvey resigned their posts as president and treasurer. To the surprise of all, the Harveys proposed that Hitchcock become president. He was elected along with four trustees: J. Howard Barnes, vice president and secretary; E. W. Smith, treasurer; Henry L. Harvey, assistant secretary; and J. T. Johnson. The Harveys left the community for retirement in Louisiana.23 On 22 January 1926, E. L. Harvey died. With the MCA already experiencing significant changes inaugurated by the new administration, the founder’s funeral in the Fountain Spring House and burial in Waukesha’s Prairie Home Cemetery took on added significance. It was ostensibly a tribute to Harvey, his ministry, the periodical he had founded, and the Movement’s missions in the United States and abroad. But the funeral provided community members with an opportunity to justify publicly their own affirmation of holiness radicalism and their decision to cast their lot with the mission of God’s “peculiar people” in Waukesha. The nearly one thousand people in attendance represented the Movement’s faithful, and they directed much of their attention toward two visitors. One was the previously discussed African American, a living reminder of Harvey’s roots in Chicago. The other was the stately Messenger, board chairman of the Church of the Nazarene, whose fond memories of the glory days of the MCA had long ago replaced his disappointment

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with Harvey’s decision to cease publication of the Scripture Text Calendar in 1913.24 Fittingly, the service featured the Methodist hymns of Harvey’s youth and songs written by members of the movement he had led. Among them was one of his favorites, “I Cannot Leave the Narrow Way,” written by Flora Lucas Palmer and sung by Palmer and Helga A. Stabell, an experienced preacher and veteran of such glorious MCA revivals as the Crandon Revival of 1906. Thirty years earlier, Stabell had been one of the first children to enroll in the Metropolitan Methodist Church Sunday School. Association vice president J. Howard Barnes gave the eulogy. A convert of the MCA’s Rockford Convention of 1902, Barnes remembered having been attracted by the spontaneous joy of the early Burning Bush Movement. He remembered Harvey as a “loveable man.” Barnes, who was already known to be opposing some of the new president’s policies defiantly reminded the MCA faithful that the Movement’s real love was not for the man but for his message. As Marian Madison summarized Barnes’s message, “He who has led many into the way of the cross, would desire that those who love them and mourn his [Harvey’s] loss, only follow more devoutly and fervently in the footsteps of Christ.” Following a hymn, the MCA’s new president, Hitchcock, spoke on the brevity of life, and in a barb directed at his critics, the continual need to adjust to changing circumstances. John T. Johnson closed the service in prayer. Responding to Hitchcock’s call for change, Johnson affirmed the Movement’s love of “the narrow way.” As the service made clear, the success of Hitchcock’s plan to radically restructure the Burning Bush Movement was not a foregone conclusion in January 1926.25 W. S. Hitchcock, a former businessman and Presbyterian elder from Crandon, Wisconsin, made it his first act to meet with the Association’s creditors. To forestall foreclosure, he immediately initiated a series of economic reforms. In particular, he placed the publishing department on an independent basis with the power to make purchases and settle accounts. Acting on his belief that the real cause of the community’s economic crisis was Harvey’s policy of granting housing to individuals with few skills and little ambition, he put virtually every able-bodied member on the road selling publications. He also began encouraging large families, especially those whose parents lacked skills needed in the Waukesha community, to find employment outside the community. Remarkably, although disappointed, few complained even though some had given the community substantial amounts of property. In a far more controversial decision, the community closed its homes for the elderly. The fact that some of Hitchcock’s bitterest critics found themselves in public homes for the aged was not quickly forgotten. The success and lack of resistance to the new president’s plan was, in part, due to a skillfully delivered message by

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Hitchcock at the final service of the 1925 Camp Meeting aptly titled “It Is the Last Time.” In the sermon Hitchcock pictured Christ weeping over a rebellious Jerusalem. To Burning Bush insiders, many of whom were aware of the very real threat of foreclosure looming in the community’s future, the meaning of the message needed little explanation: unless things changed this would the last camp meeting in Waukesha.26 As the years passed, many would question Hitchcock’s theology and vision, but no one would question his ability to raise funds. As the Burning Bush noted in 1929, “He can preach money out of people’s pockets with a boldness that is remarkable.” By the late 1920s, fewer than two hundred people were in residence at the Fountain Spring House. Amazingly, especially given the Depression, Hitchcock’s reforms worked an economic miracle. The entire debt was liquidated by the early 1930s.27 Hitchcock’s policies alone do not account for the amazing increase in the sales of Gospel Art Calendars, publications, greeting cards, wall mementos, and children’s books. In fact, the MCA’s economic resurgence resulted largely from the dedication of the selfless sales force of canvassers who received no salaries. They often lived in missions, inexpensive hotels, or with supporters while they sold products house to house. Profits were invested in the establishment of regional offices, referred to as “missions,” in leadership and management training (the Bible School), and in developing new products. This process of economic renewal reinvented the Burning Bush Movement as a religious order committed to marketing. In contrast to the dedication to evangelism of the sales force during the Harvey era, younger canvassers now were discouraged from engaging in personal evangelism and were urged to concentrate on sales.28 Evangelism was now refocused inwardly as a remarkable religious revival swept through the Bible School and among church workers from 1926 to 1928. The revival was rooted in Hitchcock’s conviction that the community’s indebtedness was the result of spiritual lethargy and as such demanded repentance. “Show me a man who is careless in handling money,” Hitchcock warned the community in the spring of 1926, “and I will show you a man who will be careless in his spiritual life.” Skillfully marginalizing his antagonists and exploiting Gertrude Harvey’s desire to see the new president succeed, Hitchcock and several key allies (including Mrs. Hitchcock, vice president J. Howard Barnes, E. W. Smith, treasurer of the church, and an eccentric Welsh convert, J. A. Williams) repeatedly emphasized the need for the church, especially its leaders, to seek repentance. Hitchcock, a skillful revival preacher, masterfully set the stage for the intense spiritual awakening. Giving his critics few prime preaching opportunities, he and his associates monopolized the community’s preaching.

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At the 1927 camp meeting, Hitchcock, buoyed by the Movement’s economic recovery, an attendance of more than 3,500, and radical preaching focusing on the spiritual indolence of the church, urged his opponents to seek forgiveness. The climax came on the final Wednesday of the camp meeting when Hitchcock, in a powerful two-hour message on “joy,” suggested that the leaders of the Church, whose spiritual indifference had led the Movement into economic and spiritual paralysis, should repent in the same manner as the biblical King David who had demonstrated deep remorse in seeking forgiveness and great joy upon experiencing restoration to God. The response electrified the camp meeting, as trusted leaders such as Henry L. Harvey, W. T. Pettengill, Arthur C. Bray, and John Wesley Hubbart (who had returned to the MCA from the Immanuel Church late in 1919) made spontaneous public confessions of spiritual failings. Responding to Hitchcock’s contention that those who experienced forgiveness would, as David, give visible demonstration to such a glorious deliverance, respected leaders and teachers willingly became “fools for Jesus.” As Arthur L. Bray remembered, one leader, and not incidentally a Hitchcock rival, ran around the tent with a teapot on his head. The result, as Bray remembered, was the humiliation of Hitchcock’s adversaries and, perhaps unintentionally, the refocusing of the Movement’s evangelism upon its own children.29 In January 1928, the Movement’s children, awed by the spiritual power of the new leader and his magnanimity in restoring repentant leaders such as Harvey, Hubbart, and Pettengill, were swept by the second phase of the revival. Especially moved by Hitchcock’s preaching were a popular nineteen-year-old high school teacher and natural leader, Howard A. Bitzer, the founder’s two nephews, Henry L. Harvey Jr. and especially Edwin F. Harvey, and Gilbert Blinn. By the time of the 1928 camp meeting, virtually all of the high school students were confessing Christians. As a deeply thankful Gertrude Harvey wrote, “Our young people have yielded their lives to God and they look at the world as a field to gather some grain for the master.” Intensely loyal to Bitzer as their teacher and to Hitchcock as the spiritual and the temporal leader of the Movement, the youth enthusiastically embraced rigorous discipline and long hours as canvassers. Nearly seventy years later, the excitement of the revival lived on in the testimonies of those who experienced salvation and sanctification in the summer of 1928. In turn, parents, grateful for the spiritual commitments of their children, were even more willing to follow the new leader in the often-weary work of production and canvassing.30 Hitchcock’s rapid advancement of young leaders was, in part, a by-product of his attempt to consolidate power. Henry L. Harvey Sr., who as the brother of the founder was a natural rival to Hitchcock, was removed from the Board of

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Trustees in 1927. Confessing to a loss of his sanctification experience, Harvey was replaced on the board by a rehabilitated W. T. Pettengill. A year later, John T. Johnson, still considered a threat by Hitchcock, was replaced on the board by Hitchcock loyalist E. A. Williams. In the early 1930s, J. Howard Barnes, although a faithful supporter of the Hitchcock-led initiative of 1926, began to question the general direction of the Movement. The leadership acted quickly and Barnes was assigned to New Mexico and was removed as vice president in 1933. By this time, Gertrude Harvey, frustrated with Hitchcock’s repeated attacks on the spiritual failings of the Harvey era, had retired to Chicago. A new order had come to the MCA.31 In the fall of 1930, the changes initiated by Hitchcock were enshrined in the Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association. The Movement’s first formal discipline radically modified the MCA’s traditional rejection of private property. Although Burning Bush leaders continued to insist that they taught the traditional MCA doctrine of “forsaking all,” the church no longer encouraged people to surrender their possessions and move to the Bible School. In effect, the church created two levels of membership. The first consisted of church workers, including ministers, deaconesses, missionaries, printers, canvassers, and residents of the Fountain Spring House. Just as those in monastic orders, these people received no salaries and were expected to surrender any possessions they had when they entered the church. The second level consisted of several categories: those sent out from Waukesha who remained faithful to the Movement; supporters who attended Burning Bush missions; and others who might only travel to the annual camp meeting. These people were expected to provide financial support much as members of the other evangelical denominations generally supported their churches. Similar to traditional holiness evangelists, such as W. B. Godbey, the MCA now taught that nonchurch workers were stewards of the wealth God had given them. As the radical reversal of the Movement’s policy was expressed in the Discipline, “It is the bounden duty of each one to give to his or her very limit.” Even more amazing, given the Burning Bush’s rigorous attacks on tithing, the church now insisted that “at least one-tenth of all one’s receipts should be given to God.”32 Responding to the Movement’s experience of indebtedness in Bullard, Texas, and at the Fountain Spring House, the MCA now taught that the borrowing of money was unscriptural and a hindrance to the preaching of the gospel. In a further reversal of policy, husbands were told that, notwithstanding the teaching of Acts 2:44–45, a husband was responsible for providing “the necessaries of life for his family.” In fact, the very Movement that once had urged the faithful to sell all and join God’s people in Waukesha now asserted that becoming dependent upon “the Lord’s people or His church was an indication of a

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lapse of faith, and an evidence of backsliding.” Naturally, not everyone accepted the new policy willingly. In February 1931, Christian Ritter, a former resident of the Fountain Spring House with several young children, wrote the Burning Bush that his initial resistance to the church’s demand that he leave Waukesha and get a job had resulted in considerable suffering for his family. However, upon his acceptance of the discipline of God’s people, the Lord had miraculously provided him with a job as a linotype operator. Although a cynic might be tempted to conclude that Ritter’s job was less the result of a miracle than of his skill as a printer, the lesson he drew was that “obedience to God and His church” had opened “the windows of Heaven.” Ritter’s experience was not unique. In the difficult decade of the 1930s, many of those “sent out” had similar stories of divine deliverance.33 The most remarkable doctrinal innovation of the Hitchcock years regarded marriage. The association placed the needs of the church above those of the individual worker, insisting that the fundamental question was one’s “usefulness” to the church. The new Discipline required that any member contemplating marriage receive the approval of the “godliest persons in the association.” Although this policy was not spelled out in the Discipline, the Hitchcocks actually taught that only entirely sanctified men and women were candidates for marriage. Naturally, since the determination of heart holiness was subjective, the policy, in effect, gave the president and his wife control over marriage within the MCA. In the two decades that followed, they deemed few individuals spiritually suitable for marriage. Canvassers, the church’s economic backbone, were generally not given the privilege. Although many young women and men willingly accepted the discipline of celibacy, Arthur L. Bray believed that as many as five hundred people were lost to the Movement by 1937 as a result this policy. In effect, a utopian community had become, to its detriment, a Protestant religious order. Shorn of its aggressive evangelism, the Burning Bush Movement attracted few converts. Unable to pass the flame to a third generation successfully, by 1992 the Burning Bush Movement’s membership had fallen to seventy-two.34 In the course of one generation, the MCA had experienced a remarkable odyssey. The Metropolitan Methodist Mission, an evangelistic mission of two respectable aspiring young urban Methodists, had attracted a remarkable cast of North American religious folk heroes including Beverly Carradine, E. F. Walker, Henry Clay Morrison, Seth C. Rees, Charles and Lettie Burd Cowman, Bud Robinson, Alma White, A. G. Garr, Glenn A. Cook, and F. M. Messenger. Interacting with some of the most dynamic religious forces of Progressive Era America, the MCA challenged the emerging professional elites in religion, economics, education, and medicine. The Movement was blessed with unusual

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economic resources and ingenious followers. While it was only one expression of evangelical communalism, the MCA had established one of the largest and most successful communal societies in American history. In launching a notable religious periodical, the Movement helped to shape gospel music, popularized new commercial religious products (e.g., the Scripture Text Calendar), and profoundly influenced the course of twentieth-century Christianity through its impact on the worldwide Pentecostal revival. In all honesty, these were not the goals of Harvey and Farson. As utopian dreamers in Progressive Era America, they sought to prepare a peculiar and entirely sanctified people fit for the messianic reign about to be inaugurated physically by Jesus. Naturally, as the promise of such a kingdom receded, their descendants, including their holiness and Pentecostal heirs, have become comfortable with more modest goals. In the quest for respectability and for places in the academy and the larger culture, their offspring have chosen to neglect the communal and folk dimensions of Progressive Era perfectionism. As with other movements, there has been a price for such historical amnesia. Amazingly, although many insist that the Holiness Movement is merely one expression of Protestant orthodoxy, the enduring power and inventive genius of such unlikely characters as Bud Robinson and the continuing mass appeal of the holiness devotional writings of Lettie Cowman and Oswald Chambers remain for many an inexplicable mystery. Ironically, even as the heirs of the Holiness Movement seek social and intellectual relevance, they show little understanding that the movement that spawned them exploited popular art forms (i.e., music, cartoons, calendars) while threatening the fundamental economic assumptions of Progressive Era optimism. They were products of their age, who skillfully employed a rich religious heritage to claim dignity for themselves and anyone willing to “forsake all for Jesus.”

Afterword

In 1950, the MCA Board of Trustees, long frustrated with Hitchcock’s intransigence and autocratic style, removed him as president. In response, Hitchcock loyalists, including many of the Movement’s young adults, organized the Wesleyan Covenant Church. It established congregations in Milwaukee, Chicago, Denver, St. Louis and Dearborn, Michigan, a high school at Potomac, Illinois and missions in Mexico and among the Navajo Indians in New Mexico. The Wesleyan Covenant Church faithfully followed the pattern established by Hitchcock in the late 1920s, selling calendars and publications door-to-door. Members of the church only abandoned canvassing when it ceased to provide sufficient revenue to cover expenses. In 1978, the Wesleyan Covenant Church merged with the Evangelical Church of North America.1 The exodus of Hitchcock loyalists reduced membership in the MCA and was a significant factor in the church’s decision in 1956 to sell the Fountain Spring House. The MCA relocated to Dundee, Illinois where it continued to market books, religious art, gift products, and the reliable Scripture calendar. In 1961, the MCA reported 443 members in fifteen North American churches.2 In the 1970s, the Burning Bush Movement sold the Dundee property. The MCA acquired an old resort hotel in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin where the Movement maintained a home for retired missionaries and continued to publish a less controversial Burning Bush. The Lake Geneva property was sold in 2000 and the last MCA

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congregation in North America in Milwaukee sold its church building in 2004. Funds from the sale were used to hire a physician for the MCA hospital in North India. The MCA archives were transferred to Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. The most notable feature of the Burning Bush Movement during the Hitchcock era was the emphasis it placed on foreign missions. Although membership figures are difficult to determine, estimates suggests that the church has over fifty thousand members in India where in North India it operates the Bitzer Memorial School and the J. S. Whipple Hospital. The majority of the church’s membership is located in South India. In South Africa, the Metropolitan Evangelistic Churches have six congregations and over six hundred members; in Swaziland, membership exceeds one thousand. In Mexico, the MCA has over twenty churches. Although the North American body continues to provide limited financial support, the churches have indigenous national leaders and are largely self-supporting.3 Many individuals nurtured in the Burning Bush Movement found homes in other established holiness bodies, founded independent ministries, or had distinguished careers in business and the academy. Especially noteworthy in this regard are the careers of Arthur L. Bray, Duke Farson, Floyd Glenn Lounsbury, Henry L. Harvey Jr. and Edwin F. and Lillian Johnson Harvey. After leaving the MCA in 1937, Arthur L. Bray (1911–93) attended Olivet Nazarene College and briefly was pastor of a Church of the Nazarene congregation in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After joining the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1941, Bray received an undergraduate degree from Upper Iowa University. In 1945, Bray and Wilber T. Dayton established a Wesleyan Methodist congregation in Oak Park, Illinois. Bray served as president of the Illinois Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church from 1950 to 1968. Planting over a dozen new congregations during his tenure as conference president, Bray emerged as an important denominational leader who continued to be an active minister until ill health forced him to retire in 1991. Equally interesting has been the odyssey of the Farson family. After separating from the MCA, Bernard Farson became one of the many former Burning Bushers to find employment as a printer for the Messenger Publishing Company. In 1927, Duke Farson and several faithful supporters relocated to Los Angeles, California. Continuing the publication of the Immanuel Herald, Farson became pastor of an independent holiness congregation—a position he held until his death in 1929. Faithful to the theology and spirit of the Burning Bush Movement, the Immanuel Herald, justifying its ministry, as had Martin Wells Knapp, on Jeremiah’s prophetic call “to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy,” bitterly attacked such old MCA foes as Bud

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Robinson, Henry Clay Morrison and the Church of the Nazarene. “Before the actual work of construction of a true Christian character and experience is begun,” Farson wrote in 1928, “there must be digging down and casting out of former things; old things must pass away, and a new life can then begin.” Farson’s major work of deconstruction in California, interestingly given the failure of the MCA’s Los Angeles campaign of 1906, was to initiate a crusade against alleged Church of the Nazarene compromises on the divorce question.4 Duke Farson’s spirit of nonconformity, albeit modified by the family’s bitter experience as holiness radicals, has continued in the lives of his descendants. Deeply disillusioned, Warren and Duke Farson Jr., abandoned evangelical Christianity for Unitarianism. Never able to separate himself completely from his formative experience in the Burning Bush Movement, Duke Jr., a commercial artist, songwriter and poet, spent his life warning people of the dangers of religious fanaticism. Duke Farson’s son Richard continued the radicalism of his father and grandfather. As a psychologist, he has been an outspoken leader in the children’s and animal rights movements.5 Bernard Farson, the oldest of the elder Farson’s three children, chose a far different course. In 1928, he organized the Church Press in Glendale, California. A skilled printer who had served briefly as superintendent of Burning Bush publishing operations, Bernard Farson emerged as an important evangelical leader in Southern California. He served as a board member of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now Biola University, and became the friend of a host of evangelical leaders in Southern California. Affirming the modified holiness doctrine of the Keswick tradition, Farson moved easily among the Fundamentalist, holiness, Pentecostal and established denominational customers of the Church Press. His wife, May Arthur, a convert of the MCA’s Boston mission, followed a different course. She experienced physical healing at a service conducted by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1928 and remained a deeply committed religious radical. True to the religious convictions she had developed with the MCA, she died of cancer in 1950, refusing medical treatment to the very end. Kenneth Farson, Bernard’s and May’s son and a frequent companion of his grandfather Farson, inherited the family’s abiding nonconformity. He was imprisoned for resisting the draft during the Second World War and later succeeded his father as head of the Church Press. A second son, Allan, with the aid of family friend and fellow pacifist sympathizer William “Uncle Cam” Townsend, co-founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, avoided military service by working as a printer and Bible translator for Wycliffe in Mexico. After the War, Allan Farson organized one of the major Spanish language evangelical publishing operations, Tipográfica Indígena in

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Cuernavaca. In 1968, leaving the Cuernavca operation in the hands of his Mexican associates, Allan Farson returned to Glendale to assist his brother in the operation of the Church Press. Similar to the Messenger Publishing Company, emigrants from the Burning Bush Movement were a key source of labor for the Church Press.6 Besides the Farsons, others nurtured by the MCA had remarkable careers outside the evangelical orbit. Floyd Glenn Lounsbury (1914–98), one of the founders of Linguistic Anthropology, was perhaps the most notable. Lounsbury was raised on a farm near Stevens Point, Wisconsin by a family of MCA supporters and received his early education at the Bible School in Waukesha. As a student at the University of Wisconsin he was asked to conduct the WPA-funded Oneida Language and Folk Lore Project. His Wisconsin MA thesis (1946) and Yale PhD thesis (1949) were path breaking studies in the field. The much-honored Lounsbury served on the Yale faculty from 1947–1979. He was Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale at the time of his death. A missionary to India from 1931 to 1943, Henry L. Harvey Jr. (1912–94) was responsible for the MCA’s expansion into South India in 1936. Returning to the states, Harvey graduated from Northwestern University. Becoming an important evangelical leader in the Chicago area, he was eventually named president of Compassion, an Evangelical child development agency founded to care for the children left in Korea by American servicemen. Among the most interesting and faithful expressions of the Burning Bush tradition has been the ministry of Edwin F. Harvey (1908–83) and Lillian Johnson Harvey (1911–2008). Inheriting the radicalism of his uncle, E. L. Harvey, and of her father, John T. Johnson, the husband and wife team led the MCA mission and Bible School in Glasgow, Scotland from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s. Many MCA members saw Edwin F. Harvey as the natural successor to his uncle E. L. Harvey and W. S. Hitchcock. Still loyal to their spiritual mentor Hitchcock and frustrated with the Movement’s apparent declining interest in evangelism, they separated from the MCA in the early 1950s. Organizing MOVE, Message of Victory Evangelism, which was named for the periodical that the MCA had edited in the British Isles, the Harveys began an extensive itinerant evangelistic and publishing ministry that experienced considerable success especially in Northern England during the late 1960s. The Harveys abandoned the exclusiveness of the Burning Bush Movement while maintaining its spirit and doctrinal emphasis. In the tradition of early faith missionaries in the mid-1990s Lillian Johnson Harvey was still supporting her ministry through free will offerings and the sale of publications. Today her daughter and son-in-law, Trudy and Barry Tait, continue

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to carry out a ministry of evangelism and service in England, Eastern Europe and the United States. Deeply rooted in the communitarian holiness tradition and drawing on the economic teachings of Jesus, the early church, John Wesley and George Müller, Lillian Harvey’s message to the end of her life was in the tradition of the Lukan Jesus, belief “that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”7

Notes

PREFACE

1. Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003), 15, 17. 2. Carey McWilliams, The Education of Carey McWilliams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 321–24. 3. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid–nineteenth Century America (New York: Abingdon, 1957); and Donald W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).

INTRODUCTION

1. Jack London, “Holy Jumpers Conduct Their Services,” Boston American, 19 December 1905. 2. Timothy L. Smith, Called unto Holiness: The Story of the Nazarenes: The Formative Years (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962). On the nineteenth–century background of Holy Rollers see Melvin E. Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1996). For the best discussion of Holiness Movement culture and spirituality, see Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1974). 3. William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 422. For an insightful academic discussion of the image of Holy Rollers, see Sean McCloud, Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 9–101.

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4. For a general introduction to the Metropolitan Church Association, see William Kostlevy, “The Burning Bush Movement: A Wisconsin Utopian Religious Community,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 83 (Summer 2000): 227–57. A second group of “jumpers” closely associated with the MCA was the Pillar of Fire. For information on them, see Susie C. Stanley, “Alma White: The Politics of Dissent,” in Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders, ed. James R. Goff Jr. and Grant Wacker, 71–83 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002). On the Wobblies, see Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969). 5. This point is made with reference to the Salvation Army in Dubofsky, We Shall Be All. 6. Franklin Rosemont, Joe Hill: The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2003), 309; and Oscar Arnal, “A New Society within the Shell of the Old: Millenarianism of the Wobblies,” Studies in Religion 8 (1979): 69. Not all historians of the Left share Hobsbawm’s willingness to endow early twentieth-century religious millenarians with the capacity for revolutionary action. For Christopher Hill, religious millenarianism died with the failure of revolutionary movements during the seventeenth-century English Civil War. In the fertile mind of E. P. Thompson, the radical millenarian tradition survived among antinomian perfectionists as late as the early nineteenth century. It is one of the points of this work, drawing on a growing body of literature, to argue that Hill and Thompson and others who share their perspective unfairly and arbitrarily privilege religious radicals of the past while marginalizing more recent expressions of the same currents. See Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1993), 36. 7. Arnal, “A New Society,” 73. I find unconvincing Donald E. Winters Jr.’s study of the Wobblies that unfortunately tries to suggest that they are in some sense linked with the moderate liberalism of the social gospel. See Winters, The Soul of the Wobblies: The I.W.W., Religion and American Culture in the Progressive Era, 1905–1917 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985). 8. Arnal, “A New Society,” 79. 9. Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John C. McMillian, eds. The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition (New York: New Press, 2003). See also Laurence R. Veysey, comp., The Perfectionists: Radical Social Thought in the North, 1815–1860 (New York: John Wiley, 1973); and John L. Thomas, “Romantic Reform in America 1815–1865,” American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965): 656–81. 10. Merrill Elmer Gaddis, “Christian Perfectionism in America” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1929). 11. R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 12. Material on many of the Holiness Movement communal societies, including the very interesting early Women’s Commonwealth of Belton, Texas; Salvation Army farm colonies; Frank Sandford’s Shiloh community in Maine; Zion, Illinois; and others, can be found in Robert S. Fogarty, All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Also see Donald E.

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Pitzer, ed., America’s Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). The most complete work on the Salvation Army farm colonies is Clark C. Spence, The Salvation Army Farm Colonies (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985). The quotation from Porter comes from Glenn Porter, “Industrialization and the Rise of Big Business,” in The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America, ed. Charles W. Calhoun (Wilmington, Del.: Scholar Resources, 1996), 2. 13. John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1870; repr., New York: Dover, 1966), 25–27. 14. The Booth quotation is from Aaron Ignatius Abell, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943), 119. 15. Howard A. Snyder, Populist Saints: B. T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodists (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006); and William Kostlevy, “Benjamin Titus Roberts and the Preferential Option for the Poor in the Early Free Methodist Church,” in Poverty and Ecclesiology: Nineteenth-Century Evangelicals in the Light of Liberation Theology, ed. Anthony L. Dunnavant, 51–67 (Collegeville: Minn.: Liturgical, 1992). 16. See William Kostlevy, “Culture, Class and Gender in the Progressive Era: The Social Thought of the Free Methodist Church in the Age of Gladden, Strong and Rauschenbusch,” in Perspectives on the Social Gospel, ed. Christopher H. Evans, 157–82 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1999). 17. Earnest Christian, June 1872, 190; and February 1865, 60. 18. Quoted in Kostlevy, “Benjamin Titus Roberts and the Preferential Option for the Poor,” 51. 19. C. M. Damon, Sketches and Incidents; or Reminiscences of Interest in the Life of the Author (Chicago: Free Methodist Publishing House, 1900), 249, 307–8; and Annual Minutes, Free Methodist Church, 1916, 322. 20. The Engels quotation is from Frederick Coutts, Bread for My Neighbour: An Appreciation of the Social Influence of William Booth (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), 11. See also Pamela J. Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001); and Lillian Taiz, Hallelujah Lads and Lasses: Remaking the Salvation Army in America, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 21. Donald W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 116. 22. Walker, Pulling The Devil’s Kingdom Down, 130; and Donald W. Dayton, “Good News to the Poor: The Methodist Experience after Wesley,” in A Portion for the Poor: Good News to the Poor in the Wesleyan Tradition, ed. M. Douglas Meeks (Nashville: Kingswood, 1995), 88. 23. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage, 117; Taiz, Hallelujah Lads and Lasses, 50–52, 15; and Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 215. 24. Taiz, Hallelujah Lads and Lasses, 107; and Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage, 118. The Darkest England program was a social reform campaign initiated by the Salvation Army and named for a best-selling book attributed to William Booth and

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published in 1890. The program included feeding, clothing, and housing the very poor; creating employment bureaus for the unemployed; and, more radically, resettling the urban poor in rural agricultural communities. The quotation from the New York Times is found in Taiz. 25. A contemporary example of the viewing of the Salvation Army as an expression of social Christianity is found in Josiah Strong, Religious Movements for Social Betterment (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1900), 120–32; an example of early scholarly tendencies to see the Salvation Army as part of the social gospel is found in Abell, The Urban Impact of American Protestantism. 26. Randall J. Stephens, The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). 27. On the rise of premillennialism in the Holiness Movement, see Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1987), 143–71; D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 77–114; and my detailed discussion in chapter 1. 28. The rise of premillennialism as a cause for the decline of Progressive social views is argued in Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage, 121–35. An example of Northern Holiness triumphalism is found in Jesse T. Peck, The History of the Great Republic, Considered from a Christian Stand-Point (New York: Broughton and Wyman, 1868). The quotation is from A. Sims, Behold the Bridegroom Cometh; or Some Remarkable and Incontrovertible Signs Which Herald the Near Approach of the Son of Man (Kingston, Ontario: By the Author, 1900), 107. My point that premillennialism is not tied to “ideological despair” is made by Grant Wacker in “The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age in American Protestantism, 1880–1910,” Journal of American History 72 (June 1985): 58. 29. L. L. Pickett, The Blessed Hope of His Glorious Appearing (Louisville: Pickett, 1901), 37–38; L. L. Pickett, The Renewed Earth; or The Coming and Reign of Jesus Christ (Louisville: Pickett, 1903), 30–31; and H. C. Morrison, Will God Set Up a Visible Kingdom on Earth? (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1934), 75–76. The point concerning “the moral and salvific meaning of the Lord’s return” for many Progressive Era Protestants was first made in Grant Wacker, “The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age,” 57. 30. William Kostlevy, “The Illusions of Perfectionism: E. Stanley Jones and Reinhold Niebuhr,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 42 (Fall 2007): 182–91.

CHAPTER

1

1. Knapp’s quotations are from “Objections to the So-Called Apostles Creed,” Revivalist, 15 November 1900, 7; “A Holy Ghost Movement,” Revivalist, 1 February 1900, 8; and “Holy Ghost Evangelists,” Revivalist, 22 February 1900, 8. 2. Martin Wells Knapp, Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies; or Devices of the Devil Unmasked (Cincinnati: Office of the Revivalist), 1898, 7. 3. Among the reasons the NHA’s first chronicler and secretary George Hughes gave for the need for a camp meeting dedicated to the promotion of the traditional

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Methodist doctrine of Christian perfection were “the demoralizing influence of the civil war,” the “inordinate ambition as respects to style of church architecture and . . . forms of worship, . . . a ministry conformed to the spirit of the age, . . . the adoption of worldly policy in the management of church finances,” and the decline of traditional camp meetings into “places of recreation and pleasant social intercourse” (George Hughes, Days of Power in the Forest Temple: A Review of the Wonderful Work of God at Fourteen National Camp-Meetings, from 1867–1872 [Boston: John Bent, 1873], 10–31). Similar views were expressed by John P. Brooks, who argued that the rapid decline of piety, especially in urban areas, was tied to a Christianity that “erects gorgeous and costly temples, to gratify pride, [and] seeks the favor and suffrage of the rich and great” (John P. Brooks, “What Are the Chief Hindrances to the Progress of the Work of Sanctification among Believers?” Proceedings of Holiness Conference Held at Cincinnati, November 26, 1877, and at New York, December 17, 1877 [Philadelphia: National Publishing Association for the Promotion of Holiness, 1878], 9). On the history of the formation of the NHA, see Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1974), 16–24; and Melvin E. Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1996), 98–103. 4. The most thorough discussions of “comeouterism” are found in Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion, 47–61; and Dieter, Holiness Revival, 236–95. 5. The European holiness revival is discussed in Dieter, Holiness Revival, 156–203. See also the brilliant, but highly subjective, interpretation of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, in his Perfectionism, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), 305–95. On the various millennial theories, see Paul S. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992). 6. On the Keswick Movement, see David D. Bundy, Keswick: A Bibliographic Introduction to the Higher Life Movements (Wilmore, Ky.: B. L. Fisher Library, Asbury Theological Seminary, 1975); Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1978), 176–81; and George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth–Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 72–101. 7. The phrase “providential movements” is from the first history of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. See G. P. Pardington, Twenty-Five Wonderful Years, 1889–1914: A Popular Sketch of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (New York: Christian Alliance, 1914; repr., New York: Garland, 1984), 13. 8. The standard history of the Alliance is Robert L. Niklaus, John S. Sawin, and Samuel J. Stoesz, All for Jesus: God at Work in the Christian and Missionary Alliance over One Hundred Years (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1996). The standard biography of Simpson is A. E. Thompson, A. B. Simpson: His Life and Work, rev. ed. (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1960). The most helpful discussion of the fourfold gospel is Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1987), 21–25; and also the discussion in the work of one of Dayton’s students, Meesaeng Lee Choi, The Rise of the Korean Holiness

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Church in Relation to the American Holiness Movement (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2008), 9–33. 9. The rapid growth of the Holiness Movement is discussed in Timothy L. Smith, Called unto Holiness: The Story of the Nazarenes: The Formative Years (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962), 38–42. On lay leadership in the Holiness Movement, see Dieter, Holiness Revival, 41–42. 10. See John Leland Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Francis Asbury Press of Zondervan Publishing House, 1985), 166. Outside Methodism, similar forces were at work. At Oberlin College the administration of Henry Churchill King decisively moved the school away from an emphasis on subjective spirituality and toward ethical action. See John Barnard, From Evangelicalism to Progressivism at Oberlin College, 1866–1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969). 11. Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism; and with relation to Friends, see Elbert Russell, The History of Quakerism (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 505–7; and Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800–1907 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 145–73. 12. The conflict in Georgia was complicated by the fact that the Holiness Movement was charged with being an agent of Northern Methodism and supporting such novel practices as women’s ministry. See Briane K. Turley, A Wheel within a Wheel: Southern Methodism and the Georgia Holiness Association (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1999), 144–45. 13. On the controversy in Texas, see Smith, Called unto Holiness, 41–42; and Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion, 93–95. 14. L. L. Pickett, A Plea for the Present Day Holiness Movement (Louisville: Pickett, 1896), 69, 82. On Morrison’s expulsion, see Percival A. Wesche, Henry Clay Morrison, Crusader Saint (Wilmore, Ky.: Asbury Theological Seminary, 1963), 82–92. See also Henry Clay Morrison, Some Chapters of My Life Story (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1941), 176. 15. The quotation and best discussion of these developments are in Smith, Called unto Holiness, 54–59. See also Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion, 90–93. On church architecture, see also Hughes, Days of Power, 13–17. 16. See the report of the New England Union Holiness Convention in Beulah Items, April 1889; and also see Smith, Called unto Holiness, 54–59. 17. Personal testimonies were a prominent feature in all Movement periodicals and were frequently printed in book form. Among the most important collections are Phoebe Palmer, ed., Pioneer Experiences; or, The Gift of Power Received by Faith: Illustrated and Confirmed by the Testimony of Eighty Living Ministers of Various Denominations (New York: W. C. Palmer, 1868). For an earlier work that contains some of the same testimonies, see The Riches of Grace; or The Blessing of Perfect Love, as Experienced, Enjoyed, and Recorded by Sixty-Two Living Witnesses (Brooklyn: Henry J. Fox, 1853). Other important works include S. Olin Garrison, Forty Witnesses Covering the Whole Range of Christian Experience (New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1888); and J. Gilchrist Lawson, Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, Gleaned from Their Biographies, Autobiographies, and Writings (Chicago: Glad Tidings, 1911).

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18. See James Mudge, Growth in Holiness toward Perfection; or Progressive Sanctification (New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1895), 271–72, 7, 9. 19. Daniel Steele, A Defense of Christian Perfection; or, A Criticism of Dr. James Mudge’s “Growth in Holiness toward Perfection” (New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1896), 17, 121–22, 128–32. See also Lewis R. Dunn, A Manual of Holiness and Review of Dr. James B. Mudge (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1895). 20. The doctrine of “the witness of the spirit” held that individuals could receive direct divine revelation. See Borden P. Bowne, The Christian Life: A Study (Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1899), 91, 95. On Bowne and the Holiness Movement, see Peters, Christian Perfection, 166–67. On James’s views of Bowne, see William James, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902), 502. The standard biography of Bowne is Francis John McConnell, Borden Parker Bowne: His Life and His Philosophy (New York: Abingdon, 1929). 21. Borden P. Bowne, The Atonement (Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1900), 66, 69. 22. Bowne, Christian Life, 58. 23. George W. Wilson, A Review of Prof. Borden P. Bowne’s “Studies of the Christian Life” (Boston: Christian Witness, 1900), 46–47. See also George W. Wilson, Methodist Theology vs. Methodist Theologians: A Review of Several Methodist Writers (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1904). 24. Daniel Steele, “Bowne on the Atonement,” Zion’s Herald, 4 October 1899, 1264–65. 25. See George W. Wilson, The Sign of Thy Coming; or, Premillennialism, Unscriptural and Unreasonable (Boston: Christian Witness, 1899); and Daniel Steele, A Substitute for Holiness; or, Antinomianism Revived; or, The Theology of the So-Called Plymouth Brethren Examined and Refuted (Chicago: Christian Witness, 1899; repr., New York: Garland, 1984). See also Steele’s analysis of the prophecy conference of 1878 in “The Prophetic Conference,” Zion’s Herald, 28 November 1878; and his last published work: “Why I Am Not a Premillennialist,” Methodist Review 93 (May 1911): 405–15. Another anti–premillennial work that was widely circulated in the Holiness Movement was S. M. Merrill’s The Second Coming of Christ, Considered in Its Relation to the Millennium, the Resurrection and the Judgment (Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1879). 26. The most important historical interpretations of premillennialism are Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism; Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture; and Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1982; enlarged ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie, 1983). For another interpretation of Fundamentalism that shares my view that it needs to be understood, at least in part, as a creative response to the cultural crises of the period, see Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 376–89. 27. Rees indicated that he embraced premillennialism and faith healing in 1888. See Revivalist, November 1897. On the early adoption of premillennialism by holiness Friends, see Hamm, Transformation of American Quakerism, 107. 28. In W. B. Godbey and Seth C. Rees, The Return of Jesus (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Office, 1898), 16, 75.

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29. The decisive year in the transition from post- to premillennialism appears to be 1896 when, possibly under the influence of Godbey, popular evangelists Beverly Carradine, G. D. Watson, L. L. Pickett, and Martin Wells Knapp publicly embraced the new teaching. Godbey indicated that he had embraced premillennialism in 1884, but scholars have found no record of his teaching the doctrine until the publication of his commentary on the New Testament in 1896. The interesting feature of Godbey’s commentary, which was published by Martin Wells Knapp, is its pervasive premillennial orientation, demonstrated in part by the fact that its first volume deals with the book of Revelation. Thomas H. Nelson, leader of the Pentecostal Bands of the World, a Free Methodist splinter group, published a premillennial work in 1896. By 1900, such important Holiness Movement leaders as Henry Clay Morrison and Canadian Free Methodist Albert Sims had joined the premillennial cause. On the rise of premillennialism in the Holiness Movement, see Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, 143–71; and D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 156–95. Especially useful is Kenneth Orville Brown, “Leadership in the National Holiness Association with Special Reference to Eschatology, 1867–1919” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1988). 30. The standard biography of Knapp is A. M. Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer; or, The Life of Rev. Martin Wells Knapp (Cincinnati: Mrs. M.W. Knapp, 1902). 31. Martin Wells Knapp, Christ Crowned Within (Albion, Mich.: Revivalist Office, 1888), 54–55, 197–98. 32. Hills, Hero of Faith and Prayer, 80. 33. “Jeremiah’s Revival Commission,” Revivalist, January 1890, 1. 34. Martin Wells Knapp, Impressions (Cincinnati: Revivalist Publishing House, 1892), 70–81, 48. This work was reprinted by Tyndale House in 1984, with an endorsement by popular evangelical radio personality James Dobson. The issue of divine guidance has been one of continued controversy in evangelicalism and in the Holiness Movement. 35. As a border city between the South and North, Cincinnati was the natural meeting place for the Southern and Northern Holiness Movements. Southern Ohio had long been a center of holiness agitation. During the late 1870s holiness agitation had broken out among Friends in Clinton County, while holiness leaders in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Hillsboro, Ohio, had played a key role in the formation of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union earlier in the decade. In neighboring Kentucky, the Holiness Movement, led by the irrepressible W. B. Godbey, had only recently made significant inroads among members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. However, during the 1890s, Movement centers had been established in Louisville, and south of Lexington, at Wilmore, where Asbury College was established in 1890 with a largely Methodist Episcopal Church, South, constituency. 36. Revivalist, June 1893. 37. “The International Revival League,” Revivalist, November 1893. 38. “Loyalty to the Church,” Revivalist, September 1894. 39. Thomas Hamm has suggested that Quakers influenced by the Holiness Movement abandoned the historic peace witness of the Society of Friends. This

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overstates the case. Until the 1940s, the Pilgrim Holiness Church, founded by Rees and Knapp, urged members not to participate in warfare. Conservative, or radical, splinter groups of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, such as the Emmanuel Association and the Grace Tabernacle Church, continue officially to oppose a Christian’s participation in warfare. 40. Biographical material on Seth C. Rees and Hulda Johnson Rees is found in Paul S. Rees, Seth Cook Rees, the Warrior Saint (Indianapolis: Pilgrim Book Room, 1934); Paul Westphal Thomas and Paul William Thomas, The Days of Our Pilgrimage: The History of the Pilgrim Holiness Church (Marion, Ind.: Wesley, 1976), 9–22; and in Byron J. Rees, Hulda: The Pentecostal Prophetess; or A Sketch of the Life and Triumph of Mrs. Hulda A. Rees, Together with Seventeen of Her Sermons (Philadelphia: Christian Standard, 1898). 41. Rees’s own account of his Cincinnati campaign of 1896 is found in Rees, Seth C. Rees, 56. The published version of these services is Seth C. Rees, The Ideal Pentecostal Church (Cincinnati: M. W. Knapp, 1897), 8, 116–18. Typical of Rees’ anti–ecclesiastical orientation is an 1898 defense of women’s ministry. “Beloved, when we swing back to Pentecost we can not wait for the ordination of any man. We can not wait for human recognition. We can not wait for the backslidden church to ordain us. We have got to preach because God puts it in us and we must give expression to it” (Seth C. Rees, Fire from Heaven [Cincinnati: M. W. Knapp, 1899], 255). 42. Quoted in Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 154–56. Kenneth Brown suggests that Knapp became a premillennialist sometime in 1896. See Brown, “Leadership in the National Holiness Association,” 269–70. 43. “Pentecostal Holiness Union and Prayer League (International),” Revivalist, June 1897. 44. Constitution and By-laws of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League (Cincinnati: np, 1897). See also Thomas and Thomas, Days of Our Pilgrimage, 13–22. 45. See Sidney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 805–24; and Peter W. Williams, America’s Religions: Traditions and Cultures (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 252–65. 46. The most notable vocabulary change was the wide adoption of the term “pentecostal” by the Holiness Movement during the decade of the 1890s. This is discussed in considerable detail in Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, 90–113. My general contention that the late nineteenth–century Holiness Movement and the growing Methodist liberalism of individuals such as Borden P. Bowne represent innovative responses to the challenges of the period is supported by Steven Dale Cooley in his study of the changing use of poetic discourse in the Holiness Movement. See Steven Dale Cooley, “The Possibilities of Grace: Poetic Discourse and Reflection in Methodist/Holiness Revivalism” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1991). 47. Knapp, Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies, 7. 48. Ibid., 80–85, 25, 211–12. The work contained chapters on sanctification, conversion, divine healing, the Second Coming, the nature of the church, domestic life, the gifts of the spirit, the nature of the ministry, and false ministers. 49. Ibid., 9, 11.

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50. This was not Knapp’s first use of visual aids. He had used lantern slides and charts, and had even circulated revival handbills that contained a “convicting” picture and a gospel song. Knapp discussed his use of illustrations in Pentecostal Messengers (Cincinnati: Revivalist Office, 1899), 66–67. The discussion of his use of lantern slides is found in Hills, Hero of Faith and Prayer, 77. Knapp’s most important illustrative drawing, “Wrecked or Rescued,” was published as The River of Death in 1898. It was circulated as a multicolored wall chart, 22 inches tall by 28 inches wide. It pictured the river of death with its tributaries carrying its victims over the falls of eternal despair. Large canvas versions of this picture were used in holiness camp meetings well into the twentieth century. Also see the version circulated in Martin Wells Knapp, The River of Death and its Branches (Cincinnati: Office of the Revivalist, 1898). An example of a canvas version that was used in camp meetings is found in the Arthur Greene Papers, B. L. Fisher Library, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. 51. Knapp, Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies, 89. 52. Ibid., 91. Knapp’s views on salaries are reported in Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 330. 53. On the mission, see Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 159–60; Knapp, Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies, 227–28, 307; and Lloyd Raymond Day, “A History of God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, 1900–1949” (Master’s thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1949), 21. 54. Martin Wells Knapp, Pentecostal Aggressiveness; or Why I Conducted the Meetings of the Chesapeake Holiness Union at Bowens, Maryland (Cincinnati: By the Author, 1899). See also Hills, Hero of Faith and Prayer, 160–82; and accounts in the Revivalist, 2 August 1899; and 10 August 1899. 55. Martin Wells Knapp, “Demonstrations Opposed,” Revivalist, 28 September 1899, 9. 56. “Forms of Fanaticism,” Revivalist, 19 October 1899, 8. Also see Hills, Hero of Faith and Prayer, 263. 57. “Pentecostal Letters Selected from the Correspondence of M. W. Knapp,” Full Salvation Quarterly 5 (January 1902): 34. The Reid quotations are from Isaiah Reid, “Needs for 1900,” Christian Witness, 18 January 1900, 4. On the radical holiness interpretation of the Apostles’ Creed, see Lucius Hawkins, “The Creeds vs. the Bible,” Revivalist, 20 September 1900, 7. See also “Objections to the So–Called Apostles Creed,” Revivalist, 15 November 1900, 7; and the front–page cartoon of the Revivalist, 29 November 1900. 58. Hills, Hero of Faith and Prayer, 183, 334. On the NHA decline, see Isaiah Reid, “The Holiness Movement and the New Year,” Christian Witness, 18 January 1900, 4; and “The Once Prosperous Holiness Movement,” Christian Witness, 8 February 1900, 9. On the growth of the premillennial wing, see “Unscriptural Divorces,” Revivalist, 8 February 1900, 8. 59. Revivalist, 2 August 1900, 8; and 20 September 1900, 8; and Isaiah Reid, “The Holiness Movement Not a Church,” Christian Witness, 9 August 1900, 4–5. See also “Among the Holiness Periodicals,” Christian Witness, 18 October 1900, 5. 60. Seth C. Rees, “Independent Holiness Churches,” Revivalist, 4 October 1900, 2.

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61. F. M. Messenger, “A Revival Which Is Greatly Needed,” Christian Witness, 18 August 1898, 2–3. See also F. M. Messenger, “Sanctified Believers,” Revivalist, 20 September 1900, 4. On the North Grosvenordale church, see “New England Notes,” Christian Witness, 3 May 1900, 5. 62. F. M. Messenger, “A Layman’s View,” Revivalist, 8 February 1900. 63. Seth C. Rees, “Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting,” Revivalist, 27 September 1900, 8; and L. B. Kent, “Pentecostal Buffalo Rock,” Christian Witness, 4 October 1900, 11. 64. “Revival Reports,” Revivalist, 10 May 1900, 11; Seth C. Rees, “The Chicago Convention,” Revivalist, 13 December 1900, 8. See also Byron J. Rees, “Notes by the Way,” Revivalist, 20 December 1900, 13. CHAPTER

2

1. On Carradine, see Beverly Carradine, Graphic Scenes (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Office, 1911); and Martin Wells Knapp, Pentecostal Preachers (Salem, Ohio: Convention Bookstore, n.d.), 10–14. For Carradine’s ministry in St. Louis, see L. L. Pickett, A Plea for the Present Holiness Movement (Louisville: Pickett, 1896), 13–14. It is important to understand that Carradine’s critique of social activism did not mean that his ministry after 1889 focused exclusively on individual conversion. To the contrary, as a holiness preacher, he believed that the perfection of individuals through the experience of entire sanctification led directly to heaven on earth. 2. “Concerning Dr. Beverly Carradine,” Burning Bush, 7 December 1911, 3. 3. On Harvey’s struggle to experience entire sanctification, see Bernard Farson, Autobiographical Letters, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. The quotation is from Edwin L. Harvey, Sermons on Bible Characters (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1909), 186. See also Harvey’s description of his experience in “God Answering by Fire, or the Great Chicago Revival,” God’s Revivalist, 30 May 1901. 4. On the World’s Columbian Exposition, see David F. Burg, Chicago’s White City of 1893 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976); and the discussion in Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 488–532. Especially helpful on the economic significance of Chicago and the symbolic importance of the “white city” is William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991), 340–69. The quotation is found on page 341. On America’s religious task, see Reid Badger, The Great American Fair: The World’s Columbian Exposition and American Culture (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1979), 126. 5. On Moody, see James F. Findlay Jr., Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 401. More helpful on the Exposition is Thekla Ellen Joiner, Sin in the City: Chicago and Revivalism, 1880–1920 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 63–108. On details of the revival, still very useful is H. B. Hartzler, Moody in Chicago; or The World’s Fair Gospel Campaign (Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1894). See also Arthur Percy Fitt, Moody Still Lives: Word Pictures of D. L. Moody (New York: Fleming H.

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Revell, 1936), 99–110. On the Sunday opening controversy, see Alexis McCrossen, Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 71–78. 6. See Joiner, Sin in the City, 79–80 Miller, City of the Century, 533–39; and W. T. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago (Chicago: Laird and Lee, 1894; repr., New York: Living Books, 1964). 7. H. H. Moore, The Republic to Methodism (Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1891), 10. A similar quotation on the rapid growth of Methodism can be found in the more skeptical and scholarly writings of William Warren Sweet. See his Methodism in American History (New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1933), 334. On Methodism and temperance, see Henry Wheeler, Methodism and the Temperance Reformation (Cincinnati: Walden and Stowe, 1882). 8. Moore, Republic to Methodism, 14, 284, 16. Methodist historians have frequently ignored anti–Catholicism in Methodism. An exception is J. Gordon Melton’s outstanding history of Methodism in Illinois, Log Cabins to Steeples: The Complete Story of the United Methodist Way in Illinois, Including All Constituent Elements of the United Methodist Church (Nashville: Parthenon, 1974), 294–303. 9. On Methodism in Chicago, see Melton, Log Cabins to Steeples, 185–207. The cultural importance of evangelicals, especially Methodists, is discussed in James Gilbert, Perfect Cities: Chicago’s Utopias of 1893 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 23–44. 10. Although a century of urban growth, decay, and changing cultural mores has done much to erase the vision of a celestial Evanston, signs of Evanston’s Methodist past persist. Although no longer a dry city, Evanston continues to be the home of the WCTU, while its streets—bearing the names of such Methodist luminaries as Dempster, Foster, Orrington, Simpson, Asbury, and Wesley—remind observant visitors of Methodism’s hold on the first generation of suburban Americans. See Frances E. Willard, A Classic Town: The Story of Evanston (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, 1892), 5, 166, 89. On Evanston’s current reluctance to affirm its Methodist past, see Melton, Log Cabins to Steeples, 198–204. 11. On the Des Plaines Camp Grounds, see Almer M. Pennewell, The Methodist Movement in Northern Illinois (Sycamore, Ill.: Sycamore Tribune, 1942), 273–84; and Willard, A Classic Town, 210–12. 12. Thomas Emerson Lenhart, “Methodist Piety in an Industrializing Society: Chicago 1865–1914” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1981), 52–59. 13. Pennewell, The Methodist Movement in Northern Illinois, 198–200. 14. See Melton, Log Cabins to Steeples, 208–23; and H. K. Carroll, The Religious Forces of the United States, Enumerated, Classified and Described on the Basis of the Government Census of 1890 (New York: Christian Literature, 1893), 232. 15. Minutes of the Rock River Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1896, 114, 68. In 1897, the Chicago Missionary and Church Extension Society argued that half of its receipts of $22,000 were expended on Bohemian, French, Italian, and other congregations among the poor. See “Chicago Methodist Mission Work,”

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Northwest Christian Advocate, 19 May 1897. In 1905, the Society’s corresponding secretary, A. D. Traveller, claimed that all recent churches were “located among the laboring classes.” Timothy R. Morriss notes that the statement was false. See Timothy R. Morriss, “To Provide for All Classes: The Methodist Church and Class in Chicago, 1871–1939” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2007), 180. Typical expressions of the view that Catholicism spawned ignorance, intolerance, and immorality are found in Moore, Republic to Methodism, 10–18. 16. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago, 268, 400, 402. 17. For a discussion of Methodist settlement work in Chicago, see Morriss, “To Provide for All Classes,” 239–45. 18. Ibid, 266–70. 19. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago, 402. 20. Smith, Called unto Holiness, 123–31. 21. Primary sources on the early history of the Metropolitan Methodist Mission are scarce. Especially useful are a series of autobiographical letters written by Bernard Farson, a son of Duke M. Farson, to his son Kenneth in 1946. They will be referred to throughout as Bernard Farson, “Autobiographical Letters.” Copies are located in the William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Also useful are several articles that appeared in the Burning Bush. They include two articles by Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Our Work from Its Beginning,” Burning Bush, 3 June 1920, 8–9; and “Birth and Growth of the Metropolitan Church,” Burning Bush, 11 June 1931; and Marian Madison, “Career of a Methodist,” Burning Bush, 13 June 1950, 4–7. Some biographical material on Harvey appears in “God Answering by Fire,” 30 May 1901, 3. 22. Madison, “Career of a Methodist, 5.” 23. Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Our Work from Its Beginning,” 8–9. 24. Farson, “Autobiographical Letters.” Reports of the number of children in the Sunday school vary between five hundred and one thousand. 25. On the Farsons’ role in Chicago Methodism, see “Chicago and Vicinity,” Northwest Christian Advocate, 11 August 1897. Information on John Farson, whose Oak Park home currently houses the Oak Park Historical Society, can be found in Jean Guarino, “A Man for All Seasons: John Farson,” Illinois Magazine, March–April 1989, 8–10. John Farson, a truly colorful personality, was a loyal Methodist. Evidence suggests he was more moderate in his religious views than his brother was. 26. “National Holiness Camp Meeting at Des Plaines,” Northwest Christian Advocate, 18 August 1897. The phrase “praying through” was the common expression to describe the intense periods of prayer that preceded the experience of entire sanctification. 27. “Chicago and Vicinity,” Christian Witness, 9 December 1897. 28. The accounts of Walker’s ministry at the Metropolitan Methodist Church are in S. Rice, “Chicago and Vicinity,” Christian Witness, 23 June 1898; 30 June 1898. Walker’s long relationship with the MCA is discussed in “Editorial: Dr. Edward F. Walker,” Burning Bush, 18 August 1918. Biographical information is available in the Delbert R. Rose Papers, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. See also Delbert R. Rose, “Dr. Edward F. Walker: An Exegete Par Excellence,” Herald, 5 November 1969.

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See also the biographical file in the Christian Holiness Association Papers, B. L. Fisher Library, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. 29. Harvey, “Birth and Growth of the Metropolitan Church, 5.” See also H. C. Morrison, “The Meeting in Chicago,” Pentecostal Herald, 6 December 1899, 8. The nature of Methodist piety in Chicago is discussed in Lenhart, “Methodist Piety in an Industrializing Society,” 203–62. The changing character of Methodist piety is reflected in the Northwest Christian Advocate, which increasingly equated church growth with evangelism and replaced the older perfectionist, and distinctly Methodist, vocabulary with code words of Keswick piety. This is reflected in the paper’s “higher life” column. 30. The tabernacle concept has not received the attention it warrants. See Robert L. Niklaus, John S. Sawin, and Samuel J. Stoesz, All For Jesus: God at Work in the Christian and Missionary Alliance over One Hundred Years (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1996), 150–51. 31. On Morrison’s Chicago campaign, see Christian Witness, 9 November 1899, 9. Harvey’s reflections on the meetings are contained in several Burning Bush editorials. See “For Every One That Doeth Evil Hateth the Light,” Burning Bush, 30 October 1903, 4; “A Review of the Years,” Burning Bush, 12 January 1922, 4; and “Concerning Dr. Beverly Carradine,” Burning Bush, 7 December 1911, 4. See also Morrison, “The Meeting in Chicago, 8.” 32. Morrison, “The Meeting in Chicago, 8.” 33. The Harveys’ increased interest in economic matters is discussed in “Chicago and Vicinity,” Christian Witness, 12 October 1899, 8. On the wealth of the Harveys, see Morrison, “The Meeting in Chicago.” The conclusion of Carradine’s Chicago meetings is discussed in “Chicago and Vicinity,” Christian Witness, 12 April 1900, 8. 34. “Revival Reports,” Revivalist, 10 May 1900, 11. 35. The Chicago Tribune reported that Farson had purchased the site to prevent one of the most beautiful sites in the state from becoming a “beer garden” and “gambling resort” (“Help Save Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, 1 March 1901, 1). 36. L. B. Kent, “The Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting,” Christian Witness, 20 September 1900, 13. 37. Ibid. On the Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting, see also L. B. Kent, “The Pentecostal Buffalo Rock Meeting,” Christian Witness, 4 October 1900, 11; and Seth C. Rees, “Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting,” Revivalist, 27 September 1900, 8. For a version of Harvey’s sermon on Lazarus the beggar, see Harvey, Sermons on Bible Characters, 219–42. For Harvey’s teaching concerning a believer’s need to crucify self, see his “Real Crucifixion,” Burning Bush, 6 October 1904, 5. 38. On the faith principal in missions, see Thomas and Thomas, The Days of Our Pilgrimage, 34–35. 39. Seth C. Rees, “The Chicago Convention,” Revivalist, 13 December 1900, 12. 40. On the ordination service, see Lettie B. Cowman, Charles E. Cowman: Missionary Warrior with Portraits, Illustrations and Maps (Los Angeles: Oriental Missionary Society, 1939), 114. Stalker, whose published account of the worldwide missionary trip was widely circulated, remained an active force in the Holiness Movement for nearly sixty years. The Cowmans would found the Oriental Missionary

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Society (now OMS International). The mission’s greatest success would come in Korea through the founding of the Evangelical Holiness Church of Korea, currently the country’s third-largest denomination, and of Seoul Theological Seminary, one of the largest graduate schools of theology in Asia. Of equal significance was the personal ministry of Lettie Burd Cowman, who served as the president of OMS from 1928 to 1949. Her devotional book Streams in the Desert would become the best-selling evangelical devotional book of the twentieth century. The standard history of OMS is Robert D. Wood, In These Mortal Hands: The Story of the Oriental Missionary Society, the First 50 Years (Greenwood, Ind.: OMS International, 1983). Stalker briefly touches on the Chicago Convention in Charles H. Stalker, Twice around the World with the Holy Ghost; or Impressions and Convictions of the Mission Field (Columbus, Ohio: By the Author, 1906), 16. Interestingly, Byron J. Rees (1877–1920), following the around-theworld tour, dropped out of the Holiness Movement. Rees became a professor of English at Williams College and an authority on nineteenth–century American literature, and served as editor of the standard edition of Thoreau’s Walden. 41. “The New Testament Church,” Revivalist, 27 December 1900, 1. Knapp’s decision to withdraw from Methodism is discussed in detail in Martin Wells Knapp, “Why I Withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church,” God’s Revivalist, 17 January 1901, 8–9. See also the materials quoted in A. M. Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer; or The Life of Rev. Martin Wells Knapp, (Cincinnati, Mrs. M. W. Knapp, 1902), 215–35. In the spring of 1901 Knapp published a tract titled Poison in the Methodist Pan (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist, 1901), a portion of which appears as “A Ringing Warning,” God’s Revivalist, 28 February 1901, 8. 42. E. L. Harvey, “Storms,” Revivalist, 27 December 1900, 3. On the MCA’s withdrawal from the Methodist Episcopal Church, see Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association of Wisconsin, Adopted November 15 1930 (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1931), 6; and Minutes of the Sixty-Second Session of the Rock River Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 23. 43. For Rees’s description of the arrangement, see “Business Men and Revivals,” God’s Revivalist, 28 March 1901, 1. 44. Noon evangelistic meetings for urban workers were not uncommon during the early twentieth century. For an example, see Charles Stelzle, “The Obligation of the Church to the Laboring Man,” in Catching Men: Studies in Vital Evangelism, ed. J. P. Brushingham, 178 (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1906). 45. “Chicago Holiness Convention,” God’s Revivalist, 14 February 1901, 10. 46. Rees’s leadership in the movement to establish “rest cottages” for converted prostitutes is discussed in Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 64–77. See also Rees’s sensational account of his ministry in Seth C. Rees, Miracles in the Slums, or Thrilling Stories of Those Rescued from the Cesspools of Iniquity, and Touching Incidents in the Lives of the Unfortunate (Chicago: Seth C. Rees, 1905). The stories are summarized in Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion, 189–94. Whittemore’s work and the related work of other perfectionist missions are discussed in Norris A. Magnuson, Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Work, 1865–1920 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1977), 20–23, 79–90. 47. S. B. Shaw, ed., Echoes of the General Holiness Assembly Held in Chicago, May 3–13, 1901 (Chicago: S. B. Shaw, 1901), 10.

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1. “To Help Save Chicago,” Chicago Daily News, 1 March 1901, 1. Among the accounts of the number of conversions, see “God Answering by Fire, or the Great Chicago Revival,” God’s Revivalist, 30 May 1901, 6. 2. “To Help Save Chicago,” 1. See also “That Chicago Wager,” God’s Revivalist, 11 April 1901, 1. 3. “Fifteen Souls against $1,000,” Chicago Tribune, 2 March 1901, 1. The details of the wager are reported in “A Regrettable Case,” Northwest Christian Advocate, 13 March 1901, 5. For Farson’s critique of “dead churches,” see “Holiness Convention Ends Today as Result of Church Official’s Indifference,” Chicago Tribune, 11 March 1901, 4. The MCA held services at the Sheffield Avenue church only after Farson withdrew the wager. See “Call a Holiness Meeting,” Chicago Daily News, 25 March 1901. 4. On the wager, see F. M. Messenger, “The Chicago Convention,” God’s Revivalist, 21 March 1901, 13; “God Answering by Fire,” 2; and especially Farson’s retrospective comments, “A Story Worth Re-telling,” Immanuel Herald, April 1926, 5–7. One of the most notable converts of the Chicago revival was Glenn A. Cook, who would become an important early Pentecostal leader. See Glenn A. Cook, “Story of My Life,” Burning Bush, 3 July 1902, 11. 5. Messenger, “The Chicago Convention,” 13; “God Answering by Fire,” 2; and especially, Farson, “A Story Worth Re-telling,” 5–7. 6. The term “preacher-actors” is found in the insightful work of R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). The concluding comments are from “God Answering by Fire,” 2. 7. Quotation is from W. B. Yates, comp., Successful Evangelism; or, Life and Labors of Rev. E. A. Fergerson (Malden, Mass.: Glory, 1912), 102. 8. Ibid., 218–19, 31–48. See also “End of the Revival,” Chicago Daily News, 11 March 1901. See also John Lakin Brasher, Glimpses (Cincinnati: Revivalist Press, 1954), 34–37. 9. An example of Dolbow’s style is recorded by J. L. Brasher. “It is told that early in his ministry he went to a church to conduct a revival. In the first service there were only a few . . . people present. . . . When he went into the pulpit, he took a look at them, stood on his head, turned a somersault over the altar and handspringed down one aisle and up the other, and back onto the platform. Then he stood on his head, waved his feet at them, and announced there would be ‘another service tomorrow night.’ The next night the house was packed” (Brasher, Glimpses, 51). 10. On Dolbow, see Andrew J. Dolbow, Story of My Life: Its Dark and Bright Side (Chicago: Christian Witness, 1895); and Brasher, Glimpses, 50–52. On Dolbow’s work in the Chicago revival, see “God Answering by Fire,” 1. 11. The quotation is from “God Answering by Fire,” 3. There is no scholarly biography of Robinson. The most helpful biography is by his son-in-law: George C. Wise, Rev. Bud Robinson (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1946). Also very useful is Robinson’s early autobiography: Bud Robinson, Sunshine and Smiles: Life

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Story, Flash Lights, Sayings and Sermons (Chicago: Christian Witness, 1903). The date of Robinson’s sanctification experience is found in “Reports,” God’s Revivalist, 24 October 1901, 11. An early unidentified newspaper account that provides important details of his early life is “Big Crowd Last Evening at Mechanics’ Hall,” located in the Hannah Whithall Smith Religious Fanaticism Collection, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. Less valuable is a second autobiography: Bud Robinson, My Life’s Story (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1928). An important article that suggests that Robinson’s effectiveness was rooted in his use of American folk humor is Mallalieu A. Wilson, “Backwoods Preacher of the Southwest,” Preacher’s Magazine, January–February 1953, 22–27. See also Brasher, Glimpses, 40–43; and James McGraw, “The Preaching of Bud Robinson,” Preacher’s Magazine, January 1954, 9–12. 12. “God Answering by Fire,” 1, 3. 13. The description of Robinson’s style is primarily from Wilson, “Backwoods Preacher,” 27. The statistics are found in “Bud Robinson,” Herald of Holiness, 7 December 1942, 9. Similar statistics are quoted in an obituary for Robinson in the New York Times, 4 November 1942, 24. Bud Robinson did refer to the Chicago Convention in a tribute to E. A. Fergerson. See Yates, Successful Evangelism, 33. In this account, Robinson indicates that one thousand souls were saved during the first eleven days of the convention. 14. “Holiness Convention Ends Today,” Chicago Tribune, 11 March 1901, 4. Also see Messenger, “The Chicago Convention,” 13; and “A Tempestuous Ordination,” God’s Revivalist, 28 March 1901, 1. On Kulp’s importance in Methodism, see Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion, 170. 15. The “Pearly White City,” initially known as “The City That’s Coming Down,” was the creation of Arthur F. Ingler (1873–1935), a holiness evangelist and song leader who was reared as a Baptist in Perrysburg, New York. After becoming an evangelist in 1894, Ingler relocated to Colorado where he became the song leader for holiness evangelist James Howell. In the spring of 1901, Howell and Ingler were in Chicago when the Chicago revival began and it was here that Ingler wrote “The Pearly White City.” Ingler remained active with the MCA until 1906. On Ingler’s life, see Arthur F. Ingler, “My Experience,” Burning Bush, 21 April 1904, 9–10; and “The Home-Going of Rev. Arthur Forrest Ingler,” God’s Revivalist, 3 October 1935, 15. He was the editor of the MCA’s first and second songbooks. In 1906 he broke fellowship with the MCA. Ingler, who eventually joined the Church of the Nazarene, was the author of many Movement songs, and served as the editor of a number of widely used songbooks. “The Pearly White City” was his best-known work. The first version of the hymn appeared in the MCA’s first songbook, Burning Bush Songs, No. 1 (Chicago: Metropolitan Church Association, 1902), 14. It also appears in Arthur F. Ingler, ed., Canaan Melodies (Kansas City, Mo.: Publishing House of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, n.d.), 88. An example of the changing character of Holiness Movement hymnody can be found in comparing Ingler’s hymn with an earlier Movement hymn “Beulah Land” (1875). For a brilliant discussion of the “Beulah Land” metaphor in the Holiness Movement, see Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion, 25–34.

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16. I have discussed economic interpretations of the Holiness Movement in an introductory historiographical essay “Historigraphy of the Holiness Movement,” in William Kostlevy, Holiness Manuscripts: A Guide to Sources Documenting the Wesleyan Holiness Movement in the United States and Canada (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1994), 12–15. See also Seth C. Rees, “God’s Choice,” God’s Revivalist, 13 June 1901, 2. The Godbey quotation is from his article “Does Preaching the Coming of the Lord Impede Revivals?” God’s Revivalist, 13 June 1901, 1. 17. On the quotation from Norberry and the immediate aftermath of the Chicago convention, see “Chicago and Vicinity,” Christian Witness, 4 April 1901, 8; and “Business Men and Revival,” God’s Revivalist, 28 March 1901, 1. See also Seth C. Rees, “From the Field,” God’s Revivalist, 28 March 1901, 12. 18. The quotation from Kilbourne is in “Reports,” God’s Revivalist, 4 April 1901, 11. 19. Primary denominations represented on the Assembly roll included the Free Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Pentecost Bands, and an assortment of rescue missions and other small groups. See S. B. Shaw, ed., Echoes of the General Holiness Assembly Held in Chicago, May 3–13, 1901 (Chicago: S. B. Shaw, 1901), 23–27. 20. “Our Creed,” Christian Witness, 14 March 1901, 8. The strong support for the so–called “side issues” is reflected in one report from the convention that noted that when the “Committee on Deliverance” reported that the convention had formally embraced premillennialism and divine healing “the amen and glory to God that burst forth” indicated the people’s endorsement of the disputed tenets (as reported in W. E. Shepard, “Echoes from the Assembly,” Nazarene Messenger, 23 May 1901, 2). 21. Seth C. Rees, “Chicago Holiness General Assembly,” God’s Revivalist, 4 April 1901, 2. 22. John T. Hatfield, “Beyond the Rockies,” Nazarene Messenger, 2 May 1901, 1; “Doctrine and Experience of Holiness,” Northwest Christian Advocate, 15 May 1901, 1. For Robinson’s attempt to get Brushingham sanctified, see “Fifteen Souls against $1,000.00.” 23. On the organization of the Assembly, see Shaw, Echoes, 21–38, 155; and “Holiness General Assembly,” Christian Witness, 16 May 1901, 1, 4. For an example of the kinds of sermons Rees preached during the Assembly, see “Sermon by Brother Rees,” God’s Revivalist, 30 May 1901, 4. 24. “Revival Shorn of Peace,” Chicago Tribune, 5 May 1901, 14; and “Holiness Convention Begins,” Chicago Daily News, 3 May 1901. 25. W. E. Shepard, “Holiness General Assembly,” Nazarene Messenger, 16 May 1901, 2. 26. “Dr. E. F. Walker,” Burning Bush, 8 August 1918, 4–5. On Alma White’s participation in the General Holiness Assembly, see Susie Cunningham Stanley, Feminist Pillar of Fire: The Life of Alma White (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1993), 44–47. 27. W. E. Shepard, “The Work in Chicago,” Nazarene Messenger, 9 May 1901, 8. 28. Shepard, “Echoes from the Assembly,” 2. The story concerning Sarah Cooke is from W. E. Shepard, “Tabernacling in Chicago, Illinois,” Nazarene Messenger, 7 June 1901, 2.

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29. Seth C. Rees, “The Chicago General Assembly,” God’s Revivalist, 30 May 1901, 12. 30. Reid’s comments are in Shaw, Echoes, 325–26. 31. W. B. Godbey, “Salvation Park Camp-Meeting,” God’s Revivalist, 18 July 1901, 13. 32. “God Answering by Fire,” 1, 6. On Knapp’s physical state during the Chicago Convention, see Hills, Hero of Faith and Prayer, 238.

CHAPTER

4

1. On the Reeses’ 1901 summer itinerary, see “Reports,” God’s Revivalist, 13 June 1901, 11; 18 July 1901, 11; and 15 August 1901, 11. 2. “Church Is Disturbed,” Boston Herald, 9 December 1901, 2 3. Seth C. Rees, “The Battle before Boston,” God’s Revivalist, 9 January 1902, 12. On the Association’s expulsion from the church, see “Put Out of Church,” Boston Herald, 10 December 1901, 2. 4. “Zeal in a New Home,” Boston Herald, 12 December 1901, 1. 5. Rees, “Battle before Boston,” 12. Quoted in Paul S. Rees, Seth Cook Rees, the Warrior Saint (Indianapolis: Pilgrim Book Room, 1934), 60–61. 6. Seth C. Rees, “Pentecost,” God’s Revivalist, 23 January 1902, 2. On restorationism in early Pentecostalism, see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 3–4, 71–72. 7. On Knapp’s request that Harvey assume leadership of his ministry, see “Martin Wells Knapp,” Burning Bush, 25 September 1902, 4. On Knapp’s successors, see A. M. Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer; or, The Life of Rev. Martin Wells Knapp (Cincinnati: Mrs. M. W. Knapp, 1902), 295. The decision to have Knapp’s body cremated is defended by W. B. Godbey in Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 320–24; and by Mrs. Knapp in “The White Path,” God’s Revivalist, 13 February 1902, 4. 8. Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 321. Queen’s defenses of herself and of Storey include “Sister Mary Storey’s Experience,” God’s Revivalist, 23 January 1902, 5; and “Pray, Pray, Pray,” God’s Revivalist, 23 January 1902, 11. On Storey’s refusal to boycott the General Holiness Assembly and her views of its consequences, see M. G. Standley, My Life as I Have Lived It for Christ and Others (n.p.: By the Author, 1949), 83. 9. Hills’s obvious surprise at being asked to write Knapp’s biography is recorded in the introduction to A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 11–12. Unlike most of the leaders of the General Holiness Assembly, Hills, a Congregationalist, had defended Knapp’s right to leave Methodism. See A. M. Hills, “Excessive Church Loyalty and the Sad Fruit It Bears,” God’s Revivalist, 30 May 1901, 12–13. 10. Potter’s statement is found in Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 398. The MCA’s view of Bessie Queen is noted in “The Inception of the Revivalist,” Burning Bush, 14 January 1915. In August 1902 Potter wrote E. L. and Gertrude Harvey saying that she could no longer work “for a worldly concern,” such as God’s Bible School. Describing herself as a person filled with the Holy Ghost and a good worker of excellent health, she asked for employment with the MCA. She would remain with

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the MCA for more than thirty years. See F. L. Potter to E. L. and Mrs. Harvey, 18 August 1902, photocopy in William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 11. On the marriage of Queen and Standley, see Seth C. Rees, “A Pentecostal Wedding,” God’s Revivalist, 19 June 1902, 7. The controversial article is Bessie [Queen], “Why I Am Married,” God’s Revivalist, 28 November 1901, 5. Information concerning the rumors in Cincinnati surrounding Knapp’s death are from “The Inception of the Revivalist,” 4. Since the MCA claimed to be Knapp’s true heirs, they were initially hesitant to circulate rumors about the relationship of Knapp and Queen. However, eventually the Burning Bush did carry such stories. See “The Cincinnati Skeleton,” Burning Bush, 1 June 1905, 4. My source for the role of Florence L. Potter in the MCA is from personal interviews with Lillian Harvey, who married E. L. Harvey’s nephew Edwin F., and with Arthur L. Bray (1911–94), both former members of the MCA. A telephone conversation with Lillian Harvey confirmed that Florence Potter had insisted in no uncertain terms that the relationship between Knapp and Queen was inappropriate and that Knapp had confessed such indiscretion to E. L. Harvey This confirms information from Arthur L. Bray, interview by the author, 8 November 1991, Brooksville, Fla., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 12. I am especially indebted to Charles E. Jones for the insight concerning the crucial role of editors in the Holiness Movement. In fact, it was not uncommon to use names of periodicals when referring to loyalties of individuals. For example, members of the Church of God (Anderson) were “Gospel Trumpet people,” and readers of the Burning Bush were “Burning Bush people.” Also, in denominations such as the Church of God (Holiness), the editor’s position was considered to be so important that it was an elected office. In spite of her great importance, there is little biographical information on Bessie Queen Standley. Of some value is M. G. Standley’s autobiography, although it was written nearly fifty years after Knapp’s death and in the midst of a power struggle that resulted in Standley’s ouster as president of God’s Bible School. See Standley, My Life as I Have Lived It, 58–79. 13. In spite of Knapp’s withdrawal from Methodism, holiness radicals presented anything but a unified front on the question of continuing membership in the older evangelical denominations. In fact, even as the IAHU was actively ordaining clergy, establishing congregations, and commissioning missionaries, supporters such as W. B. Godbey, the venerable father of the Southern Holiness Movement, insisted that Knapp was an unsectarian opponent of “come–outerism.” Godbey, who retained his own membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, insisted that Knapp’s decision to separate from Methodism was merely an expedient to provide a church home for students attending God’s Bible School. Reminding readers of God’s Revivalist that Seth C. Rees, president of the IAHU, was still a member in good standing of the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, Godbey suggested that “comeouters” were not those who organized independent congregations, but those who separated from all church organizations. Godbey’s position was shared by Storey, who continued to hold her own membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

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In fact, Knapp, although certainly wishing to avoid the “come–outer” label, had adopted a far more radical position. He had come to believe that the distinctive character of a faithful church—the church depicted in the second chapter of Acts—was unity of purpose. Knapp insisted that this condition could not be met among the “baptized heathen” inhabiting the pews of most evangelical churches. “It [the Chicago revival] is a continuation of the great revival that broke out at Pentecost,” Knapp wrote, “and proves that where pentecostal conditions are met. . .Pentecost will be repeated.” For the father of the radical Holiness Movement, the Metropolitan Methodist Church had become the model of the faithful Christian church. Godbey’s views are from “Salvation Park Camp–Meeting,” God’s Revivalist, 18 July 1901, 13. For Knapp’s views on the conditions for repeating Pentecost, see “What God’s Word Says about Church Relations,” God’s Revivalist, 13 June 1901, 8. 14. Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer, 232–35. Among the God’s Revivalist articles warning about fanaticism, see “Thumping Preachers,” 30 January 1902, 1; “Revival Orthodoxy,” 10 April 1902, 1; W. B. Godbey, “Side Tracks: Fanaticism,” God’s Revivalist, 17 April 1902, 1–2; and E. L. Harvey, “Secret Societies,” God’s Revivalist, 16 January 1902, 4. 15. On Rees’s reputation, see Smith, Called unto Holiness, 272–97. 16. In his biography of his father, Paul Rees included several pages on the Chicago and Boston revivals of 1901. Explaining his father’s separation from the MCA, Rees wrote, “It seems only fair to state that in these conventions there were some emotional excesses that proved, in the case of certain persons, to be more fleshly than spiritual. It was not long until the ‘Farson and Harvey’ element, which eventually headed the Burning Bush movement, carried matters to such an extreme as to forfeit Seth Rees’s confidence with respect to the soundness of their leadership. A separation became imperative” (from Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 61–62). In early March 1902, Seth C. Rees spoke at Texas Holiness University. One can only speculate on what role A. M. Hills, president of the university and Knapp’s biographer, may have played in Rees’s decision to separate from the MCA, which he made shortly after he returned to Chicago. See Seth C. Rees, “The Battle of Greenville,” God’s Revivalist, 13 March 1902, 12. 17. On the MCA’s view that the Revivalist had attempted to keep the MCA as a financial resource for as long as possible, see “Dr. Torrey’s Grandchild,” Burning Bush, 17 September 1903, 6. Even after their break with the MCA, God’s Revivalist readers were assured that individuals in the Revivalist movement were the most radical holiness people. See “A Dangerous Side-Track,” God’s Revivalist, 24 July 1902, 1. 18. On Messenger’s financial contribution to God’s Bible School, see Standley, My Life as I Have Lived It, 53; Seth C. Rees, “Independent Holiness Churches,” Revivalist, 4 October 1900, 2. 19. An interesting source of information on the struggle for the support of individuals among the MCA, Rees, and Knapp’s Cincinnati heirs are the weekly columns of W. E. Shepard in the Nazarene Messenger from March to June 1902. Shepard, after having been offered temporarily the pastorate at the Austin Holiness Church and courted in Cincinnati, became acting coeditor of the Burning Bush. On Rees’s last sermon for the MCA, see W. E. Shepard, “Chicago, Illinois,” Nazarene

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Messenger, 4 April 1902, 5. On his break with the MCA, see “Austin Holiness Church,” God’s Revivalist, 24 April 1902, 3. Although continuing as a Holiness Movement leader until his death in 1935, Seth C. Rees never duplicated the evangelistic successes of his year with the MCA. Separating from the IAHU in 1905, he eventually joined the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. After relocating to Pasadena, California, he became a Nazarene pastor. In 1917, Rees’s congregation was unceremoniously disorganized, interestingly at the direction of E. F. Walker. Among the charges against him was his association with the Burning Bush Movement. Rees soon after organized the Pilgrim Church in Pasadena, California. In 1925 the Pilgrim Church, essentially one sizable congregation, merged with the Pilgrim Holiness Church. 20. For descriptions of the services in Boston, see Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 61; “Continued the Dance,” and “Revivalists Renew Efforts in New Hall,” clippings in the Hannah Whitall Smith Religious Fanaticism Collection, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky.; and “Zeal in a New Home,” 1. On the link between the assumptions of the jumpers and of Pentecostals, see Jennie A. Jolley, comp., As an Angel of Light; or, Bible Tongues and Holiness and Their Counterfeits (New York: Vantage, 1964), 23–24. 21. Rees, The Ideal Pentecostal Church, 47; “Pentecostal Demonstrations,” God’s Revivalist, 21 November 1901, 1; and “Instruction,” God’s Revivalist, 5 June 1902, 2. On the importance of physical demonstrations in the Methodist tradition, see Winthrop S. Hudson, “Shouting Methodists,” Encounter 29 (Winter 1968): 73–84; and Ann Taves, Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 77–117, 232–40. 22. “Revival Demonstration,” God’s Revivalist, 21 November 1901, 1. This editorial was republished as “Brother Knapp’s Teaching on Revival Demonstration,” God’s Revivalist, 26 February 1903, 1. 23. Jolley, As an Angel of Light, 23–24. For newspaper drawings of MCA jumping, see “Zeal in a New Home,” 1; and “Jack London Sees Physical Culture Boom in Holy Jump,” Burning Bush, 4 January 1906, 10. E. E. Shelhamer’s daughter Esther Shelhamer James remembers that after an MCA leader saw Shelhamer jump, he considered the evangelist sanctified (Esther Shelhamer James, interview by the author, 15 February 1995, Wilmore, Ky., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 24. Henry L. Harvey Sr., “Preparing for Holy Ghost Baptism,” Burning Bush, 14 February 1918, 2. 25. For Bible verses supporting the MCA view of spiritual jumping, see C. M. S., “Demonstration,” Burning Bush, 12 April 1906, 4–5. Walker’s interpretation is from “Holy Joy,” Burning Bush, 17 July 1902, 5. In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Luke 6:23 is translated “rejoice on that day and leap for joy.” The last quotation is from “Emotions in Religion,” Burning Bush, 5 July 1928, 4. 26. Henry L. Harvey Sr., “A Reasonable Faith,” Burning Bush, 16 November 1916, 2; and Henry L. Harvey Sr. “Holy Joy,” Burning Bush, 17 July 1902, 5. 27. G. W. Henry, History of the Jumpers; or, Shouting Genuine and Spurious: A History of the Outward Demonstrations of the Spirit (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1909), 7. Ironically, the decline of jumping and other physical manifestations in the MCA coincided with the general decline of demonstrations

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within the Holiness Movement. Even as established holiness denominations such as the Church of the Nazarene, the Free Methodist Church, and the faithful remnant of holiness adherents in the Methodist Church quietly but effectively eliminated shouting and other by then embarrassing spiritual expressions, respected MCA leader and former missionary to India Henry L. Harvey Jr. led a similar movement in the MCA. By the 1950s, jumping had become merely a part of the folklore of the MCA. Physical demonstrations were largely left to dissenting holiness radicals who continued to flock to the annual Inter–Church Holiness Convention, an annual gathering of conservative holiness adherents in Dayton, Ohio, and to Pentecostal groups, especially the great Pentecostal healing ministries, which bore remarkable similarities to the MCA of the Chicago and Boston revivals.

CHAPTER

5

1. L. L. Pickett, The Blessed Hope of His Glorious Appearing (Louisville: Pickett, 1901), vii. 2. See the account of Pickett’s article in the Nazarene Messenger, 14 August 1902, 6. 3. L. L. Pickett, Our King Cometh (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1903), 56; and L. L. Pickett, The Renewed Earth; or The Coming and Reign of Jesus Christ (Louisville: Pickett, 1903), 37–38. An inveterate social activist with his wife, Ludie Day Pickett, longtime president of the Kentucky WCTU, L. L. Pickett remained active and was a candidate several times for statewide office, with the Kentucky Prohibition Party. A son, J. Waskom Pickett, served as a missionary bishop in India. A second son, Deets Pickett, was a longtime national officer of the World League Against Alcoholism. As Pickett wrote in 1903, “A Rockefeller raises the price of oil sufficiently to grind a million a week from the masses, and then palliates his conscience by teaching Sunday school, or making a contribution to the University of Chicago. The question of how Christ would conduct business is seldom asked by millionaires” Pickett, The Renewed Earth, 155). Other biographical information on L. L. Pickett is found in Arthur G. McPhee, The Road to Delhi: J. Waskom Pickett Remembered (Bangalore, India: SAIACS, 2005). 4. As reported in the Burning Bush, 30 March 1905, 1. As the Burning Bush repeatedly noted over the years, the King’s Herald had a short history. It ceased publication before 1910. 5. On the Revivalist’s commission, see “Jeremiah’s Revival Commission,” Revivalist, January 1890, 1; and for its restatement in the paper after it became a weekly in 1899, see “Destructive,” Revivalist, 5 January 1899, 1. On the Burning Bush, see “Introduction,” Burning Bush, 29 May 1902, 5. Bray’s comment is from A. C. Bray, “Our Paper’s Mission,” Burning Bush, 26 May 1910, 4. See also “The Work of the Burning Bush: Jeremiah’s Commission,” Burning Bush, 29 June 1916, 4. 6. Among the other Revivalist writers who became associated with the Burning Bush were Louis F. Mitchel, I. Guy Martin, Authur F. Ingler, John Wesley Lee, John T. Hatfield, Arthur Greene, D. S. Curtis, and, most notably, F. M. Messenger. 7. Interestingly, even after he assumed responsibilities with the Burning Bush, Shepard continued to serve as a corresponding editor for Phineas Bresee’s Nazarene

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Messenger. His name was not removed from the paper’s list of editors until the spring of 1903, although his last column appeared in the fall of 1902. The quotation is from W. E. Shepard, “The Holiness Movement,” Nazarene Messenger, 29 May 1902, 5. Shepard’s position on the church question is expressed in “Come-inism,” Burning Bush, 26 June 1902, 4. By 1902 Shepard was the author of two important works, Holiness Typology (San Francisco: By the Author, 1896); and Wrested Scriptures Made Plain; or Help for Holiness Skeptics (Louisville: Pickett Publishing Company, 1900). 8. “Introduction,” 5. 9. On the growth of the Burning Bush, see “Our Anniversary,” Burning Bush, 23 June 1904, 9–10; “The Birthday of the Burning Bush,” Burning Bush, 5 June 1913, 5; and Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “The Burning Bush, 1902–1927,” Burning Bush, 2 June 1927, 6, 9. On the paper’s circulation, see “Back Biting in Free Methodist Church,” Burning Bush, 8 August 1912, 5–6. Among the holiness periodicals that ceased publication in the first two decades of the twentieth century were such NHA standards as the Guide to Holiness and Christian Standard. At the same time, the Christian Witness’s circulation was unexceptional. Among the evangelists who failed to establish successful periodicals were Seth C. Rees and L. L. Pickett. 10. The point that muckraking journalism had its roots in nineteenth-century evangelicalism is made in Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955), 186–214. On the religious roots of the muckrakers and other Progressive Era reformers, and on the muckrakers’ tendency to see exposé as an end in itself, see Robert M. Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives’ Achievement in American Civilization, 1889–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 165. The very term “muckraker,” from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, reflects the moralistic and evangelical world of the muckrakers and their readers. The quotation is from “Is Exposing Sin Wrong?” Burning Bush, 22 December 1904, 7. 11. “Christian Witness,” Burning Bush, 18 December 1902, 3. 12. See “Who Are the Real Come-Outers,” Burning Bush, 30 October 1902, 1; “The Church Situation,” Burning Bush, 29 January 1903, 1, 4; and “Captured by Babylon,” Burning Bush, 4 February 1904, 1. 13. On holiness evangelists as cultural figures, see Bud Robinson, A Pitcher of Cream (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1906). An ad for Shaw’s picture appears at the end of S. B. Shaw, ed., Echoes of the General Holiness Assembly Held in Chicago, May 3–13, 1901 (Chicago: S. B. Shaw, 1901). 14. On the use of cartoons, see “The Thirtieth Anniversary of the Birth of the Burning Bush and Its Mission through the Years,” Burning Bush, 26 May 1932, 8–9. The discussion of the source of the cartoons is from E. L. Harvey, “Herod and Pilate Unity,” Burning Bush, 8 September 1904, 7. The quotation is from “Another Pictorial Lesson,” Burning Bush, 10 May 1906, 4. 15. Examples of new teachings to emerge from MCA camp meetings were teachings on property (1902, 1903), divorce (1903), and labor unions (1904). The Burning Bush’s anniversary issues are an excellent way to trace the evolution of MCA teaching. For example, by 1914 the Burning Bush message was described as opposing divorce and remarriage and labor unions. More comprehensive is a 1920 list including

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divorce and remarriage, giving up one’s possessions, divine healing, and premillennialism. See J. H. Barnes, “The Burning Bush and Its Contemporaries,” Burning Bush, 28 May 1914, 5; and E. L. Harvey, “The Bush Still Burning,” Burning Bush, 3 June 1920, 5–6. One of the most comprehensive lists appeared in 1913. It included opposition to divorce and remarriage, support for giving up one’s possessions, including real estate and jewelry, opposition to labor unions and secret societies, opposition to the “gift of tongues,” and affirmation of sanctification as a second work of grace following justification. 16. See the ad for the Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting in the 14 August 1902 issue of the Burning Bush. 17. The call to become God’s faithful remnant is especially strong in a message delivered by Farson at Buffalo Rock. See D. M. Farson, “The Signs of Pentecost,” Burning Bush, 2 October 1902, 2. The 18 September issue of the Burning Bush indicated that three pastors had surrendered denominational affiliations. They were C. W. Layman, pastor of the Chicago First Free Methodist Church; L. A. Rockwell, pastor of the Langley Methodist Episcopal Church, Rock River Conference; and Chicago Congregational pastor L. A. Townsend. The quotation is from “Victory,” Burning Bush, 18 September 1902, 3. 18. John Wesley Lee, “The Faith Life,” Burning Bush, 18 September 1902, 5; and “Mrs. Kent White,” Burning Bush, 18 September 1902, 4, 6. 19. E. L. Harvey, “The Uncontainable Blessing,” Burning Bush, 11 September 1902, 11. 20. W. E. Shepard, “How to Get Sanctified,” Burning Bush, 18 September 1902, 8. Other versions of this sermon are in Shaw, Echoes of the General Holiness Assembly, 250–63; and the most complete version, W. E. Shepard, How to Get Sanctified (Cincinnati: Revivalist Press, 1916). On the amount of property given to the MCA, see “Victory,” 3; and W. E. Shepard, “Bloomfield, Iowa,” Nazarene Messenger, 25 September 1902, 7. 21. The quotations are from “The Unique School,” Burning Bush, 20 November 1902, 7; and a full–page ad that appeared in several issues of the Burning Bush in August and September 1902. The enrollment figures are from “Bible Students and Instructors,” Burning Bush, 4 June 1903, 3. By the 1920s, enrollment had grown to only 150 students; see A. M. A., “The Bible School,” Burning Bush, 16 July 1925, 4. 22. The basic doctrinal textbook created by Shepard during the school’s first term remains in print. Initially published as W. E. Shepard, Bible Lessons (Waukesha, Wisc.: Burning Bush, 1905), a second revised edition was released by the MCA in 1907. In 1934, the South African mission of the MCA reissued the 1907 edition. Currently this is available as Bible Lessons: a Treatise on Evidences of Religion, Sin, Repentance, Consecration, and Holiness (Salem, Ohio: Allegheny, 1989). 23. Mrs. M. J. Ewald, “Reminiscences of the Bible School,” Burning Bush, 28 May 1914, 6–7. 24. By the summer of 1902, people in the area surrounding the church were reported to be petitioning that the church be closed. See “The Sunday Chronicle,” Burning Bush, 30 October 1902, 9. The MCA had significant numbers of young women converts in Rockford, Illinois, as well as in Chicago. See “The Work at Rockford Continues,” Burning Bush, 13 November 1902, 3.

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25. Information on Annie Jacobson is from “Young Woman Arrested because She Sees Visions and Hears Voices,” Chicago–American, 20 October 1902; “Pentecost in Chicago,” Burning Bush, 23 October 1902, 6–7. The Sunday Chronicle story was reprinted in the Burning Bush: see “The Sunday Chronicle,” Burning Bush 23 October 1902, 9. 26. “From Brewery to Bible School,” Burning Bush, 13 November 1902, 3–4. The report of Hollingsworth’s sanctification experience is from “The Unique School,” 7. 27. On the orphanage, see “Buffalo Rock Orphanage,” Burning Bush, 21 May 1903, 2–3. Home missionary work in Chicago is discussed in “Our Anniversary,” Burning Bush, 4 June 1902, 4–5. Seth C. Rees’s involvement in rescue work is discussed in Paul S. Rees, Seth Cook Rees, the Warrior Saint (Indianapolis: Pilgrim Book Room, 1934), 64–67. 28. Gustaf Swenson, “From Our Missionary in Sweden,” Burning Bush, 4 June 1903, 4. The church’s work in India is discussed in Katherine Workman, “M.C.A. Missionary Work in India” (unpublished manuscript in the Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif., 1950s), 2. 29. On the Rockford Convention, see “The Rockford Convention,” Burning Bush, 16 October 1902, 2–6. The Kewanee Convention is covered in “The Kewanee Convention,” Burning Bush, 30 October 1902, 2–5; while on Danville, see “The Danville Convention,” Burning Bush, 13 November 1902, 2–4. Harvey’s quotation is from “Pulls Angels Down to Hell,” Rockford Register-Gazette, 11 October 1902, 1; Farson’s is from “Farson Says Hell’s Only Mile Away,” Rockford Republic, 11 October 1902, 1. Of special interest is the Republic’s description of Harvey’s preaching: “He [Harvey] does not have the manner of a preacher. He is more like a stump speaker in his style. He has the face of an actor and the motion of an athlete. The lowest estimate placed on his jump from the platform last night was four feet” (from “Heaven to Have No Strike,” Rockford Republic, 10 October 1902, 1). Other notable features of the fall conventions were special services for healing and the usual physical demonstrations that accompanied MCA services. The Burning Bush reported that in Racine “there was walking, and running, and leaping. The glory of God was present. One brother was laid out under God’s power for some time, apparently unconscious” (“The Racine Convention,” Burning Bush, 27 November 1902, 6). 30. On Messenger’s role in the development of comeouter sentiment, see chapter 1. On the Holiness Movement in New England, see Timothy L. Smith, Called unto Holiness, The Story of the Nazarenes, The Formative Years (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962), 54–90; and James R. Cameron, Eastern Nazarene College: The First Fifty Years, 1900–1950 (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1968), 11–50. 31. On the Springfield Convention, see “Stopped by Police,” Burning Bush, 11 December 1902, 2–5. 32. Ibid. 33. “Down in Connecticut,” Burning Bush, 1 January 1903, 2. 34. On Greene’s fall from grace with the MCA, see “North Attleboro, Mass.,” Burning Bush, 9 June 1904, 4–6. See also “The Elder Brothers,” Burning Bush, 4

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August 1904, 4, which reports that Rees had written Greene that any fellowship with the Burning Bush Movement would lead to his being ostracized by the IAHU. 35. Mitchel was a regular writer for the Beulah Christian and for God’s Revivalist. He would remain with the MCA until his death in 1935. Curtis remained with the MCA until 1909. On his decision to leave the Methodist Church, see L. F. Mitchel, “A Living Death,” Beulah Christian, 3 August 1901, 3. Pentecostal Collegiate Institute, now Eastern Nazarene College, relocated to Wollaston, Massachusetts, in 1919. 36. On Fogg, see “Down in Connecticut,” 3; Cameron, The First Fifty Years, 25; and Louis F. Mitchel, comp., Nuggets No.2 from Black Susan (Springfield, Mass.: Christian Worker’s Union, 1902). 37. “Bro. F. M. Messenger Tells of the Meeting,” Burning Bush, 1 January 1903, 4. 38. Although Fogg was the most visible African American in the history of the MCA, she was certainly not unique. Reports indicate that MCA conventions in both the Midwest and New England were racially integrated. In 1903, a joint MCA and Pillar of Fire Convention in Colorado Springs was held in an African Methodist Episcopal Church. With the exception of Fogg, the most important African American MCA leader was William Wiley, who served for many years as the MCA leader in Providence, Rhode Island. Among the MCA leaders, E. L. Harvey was especially concerned about the plight of African Americans. In fact, Harvey had once hired a lawyer to defend a black man falsely accused of murder. The man was acquitted and later attended Harvey’s funeral. See Edwin. F. Harvey, “Deeper Truths for Christians,” Message of Victory, January–March 1980, 1. 39. On Messenger’s experience as a mill superintendent, see a story from the Putnam Patriot that was published in the Burning Bush as part of a story on Messenger: “F. M. Messenger,” Burning Bush, 6 June 1903, 4. See also “Down in Connecticut,” 2–3. 40. The most interesting source on Messenger’s career at North Grosvenor is an autobiographical account published by the MCA that changes names of individuals, but otherwise claims to be accurate. See F. M. Messenger, Catacombs of Worldly Success; or History of Coarsellor Dell (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1910), 34, 78–89. Correspondence concerning Messenger’s discharge by the Grosvenor-Dale Company is published in F. M. Messenger, “Sowing to the Flesh,” Burning Bush, 15 December 1904, 11. 41. On the Messenger family’s decision to give up their personal property, see Mrs. F. M. Messenger, “Since Giving Up All for Jesus,” Burning Bush, 7 September 1905, 5. The calendars, still known as the Messenger Line, are published by the Norwood Company, with headquarters in Indianapolis, and are marketed to churches, especially through funeral homes. The company’s printing plant is located in Auburn, Indiana.

CHAPTER

6

1. The first quotation from Finney is from one of the most commonly used holiness editions: Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1868), 377. One of the best discussions of Finney’s views on economic issues with the republication of some of his neglected writings on

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the subject is found in Charles G. Finney, The Promise of the Spirit, ed. Timothy L. Smith (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1980), 21, 87, 89–90. Generally viewed as being either escapist or as opiates, the economic views of evangelicals remain largely unexplored. For example, Charles Sellers, depending heavily on Paul Johnson’s controversial interpretation of the Rochester, New York, revival of 1831, suggests that Charles G. Finney’s significance rests in the fact that the evangelist made capitalism safe for the general populace. Sellers’s discussion of Finney is found in The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 225–37. In recent years, scholars fixated on the rapid growth of the market in the Early Republic have suggested that evangelicalism must take the blame, or credit, depending on the ideological presuppositions of the scholar in question. A good discussion is found in Curtis D. Johnson, “Supply-Side and Demand–Side Revivalism? Evaluating the Social Influences on New York State Evangelism in the 1830s,” Social Science History 19 (Spring 1995): 1–30. In truth, in spite of the considerable literature on the social impact of antebellum evangelicals, very little serious work has been done on their actual economic views. This is not a result of the lack of primary source material. My own exposure to the economic writings of evangelicals, however limited, suggests that there is considerable relevant literature. For example, see William C. Kostlevy, “Benjamin Titus Roberts and the Preferential Option for the Poor in the Early Free Methodist Church,” in Poverty and Ecclesiology: Nineteenth–Century Evangelicals in the Light of Liberation Theology, ed. Anthony L. Dunnavant, 51–67 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1992). I suspect that evangelicalism, as a complex, multidimensional movement, has varying economic agendas that cannot be reduced to a single economic understanding or result. 2. As holiness and Pentecostal groups have sought acceptance in the wider culture, the crucial roles played by such communities as Zion, Shiloh, and the MCA have disappeared from collective memory. On the Assemblies of God leaders with ties to Zion, see Edith L. Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism, Volume 1 to 1941 (Springfield, Mo.: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), 113–16. A. J. Tomlinson, founder of what became the Church of God (Cleveland) and briefly, before his conversion, a Populist Party political candidate, under the influence of Frank Sandford, organized a Bible school, orphanage, and community in Culbertson, North Carolina. On Tomlinson’s communal experiment, see R. G. Robins, A. J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 129–43. The role of the MCA in the life of such early Church of the Nazarene leaders as W. E. Shepard, Bud Robinson, F. M. Messenger, and A. F. Ingler has not received the attention of scholars. 3. Interestingly, in the literature on antebellum perfectionism, communal societies are frequently treated as the logical result of perfectionism. See John L. Thomas, “Romantic Reform in America, 1815–1865” American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965): 656–81. In spite of the growing literature on communal societies, evangelical communal groups remain significantly underdocumented. Among the Holiness Movement groups operating during this period only two, Oneida, which became a private corporation in 1871, and the Women’s Commonwealth of Belton, Texas, have been fully integrated into the literature on communal societies. Other well–known

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societies with close ties to the Holiness Movement are Frank Sandford’s community at Shiloh, Maine, and Alexander Dowie’s community at Zion, Illinois. The Salvation Army operated three farm colonies, the most notable in Amity, Colorado, for those deemed sincere in their desire to escape urban property. A similar community, especially serving reformed alcoholics, was founded near Los Angeles by holiness and Pentecostal sympathizer Finis Yoakum. Alma White’s Pillar of Fire founded several communities, most notably in Westminster, Colorado, and Zarephath, New Jersey. Although never teaching that all members should give up their personal property, the Church of God (Anderson) operated more than forty communal–type urban missionary training homes from the 1890s to the 1920s. Churches of Christ in Christian Union minister Henry Clay Leeth, as a result of reading the Burning Bush, founded a group that rejected private property in Washington Court House, Ohio, in 1917. Material on the Women’s Commonwealth, Salvation Army farm colonies, Shiloh, and other communal groups of the period can be found in Robert S. Fogarty, All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). The most complete work on the Salvation Army farm colonies is Clark C. Spence, The Salvation Army Farm Colonies (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985). On the Church of God’s communal experience, see John W. V. Smith, The Quest for Holiness and Unity: A Centennial History of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) (Anderson: Ind.: Warner, 1980), 230–44. And especially helpful on the Gospel Trumpet community at Anderson, Indiana, is Harold L. Phillips, Miracle of Survival (Anderson, Ind.: Warner, 1979), 147–53. On Frank Sandford’s influential Shiloh community, see the official interpretation in Frank S. Murray, The Sublimity of Faith: The Life and Work of Frank W. Sandford (Amherst, N.H.: Kingdom, 1981); and the highly critical work of Shirley Nelson, Fair, Clear, and Terrible: The Story of Shiloh, Maine (Latham, N.Y.: British American, 1989). On Finis E. Yoakum, see Robert V. Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 153–54. On the House of Prayer, the Churches in Christ in Christian Union communal group, see Kenneth Brown and P. Lewis Brevard, From Out of the Past: History of the Churches of Christ in Christian Union (Circleville, Ohio: Circle, 1980). 4. An introduction to the literature documenting communal millennial societies can be found in Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 1–112. On Wesley’s views, see Arthur C. Bray, “Give Up All-by John Wesley” Burning Bush, 22 January 1914, 5. On Wesley’s attempt to organize a community on the model of Acts 2, see Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 364–65. 5. Useful material on the history of stewardship can be found in George A. E. Salstrand, The Story of Stewardship in the United States of America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1956), 25–27. James William Lee argues that the “reformist zeal” of Finney’s ministry and Oberlin College was rooted in his doctrine of “divine ownership of all things.” See James William Lee, “The Development of Theology at Oberlin” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1952). On Keswick, see David D. Bundy, Keswick: A

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Bibliographic Introduction to the Higher Life Movements (Wilmore, Ky.: B. L. Fisher Library, Asbury Theological Seminary, 1975). The doctrine of surrender has shown remarkable longevity in American Christianity. For example, E. Stanley Jones, the unusual product of the American Holiness Movement whose suspicion of capitalism was well documented, continued to expound Keswick themes to mainstream Methodist audiences well into the twentieth century. See E. Stanley Jones, Victory through Surrender (Nashville: Abingdon, 1966). 6. Parker’s quotation is from Proceedings of the Holiness Conference Held at Cincinnati, November 26, 1877, and at New York, December 17, 1877, 202. Knapp’s is from Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies; or Devices of the Devil Unmasked (Cincinnati: Office of the Revivalist, 1898), 89. In spite of Methodism’s steady retreat throughout the nineteenth century from its origins as a church of the common people, many voices, even in important places, continued to warn the church of the dangers “of laying up treasures on earth.” One such author, Thomas Ralston, who was widely read in the Holiness Movement, even suggested that Acts 2 was the normal ethical standard for Christians’ life together. See Thomas N. Ralston, Elements of Divinity; or, A Concise and Comprehensive View of Bible Theology (Nashville: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1878), 848–55. 7. On the growth of tithing, see James Hudnut–Beumler, In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 47–75; and George Salstrand’s still useful older work, The Story of Stewardship, 41–46. 8. S. B. Shaw’s work went through many editions, including at least two by God’s Revivalist Press. The first edition is S. B. Shaw, God’s Financial Plan; or Temporal Prosperity the Result of Faithful Stewardship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: S. B. Shaw, 1897). Among the works that include accounts of God’s vengeance against those not tithing are two Church of the Nazarene classics on tithing, J. W. Goodwin, Tithing: The Touchstone of Stewardship (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, n.d.); and Jarrette E. Aycock, Tithing: Your Questions Answered (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 1955). The Church of the Nazarene literature on tithing alone is vast. For Holiness Movement literature on tithing, see Charles Edwin Jones, The Wesleyan Holiness Movement: A Comprehensive Guide, 2 vols. (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2005). In the Church of the Nazarene, storehouse tithing was first presented as a “best, if not obligatory” principle. By 1964, storehouse tithing was described as the “Scriptural and practical” means of church support. See Manual, Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene (Los Angeles: Nazarene Publishing Company, 1907), 31; and Manual of the Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1964), 48. In 1903, I. G. Martin, an ex-Burning Busher, was ordained to the ministry in the Church of the Nazarene. In his ordination message, Phineas Bresee emphasized storehouse tithing as a central teaching of the new denomination. Reported in I. G. Martin, My Scrapbook (Mansfield, Ill.: By the Author, 1936), 56. Storehouse tithing was taught early on in the history of the International Apostolic Holiness Church. See Manual of the International Apostolic Holiness Church (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Press, 1914), 36–37. On the financial struggles of a typical holiness denomination that only gradually embraced

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storehouse tithing, see Wayne E. Caldwell, ed., Reformers and Revivalists: The History of the Wesleyan Church (Indianapolis: Wesley, 1992), 140. 9. Reprinted in W. Schell, “The Tithing System Abolished,” Gospel Trumpet, June–July 1992, 8–9. A. J. Tomlinson identifies three systems, each claiming its roots in Scripture: tithing, selling all and giving the proceeds to the church, and following one’s conscience. See A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict (Cleveland, Tenn.: Press of Walter E. Rodgers, 1913; repr., Cleveland, Tenn.: White Wing, 1984), 185–86. 10. Interestingly, the MCA’s rejection of storehouse tithing was tied to its growing insistence that one give up all for Jesus. In fact, in the summer of 1902, Charles F. Weigele even advocated tithing at an MCA convention. See “Chicago Holiness Convention,” Burning Bush, 12 June 1902, 1. Three examples of the uniting of the themes of holiness, millennialism, and restoration are “The Whole Gospel,” Burning Bush, 2 July 1908, 5; “True Giving,” Burning Bush, 24 July 1909, 5–6; and F. M. Messenger, “Saving Faith and Savings Banks,” Burning Bush, 28 October 1909, 4. The Lehman quotation is from F. M. Lehman, “The Property Question,” Burning Bush, 3 August 1905, 6–8. Years later, Gertrude Harvey was still attacking the doctrine of storehouse tithing. As she observed at the 1924 MCA camp meeting, Those who preach, ‘give one–tenth’ are old covenant preachers and they can not get their people to Heaven because we have to move up into the New Testament to please Jesus” (Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “The New Testament Standard,” Burning Bush, 4 September 1924, 3). There were a number of accounts in the secular press concerning Farson’s surrender of his considerable fortune. Especially interesting is an unidentified newspaper clipping, “Farson Is Poor Now,” located in the Metropolitan Church Association File, Waukesha County Historical Society, Waukesha, Wisconsin. 11. The first mention that the Bible School is operating on “apostolic lines” is in the Burning Bush, 23 June 1904. Other important early articles in the Burning Bush are Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Faith Line,” Burning Bush, 28 July 1904, 3; E. L. Harvey, “Real Crucifixion,” 6 October 1904, 5; “Bring in the Tithes,” 6 October 1906, 9; and F. M. Messenger, “The Money Question,” Burning Bush, 3 November 1904, 9. The final quotation is from “Holy Giving,” Burning Bush, 20 July 1905, 6. 12. Membership statistics are in the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Religious Bodies, 1906, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1910), 281–82. On the overcrowded conditions, see F. M. Messenger, “Waukesha,” Burning Bush, 16 November 1905, 7. The number of Harvey’s hotels is taken from Henry L. Harvey Jr., interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Hartford, Conn., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 13. The MCA’s plan to move to Buffalo Rock is discussed in Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Our Near Exodus,” Burning Bush, 1 June 1905, 8–9; and in “Our New Home,” Burning Bush, 8 June 1905. The announcement of the move to Waukesha is in “Our New Location,” Burning Bush, 7 September 1905, 10. 14. Marian L. Madison, The Fountain Spring House, 1961, a four–page pamphlet in the possession of the author. Details of the negotiations are in “Cities Which Thou Buildest Not,” Burning Bush, 7 September 1905, 8–11.

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15. Madison, “Fountain Spring House.” The MCA was notorious for its aggressive evangelism. A Church of the Nazarene minister told Arthur L. Bray that during the first two decades of the twentieth century, it seemed impossible to board a train in the Midwest without running into a Burning Bush evangelist (Arthur L. Bray, interview by the author, 8 November 1991, Brooksville, Fla., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 16. Information is taken from interviews with Henry L. Harvey Jr., interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Hartford, Conn., tape recording; Edna Hounshell Clark, interview by the author, August 1991, Oshkosh, Wisc., tape recording; Ruth Capsel Hobbes, interview by the author, August 1991, Lake Geneva, Wisc., tape recording; Kenneth Kendall, interview by the author, August 1991, Milwaukee, Wisc., tape recording. All recordings are located in the William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 17. The statistics are from Census of Religious Bodies: 1906, vol. 2, 281; L. F. Mitchel, “Retrospect,” Burning Bush, 5 January 1928, 10; Mrs. F. M. Messenger, “Among Our Families,” Burning Bush, 8 April 1909, 9; Henry Norman, “Our Fifth Anniversary in Waukesha,” Burning Bush, 23 March 1911, 15; and “Thanksgiving,” Burning Bush, 28 November 1912, 4. 18. The earliest Burning Bush article on the need for equality in food and clothing is Mrs. F. M. Messenger, “Equal Division,” Burning Bush, 16 February 1905, 12. Information on the amount of food and clothing is from Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Having All Things in Common,” Burning Bush, 8 July 1909, 8–9. 19. Grace Smith, “A Day at the Bible School,” Burning Bush, 18 November 1909, 8; and “Holiness Band Here,” Waukesha Freeman, 4 January 1906, 1. Although the daily regimen may seem intense, one needs to remember that even noncommunal holiness people lived lives structured around daily prayer and repeated religious services that included a seemingly endless series of camp meetings, revivals, prayer meetings, and weekly gatherings for worship. 20. Hobbes, interview by the author, August 1991, Lake Geneva, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.; and “In Memory,” Burning Bush, 5 December 1957, 21, 31. 21. William T. Pettengill, “Bible School Music,” Burning Bush, 16 July 1925, 7. On the place of music in the course of study, see the flyer Metropolitan Bible School, Situated at Waukesha, Wisconsin (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, n.d.). See also Arthur F. Ingler, ed., Burning Bush Songs, No. 1 (Chicago: Metropolitan Church Association, 1902); Arthur F. Ingler, ed., Joy-bells of Canaan; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 2 (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1905); The Highway and the Way; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 3 (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1907); Milk and Honey; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 4 (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1911); and The New and Living Way; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 5 (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1913). On Flora Lucas Palmer, see her obituary in Burning Bush (October 1972). 22. On Ingler, see chapter 4; and M. K. Moulton, “Ingler,” Herald of Holiness, 28 September 1935. After leaving the MCA, Ingler edited a widely used songbook, Canaan

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Melodies. On Lehman, see Phillip Stanley Kerr, Music in Evangelism and Stories of Famous Christian Songs (Glendale, Calif.: Gospel Music Publishers, 1959), 153. 23. On Mitchel, see L. F. Mitchel, “Shall We Keep On?” Burning Bush, 9 February 1917, 9; L. F. Mitchel, “Reminiscences of the Burning Bush Camp Meetings,” Burning Bush, 20 July 1920, 8, 14; L. F. Mitchel, “A Music Teacher’s Conversion,” Burning Bush, 23 April 1925, 9; and Louis F. Mitchel, “Retrospect,” 10. Two hymns that capture Mitchel’s theology are “O Love of God” and “The Story of Jesus,” nos. 32 and 45, respectively, in Milk and Honey. 24. On Pettengill, see W. T. Pettengill, “Strict Independency,” Burning Bush, 23 October 1913, 5; and “Gathering at the River,” Burning Bush, 6 December 1956, 19–20. “Pentecostal Power” is hymn no. 70 in The New and Living Way. After Pettengill’s death, the MCA published a collection of his hymns, Collected for Keeps: Hymns of W. T. Pettengill (Dundee, Ill.: Metropolitan Church Association, n.d.). 25. On Harris, see Kerr, Music in Evangelism, 197; and the brief discussion in Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 232. 26. See correspondence between Harris and E. L. Harvey, in the Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, especially 1909–10; and the correspondence between E. L. Harvey and Henry Date, June 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 27. On the early casualties of communal life, see “There’s Death in the Pot,” Burning Bush, 7 June 1906, 4–5. In spite of his great success as a hymn writer, Lehman’s ministerial career was troubled by scandal and controversy. One such controversy involved the sale of stocks; see F. M. Lehman, “Confession,” Herald of Holiness, 29 December 1915, 6. On Lehman’s and Shepard’s defections, see “There’s Death in the Pot,” 4–5. On Shepard, see also “Burning Bush Backsliders,” Burning Bush, 22 May 1919, 5; and W. E. Shepard, Fanaticism: What It Is, How to Avoid It, How to Correct It (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, n.d.). Among the available editions of Bible Lessons, the most accessible is Bible Lessons: A Treatise on Evidences of Religion, Sin, Repentance, Consecration, and Holiness (Salem, Ohio: Allegheny, 1989). 28. E. L. Harvey, “Real Crucifixion,” 5; and “The Property Question,” Burning Bush, 15 December 1904, 6–7. Lehman first used Luke 14:33 as a defense of the MCA in “The Tithing System,” Burning Bush, 13 April 1905, 4–5. It was more fully developed in Lehman, “The Property Question,” 6–7. In the same issue see “Wesley on Riches,” 5–6. 29. See especially the sermon on 2 Corinthians 8:9 in Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “His Poverty Is Our Riches,” Burning Bush, 8 July 1909, 2–3; Charles T. Hollingsworth, “Giving All,” Burning Bush, 9 December 1909, 9. 30. In contrast to the Burning Bush, the Northwest Christian Advocate, the publication of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the Midwest, insisted that the rich could make important contributions to the church. On 6 March 1901 the paper even featured J. P. Morgan on its cover. A list of the Scripture texts the MCA used to defend its position is in Charles T. Hollingsworth, “Forsaking All–– A Bible Doctrine,”

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Burning Bush, 29 January 1920, 9, 15. On what constitutes a rich person, see E. L. Harvey, “The Price of Discipleship,” Burning Bush, 15 January 1910, 2–3. The first quotation is from “Rich People,” Burning Bush, 21 August 1919, 4–5. 31. Donald S. Lundin, “The Lord’s Poor,” Burning Bush, 11 May 1911, 11, 14. An example of the MCA’s rejection of simply giving one’s money to any poor person is F. M. Messenger, “Giving Our Best,” Burning Bush, 14 November 1912, 3. “For the Poor” appeared in many issues of the Burning Bush. For example, see “For the Poor,” Burning Bush, 1 August 1912, 12. For another example of the “preferential option for the poor” in evangelicalism, see Kostlevy, “Benjamin Titus Roberts and the Preferential Option for the Poor.” 32. Among the Burning Bush articles that suggest that faith is the fundamental issue at stake, see three editorials by F. M. Messenger, “Saving Faith and Savings Banks,” 4; “Faith,” Burning Bush, 3 February 1910, 4; and “Treasures,” Burning Bush, 5 May 1910, 4. The Harvey quotation is from “Some of Harvey’s Sayings,” Burning Bush, 13 August 1903, 5. 33. Donald S. Lundin, “Giving Up All,” Burning Bush, 24 October 1912, 8. Mokstad’s message is reported in “Behold, We Have Forsaken All and Followed Thee,” Burning Bush, 14 October 1915, 4. 34. The MCA literature on faith healing is immense. See especially the 21 August 1913 issue of the Burning Bush that was dedicated to that topic. Among the most helpful articles on articulating the link between forsaking all and healing is “The Faith Line,” Burning Bush, 20 April 1905, 9. Also helpful is the editorial “Divine Healing,” Burning Bush, 6 May 1915, 4–5. The quotation is from The Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association of Wisconsin, Adopted November 15 1930, 15. The lore of the MCA is rich with accounts of divine healing. Especially noteworthy accounts were from Gertrude Harvey, W. E. Shepard, and A. C. Bray. Interestingly, the MCA’s opposition to medical treatment ended suddenly in 1933. In 1932, Henry L. Harvey Jr. and a young firebrand, Howard Bitzer, were sent as missionaries to India. The death of Bitzer from smallpox while Harvey, who had been secretly inoculated for the disease, remained healthy resulted in a change of policy. The church no longer considers the use of drugs and medicines to be unscriptural. See Discipline and Rules for Christian Conduct of the Metropolitan Church Association (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1952), 19–20; and Henry L. Harvey Jr., interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Brooksville, Fla., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. The MCA has played an important, although largely unknown, role in the history of twentieth-century faith healing. MCA leader A. G. Garr and Clarence Erickson, the son of prominent leader R. L. Erickson, were instrumental in the establishment of faith healing ministries in the 1910s and 1920s that were precursors to the great post-World War II healing revival. 35. Juanita Owen, Where Flows the Ganges: The Story of John Samuel Whipple, Missionary to India (Brainerd, Minn.: Lakeland Color, 1978); Alice Whipple, interview by the author, August 1991, Lake Geneva, Wisc., tape recording; and Muriel Whipple Haddon, interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Mystic, Conn., tape recording. All interviews are from the William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

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36. Martha A. Dammarell, “Crandon,” Burning Bush, 4 July 1907, 4–5; Helga A. Stabell, “Results of Crandon Revival,” Burning Bush, 12 March 1908, 8; and also Hobbes, interview with the author, August 1991, Lake Geneva, Wisc., William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. On Smith, see Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “The Old Time Power,” Burning Bush, 30 August 1906, 9. 37. George W. Barker Sr. to the Burning Bush, Waukesha, Wisconsin, 20 May 1908. Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 38. Daniel Steele, “Saving Faith,” Christian Standard, 9 October 1909, 2. Also see Christian Standard, 8 July 1911. Also see the response to the Standard’s position in “Communism,” Burning Bush, 18 July 1912, 5. Other attacks on the MCA position that have been located by the author include “Fanaticism,” Pentecostal Messenger, 15 July 1913; and “Treasures in Heaven,” Religious Telescope, 23 February 1910. The Pettengill quotation is from W. T. Pettengill, “Beating the Bush” Burning Bush, 16 October 1913, 5. On the discussion of metaphor, see Steven Dale Cooley, “The Possibilities of Grace: Poetic Discourse and Reflection in Methodist/Holiness Revivalism” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1991). 39. On the early cooperation and subsequent split of the MCA and Pentecostal Union, see Susie Cunningham Stanley, Feminist Pillar of Fire: The Life of Alma White (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1993), 53–65. Especially interesting, given the subsequent conflict between the two groups, is the first edition of White’s autobiography recounting her positive impression of the Metropolitan Holiness Church when she attended the 1901 General Holiness Assembly in Chicago; see Mrs. Mollie Alma White, Looking Back from Beulah (Denver: Pentecostal Union, 1902), 252–56. These pages were removed from the 1909 edition. The first edition of White’s autobiography was distributed by the MCA. The role of the MCA in shaping Pillar of Fire worship receives support in Frank Bartleman, From Plow to Pulpit: From Maine to California (Los Angeles: By the Author, 1924), 90–112. Also, on the campaign in England, see “From the London Dailies,” Burning Bush, 5 January 1905, 4–6. 40. The statements by Erickson and Messenger are printed in “Who Tells the Truth,” Burning Bush, 15 February 1906, 6. Copies of the letter to Farson and the application to the Metropolitan Bible School were published in the Burning Bush, 18 January 1906, 2, 5. 41. The MCA’s position is expressed in “Dialogue Made from Conversation, Letters and Facts,” Burning Bush, 18 January 1906, 7. 42. The first public announcement that the Burning Bush Movement and White’s Pentecostal Union were at odds was a full-page statement that appeared in the 9 November 1905 issue of the Burning Bush. Unlike usual Burning Bush exposés, no specific charges were made, perhaps because they still hoped White might be reconciled. The MCA response to Burning Bush Exposed is in “A Comforting Thought,” Burning Bush, 18 January 1906, 5. Alma White’s interpretation of the events is from Alma White, The Story of My Life and the Pillar of Fire, vol. 4 (Zarephath, N.J.: Pillar of Fire, 1928), 261–88. 43. On the crisis in Los Angeles, see “Mrs. Kent White,” Burning Bush, 25 January 1906, 4, 6–7; and “God Working with Us,” Burning Bush, 15 February 1906, 1–7.

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Although C. K. Ingler remained with the Pillar of Fire, Arthur F. Ingler, after flirting with Pentecostalism, joined the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. In the late 1960s, Gary Bowell, who had been introduced by his Methodist Sunday school teacher in Richland Center, Wisconsin, to the Burning Bush and the MCA, attended a Pillar of Fire Church in Seattle. Unaware of the earlier conflict between the two groups, Bowell was impressed by their similarities—at least until the Pillar of Fire minister gave a sermon on a little-known but dangerous cult: the Burning Bush Movement (Gary Bowell, interview by the author, August 1991, Richland Center, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). Although Alma White’s separation from the MCA had occurred ninety years earlier, many stories about White continued to circulate in the MCA as late as the early 1990s. Incidentally, the Bound Brook property remains an important center for the Pillar of Fire Church and the location of that denomination’s largest congregation. Today the Pillar of Fire has fewer then one thousand members in North America, but has a significant ministry outside the United States. My research into the Pillar of Fire Church has benefited greatly from my friendship with Robert Cruver, Pillar of Fire pastor and former president of the Pillar of Fire–related Somerset Christian College. I am also indebted to interviews with Arthur L. Bray, Ruth Capsel Hobbes, Alice Whipple, and Gary Bowell.

CHAPTER

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1. A. G. Garr to Henry Harvey, 13 May 1907, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 2. The popular report that Lillian Anderson’s father was a Methodist bishop is not true. 3. On the Los Angeles campaign, see W. E. Shepard, “From Los Angeles,” Burning Bush, 7 April 1904, 4–5; and W. E. Shepard, “The Los Angeles Convention,” Burning Bush, 28 July 1904, 5. Besides Los Angeles, the MCA held services and attempted to establish a mission in San Jose, and, apparently, in Sacramento. Frank Bartleman, a holiness itinerant evangelist who had worked with Alma White’s Pentecostal Union in Denver and who considered the Pillar of Fire fanatical, distributed five thousand tracts warning of Burning Bush fanaticism in San Jose. See Frank Bartleman, From Plow to Pulpit: From Maine to California (Los Angeles: By the Author, 1924), 119–21. 4. On the success of A. G. and Lillian Garr, see “Los Angeles Again: Another Nazarene Converted,” Burning Bush, 15 December 1905, 6. Also indicative of the Garrs’ style was Lillian Anderson Garr’s revelation that her own father, T. H. B. Anderson, a regular writer for Henry Clay Morrison’s Pentecostal Herald, was a habitual user of tobacco. Lillian Garr charged that Morrison, who knew her father smoked, was indifferent to her father’s spiritual needs. See the Burning Bush, 30 March 1905. On Anderson, see T. H. B. Anderson, Experience of Rev. T. H. B. Anderson, D. D. (n.p.: By the author, n.d.). Herbert Buffum (1879–1939) became one of Pentecostalism’s most noted songwriters, authoring a reported ten thousand songs.

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5. Allan Farson, Ken Farson, 1917–1988: A Book of Memories (Glendale, Calif.: By the Author, 1991), 8, 16. On Duke Farson’s continued fascination with the issue of divorce, see “More about the Tidwell-Nazarene Church Matter,” Immanuel Herald, 11 March 1928, 7–11, 22–23. In 1958, the MCA published the important radical holiness tract against remarriage: Glenn Griffith, Until Death Do Us Part (Dundee, Ill.: Metropolitan Press, 1958). 6. Shepard would eventually return to the Church of the Nazarene. See “There’s Death in the Pot,” Burning Bush, 7 June 1906, 4–5. In my research on A. G. and Lillian Garr, I was greatly aided by their son A. G. Garr Jr. (interview by the author, January 1993, Charlotte, N.C., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). Also on Garr, see William A. Ward, The Trailblazer: The History of Dr. A. G. Garr and Garr Auditorium (Concord, N.C.: By the Author, n.d.). Ward’s contention that Garr received the gift of tongues on 16 June is supported in Garr’s letter to Henry Harvey. Other sources, most notably an article from Pentecostal Power quoted in the Burning Bush, 20 June 1907, 5, give the date as 14 June. The 16 June date suggests that Garr received the gift of tongues one day after Frank Bartleman, who claimed to have received the experience on 15 June. See Frank Bartleman, Witness to Pentecost: The Life of Frank Bartleman (New York: Garland, 1985), 56. As early as April, Glenn A. Cook reported that he attended the meetings but his prejudice against the third blessing prevented him from receiving his Pentecost at that time. See Glenn A. Cook “Receiving the Holy Ghost,” Apostolic Faith, November 1906, 2. Concerning the origins of Pentecostalism, see the early but still valuable work of Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 66–68; D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); and Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 7. On the meeting in Chicago, see “The Third Blessing,” Burning Bush, 19 July 1906, 1–2; and in the same issue, “A. G. Garr,” 2. 8. The Garrs’ own reports of their experiences in Danville are in “Good News from Danville, VA,” Apostolic Faith, September 1906, 4; and, interestingly, A. G. Garr’s less optimistic report in “Pentecost in Danville, VA,” Apostolic Faith, October 1906, 2. 9. In a 1907 letter to Harvey, Garr rejected the MCA claim that he had attempted to steal MCA property. The MCA continued to have a presence in the Danville, Virginia. In 1911, E. L. and Gertrude Harvey reported that despite the damage that Garr had done, the “tongues delusion” was dying out in Danville. See Mr. and Mrs. Harvey, “The Virginia Campaign,” Burning Bush, 23 February 1911, 8–9. Wacker discusses personal autonomy and uses the quotation from Garr in Heaven Below, 212–16. The similar experience of Norwegian Pentecostal pioneer Thomas Ball Barratt is described in David D. Bundy, “Visions of Apostolic Mission: Scandinavian Pentecostal Mission to 1935” (PhD diss., Uppsala University, 2009), 173–77. 10. The Garrs’ failure to speak in native languages seems to have destroyed any chance they might have had to win Burning Bush missionaries to their cause. This is a much–repeated story in the MCA, and it continues to be cited as a prime reason for

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the Movement’s rejection of Pentecostalism. On the India perspective, I am especially indebted to Alice Whipple. The original article first appeared in the Calcutta Pentecostal periodical Pentecostal Power and was reprinted as part of a larger article in “God’s Two Gifts of Tongues,” Burning Bush, 20 June 1907, 4–5. 11. The Garrs’ own account of their experiences in India, first published in B. F. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored (St. Louis: Gospel Publishing House, 1916), 96–105, is accessible in Donald W. Dayton, comp., Three Early Pentecostal Tracts (New York: Garland, 1985). 12. Ward, Trailblazer, 7–8. Frank Bartleman shared Garr’s view that the liberation of the church from human leadership was a fruit of the Azusa Street Revival. See Bartleman, Witness to Pentecost, 58, 155–60. Typical of the Garrs’ style was their revival in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in 1925. The Garrs arrived in town in a car with Scripture verses fixed to the sides, along with the story of the Garr Evangelistic Team, but were unable to rent a building, and simply began services in a vacant lot (Robert Bryant Mitchell, Heritage and Horizons; The History of the Open Bible Standard Churches [Des Moines: Open Bible, 1982], 76–77). 13. “The Third Blessing,” 4. On the slow start to the Azusa Street Revival, see Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited, 66–68. Typical of the MCA position on race is a brief quotation criticizing the Methodist Episcopal Church’s racial attitudes. “Thank God, we do not draw the line on color, but on sin and unGodliness” (Burning Bush, 21 February 1907, 7). On Seymour’s preoccupation with the divorce and remarriage issues, see W. J. Seymour, “The Marriage Tie,” Apostolic Faith, 21 September 1907, 3. On the teachings of the Apostolic Faith Church, Portland, Oregon, see A Historical Account of the Apostolic Faith: A Trinitarian-Fundamental Evangelistic Organization (Portland, Ore.: Apostolic Faith Publishing House, 1965), 48–50. 14. On Parham, see James R. Goff Jr., Fields White unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1988). The MCA’s first extended attack on Pentecostalism is in the Burning Bush, 24 January 1907, 4–8. The story of Glenn A. Cook is one of particular interest. Cook handled finances and correspondence at Azusa Street. Eventually he took the Pentecostal message to Indianapolis, where he became a leader in the “Oneness” Pentecostal Movement, which emerged in 1914. Although difficult to trace, his history with the MCA was especially stormy. A convicted arsonist, Cook was converted during the Chicago revival of 1901. He served the MCA as a printer and wrote a number of articles for the Burning Bush. According to the MCA, Cook owed the MCA $500 when he left in 1906. In 1908 Cook wrote to E. L. Harvey. In response, Harvey reminded Cook of his unpaid debt and ended the letter “Yours for a hot, fiery, honest, second blessing, truth filling and debt-paying gospel” (E. L. Harvey to Glenn A. Cook, 24 April 1908, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). On Cook, see “How I Received the Los Angeles Gift of Tongues,” Burning Bush, 24 January 1907, 6–7. 15. F. M. Messenger, “Counterfeit Gift of Tongues,” Burning Bush, 19 September 1907, 5–7. In the years that followed, the MCA lost few people to Pentecostalism. Interestingly, R. L. Erickson, one of the Burning Bush Movement’s most successful evangelists, did embrace Pentecostalism. Erickson’s story was, however, one of tragedy.

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Shortly after the death of his wife in 1907, he was expelled from the MCA for sexual indiscretion. Eventually joining the Pentecostal Movement, he served briefly as a pastor in Chicago. In 1914, special speakers at his church included such old friends from his MCA days as A. G. Garr and Kent White. See “Tongues Inconsistency,” Burning Bush, 2 July 1914, 4. After being involved again in sexual indiscretion, Erickson was fired by his church in 1915. In 1944, he died in Charlotte, North Carolina. As previously indicated, his daughter Hanna, the second wife of A. G. Garr, would serve as the pastor of the Garr Memorial Tabernacle from 1944 to 1976. A son, Clarence Erickson, served as a pastor in Indianapolis and Chicago. Like his father and sister, he was a noted faith healer. 16. On the MCA arrival in Waukesha, see G. H. Koenig, “The Jumpers Jarred Waukesha,” Waukesha (Wisconsin) Freeman, 20 March 1982. 17. See “From Milwaukee Sentinel,” Burning Bush, 7 June 1906, 8–9, 13. 18. See L. F. Mitchel, “Riot in Waukesha,” Burning Bush, 26 July 1906, 4–5; and “Holy Jumpers Egged by Mob,” Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 August 1906. For an account of the 1906 camp meeting, see also “Camp Meeting Number,” Burning Bush, 30 August 1906. 19. On the seventeen students arrested, see the Burning Bush, 13 June 1907; and 20 June 1907. On the Blinn and Meinung arrest, see Clara L. Huntington, “The Battle Hot,” Burning Bush, 11 July 1907, 4. On Messenger’s arrest, see Burning Bush, 11 July 1907, 9; F. M. Messenger, “Arrest and Confinement,” Burning Bush, 18 July 1907, 5–7; and “Acquitted,” Burning Bush, 3 October 1907, 5. See the obituary for the MCA’s first convert in Waukesha, “Mrs. McGraw’s Death,” Burning Bush, 18 July 1918, 11. 20. W. C. Dixon, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 24 May 1910; Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Parsons, Red Cloud, to Burning Bush People, Waukesha, 23 June 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Red Cloud is located on the Nebraska-Kansas state line. It is a commercial center and the county seat of Webster County. It is best known as the home of author Willa Cather. 21. Martha Bray, Red Cloud, to Gertrude Harvey, Waukesha, 12 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 22. Ibid. 23. Not everyone received the revivals positively. For example, Bray reported that “a young woman came to the altar and was praying through fine when her mother drew up in front of the tent and called for her girl. I went to the wagon and found the mother in a rage. She jumped from the wagon and started for the tent promising trouble and rushed to the altar and dragged her girl away” (Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 17 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 24. Martha Bray, Red Cloud, to Gertrude Harvey, Waukesha, 12 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 25. Ed F. Deright, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, undated, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

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26. [Deright], Red Cloud to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 20 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 27. Red Cloud Advertiser, 23 September 1910. On the community’s reaction to the Burning Bush Movement’s acquisition of the Reed property, see Webster County Argus, 23 September 1910. 28. Ed F. Deright and Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to Burning Bush, Waukesha, typescript of telegram, 21 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 29. Undated and handwritten text of telegram to Deright and Bray, Red Cloud, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. In Matthew 10:23 Jesus tells his disciples that when they are persecuted in one city they are to flee to another because there are many other places that need their message. 30. Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 24 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 31. Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 26 September 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 32. Arthur C. Bray, Esbon, Kans., to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 4 October 1910; Martha Bray, Red Cloud, to Gertrude Harvey, Waukesha, 4 October 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 33. Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 6 October 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 34. Ibid. 35. Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 13 October 1910; Ed F. Deright, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 14 October 1910; Martha Bray, Red Cloud, to Gertrude Harvey, Waukesha, 14 October 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 36. Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 18 October 1910; Ed F. Deright, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 26 October 1910. Arthur C. Bray, Red Cloud, to E. L. Harvey, Waukesha, 29 October 1910, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 37. Interestingly, in spite of the turmoil of 1910, a few years later the MCA received another request to send missionaries to Red Cloud. There is no evidence that anyone was sent. The Parsons family continued to correspond with the MCA for several years after the incident. As for the missionaries, the Brays’ life together would be short. In 1912, while following the MCA practice of rejecting medical treatment, Martha died, leaving behind, in addition to her husband, a son of less than one year of age. Arthur C. Bray remained with the Burning Bush, serving as a teacher and evangelist, until his death in 1937. Ironically, considering his strident tone in demanding that believers give all to Jesus, E. F. Deright left the Burning Bush in 1913. 38. On the evolution of the Scripture Text Calendar, see the ads for the calendar that appeared in the fall issues of the Burning Bush. The International Sunday School Lessons were an ecumenical Protestant effort to coordinate Sunday school lessons, which resulted in common Scripture texts being used with each week’s lesson.

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39. Martin Wells Knapp, Pentecostal Letters (Cincinnati: Office of God’s Revivalist, 1902). On Messenger’s interpretation of the calendars and their sale, see W. G. Schurman, “The Home–Going of Brother Messenger,” Herald of Holiness, 4 March 1931, 10. On his confession of error, see F. M. Messenger, “My Confession,” Herald of Holiness, 21 January 1914, 10. I am indebted to Charles E. Jones for locating Messenger’s confession. A letter from E. L. Harvey to Waukesha postmaster H. E. Blair indicates that Messenger first relocated to Zion City, Illinois. In the letter Harvey complains that a clerk in the post office had immediately shared with customers at a local barbershop the news that Messenger was permanently leaving the MCA. See E. L. Harvey to H. E. Blair, 14 April 1913, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. On Messenger’s role in the development of the Church of the Nazarene pension plan, see John C. Oster, Serving Those Who Serve: 75 Years of Pensions and Benefits (Kansas City, Mo.: Board of Pensions and Benefits USA, Church of the Nazarene, 1993), 18–20. 40. John S. Whipple to E. L. Harvey, 6 February 1918, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 41. The work of Hofmann and Plockhorst is discussed in Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995). On Tillich, see Sally M. Promey, “Interchangeable Art: Warner Sallman and the Critics of Mass Culture,” in Icons of American Protestantism: The Work of Warner Sallman, ed. David Morgan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 156–57. Copies of the calendars referred to in this article are in the Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 42. For information on Sallman, see McDannell, Material Christianity, 27, 189–92, 240; David Morgan, ed., Icons of American Protestantism: The Work of Warner Sallman (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996); and Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), 117–23. Gaebelein is quoted in McDannell, Material Christianity, 7.

CHAPTER

8

1. Edwin F. Harvey’s sentiments were expressed in “Deeper Truths for Christians,” Message of Victory (January–March 1980): 1. The memories of Messenger and the African American at the funeral were recounted by Kenneth Kendall, interview by the author, August 1991, Milwaukee, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Other people who mentioned the story included Henry L. Harvey Jr., Lillian Johnson Harvey (interviews by the author, April 1991 and 22 November 1995, Hampton, Tenn., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.), and Arthur L. Bray (interview by the author, 8 November 1991, Brooksville, Fla., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 2. The MCA’s Bullard community was actually better known for many years than the group’s Waukesha experiment. This is largely the result of a 1947 article by Edwin Smyrl, “The Burning Bush,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 50 (January

208

NOTES TO PAGES

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1947): 335–43. Other information can be found in Earle Walker, “Religious Group Established Colony in Bullard Area Half Century Ago,” Tyler Courier Times, 23 September 1962; Bob Bowman, The 35 Best Ghost Towns in East Texas (Lufkin, Tex.: Best of East Texas, 1988); Thelma Chambers Cravy ed., The Bullard Area: Its History and People, 1800–1977 (Bullard, Tex.: Community Library Assoc., 1978), 23–25; and Tom Bailey, Cults and Country People (n.p.: By the Author, 1980), 16–31. All of this material is available at the Bullard (Texas) Community Library: Burning Bush Collection. 3. On the MCA’s organization of the Texas property, see Mrs. Henry L. Harvey, “Six Months in East Texas,” Burning Bush, 13 August 1914, 8; and “All Aboard for Texas,” Burning Bush, 29 April 1915, 4. 4. Smyrl, “The Burning Bush,” 335–343. Also see Allan Farson, Ken Farson, 1917–1988: A Book of Memories (Glendale, Calif.: By the Author, 1991), 3–7. 5. On the MCA in 1916, see Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Various Branches of Our Work,” Burning Bush, 15 June 1916, 4–5; and U. S. Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies, 1916, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), 282–83. 6. Edna Hounshell Clark, interview by the author, August 1991, Oshkosh, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. On women’s predominance in “radical evangelicalism,” see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). On the MCA work in the coal region of West Virginia, see W. S. Hitchcock, “Among the Hills of Amy, West Virginia,” Burning Bush, 6 August 1914, 8; and “The Missionary Field—at Home and Abroad,” Burning Bush, 18 February 1915, 7. Lillian Harvey reported that her father, John T. Johnson, was threatened on several occasions because of his strong preaching of the doctrine of forsaking all (Lillian Johnson Harvey, interview by the author, 22 November 1995, Hampton, Tenn., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 7. A. C. Bray, “Evangelism in Texas,” Burning Bush, 8 July 1915, 8; and H. L. Callaway, “Burning Bush Revival in Texas,” Burning Bush, 16 September 1915, 7. On the 1915 camp meeting, see Burning Bush, 21 October 1915, 15. 8. It seems that the person spreading rumors concerning pending legal action against the MCA was none other than W. E. Shepard, then pastor of the Woodlawn Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene (Chicago, Illinois). See D. M. Farson, “The Conspiracy Case,” Burning Bush, 10 May 1917, 4. 9. The suit was first mentioned in the 28 December 1916 issue of the Burning Bush; the MCA’s response to the case appears in D. M. Farson, “The Conspiracy,” Burning Bush, 8 March 1917, 6. 10. On the suit, see D. M. Farson, “The Conspiracy Case,” Burning Bush, 18 January 1917, 4–5; 25 January 1917, 5–6; and 1 February 1917, 4–5. The quotation is from the 1 February issue. 11. W. T. Pettengill, “Our Front Page Picture,” Burning Bush, 5 November 1914, 4; and “The Methodists and the War,” Burning Bush, 3 December 1914, 5. In the 26 September 1918 issue of the Burning Bush, Harvey defended the paper’s soft stance on

NOTES TO PAGES

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209

the evils of war (page 5). Other material on the MCA and the war is found in Bernard Farson, Autobiographical Letters, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. On the shortages of food and fuel in Waukesha, see Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Fuel Shortage–God’s Deliverance,” Burning Bush, 21 March 1918, 8–9. 12. Gertrude Harvey to Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Scarce, 13 October 1918, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 13. Gertrude Harvey to Miss J. S. Whipple, 3 December 1918, Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. In a letter to Mrs. L. W. Seward, 11 December 1918, Mrs. Harvey noted that the flu resulted in extra expenses for the community (Metropolitan Church Association Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). The influenza pandemic tended to strike people in the prime of life, between about twenty and forty years of age, and likely would have spared the children and the older members of the Burning Bush community. 14. On the failure of Farson’s bond business and the end of the Bullard experiment, see Farson, Ken Farson, 7; and Smyrl, “The Burning Bush,” 342–43. Information on the Burning Bush community at Bullard is available from Bullard Community Library, Bullard, Texas; and the Smith County Historical Society, Burning Bush File, Tyler, Texas. 15. Quoted in Henry Harvey, Howard B. Bitzer (Siwait, Allahabad, India: Metropolitan Church Association, 1936), 78. On the Chicago Central District of the Church of the Nazarene, see Mark Reynolds Moore, Fifty Years and Beyond: A History of the Chicago District of the Church of the Nazarene (Kankakee, Ill.: Chicago Central District of the Church of the Nazarene, 1954), 147–48. An example of the nostalgic turn in Harvey’s reflections is E. L. Harvey, “A Review of the Years,” Burning Bush, 12 January 1922, 4–5. The last quotation is from the Burning Bush, 16 October 1919. 16. E. L. Harvey, “Joining the Nazarenes (Process of Questioning Necessary),” Burning Bush, 26 August 1920, 1, 4; and E. L. Harvey, “Apology (?) to the Nazarenes,” Burning Bush, 15 December 1921, 4. 17. On the Burning Bush Movement’s ministry in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, see E. L. Harvey, “The Meeting in Manistique,” Burning Bush, 4 December 1919, 12–13; and “The Gospel at Your Door,” Burning Bush, 25 April 1929, 9. 18. On the Hitchcocks’ ministry, see “A Revival at New Salem,” Burning Bush, 2 June 1921, 6; and Mrs. John T. Johnson, “Friday—Home Mission Day,” Burning Bush, 10 September 1925, 8. On the Detroit Mission, see W. T. Pettengill, “Detroit Mission Church,” Burning Bush, 1 July 1926, 1, 6. Material on John T. Johnson is from my interview with Lillian Johnson Harvey, April 1991, Hampton, Tenn., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. 19. On Anaman’s role in the Boscobel revival, see “The Chain God Forged,” Burning Bush, 10 November 1927, 6. 20. On Louis Goetz, see “In Memoriam,” Burning Bush, 13 October 1932, 15; “In Memory,” Burning Bush, 28 December 1950, 12; and Dorothy Goetz Ison, interview by the author, August 1991, Muskego, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

210

NOTES TO PAGES

154–156

21. “The Harvest-field, Victory at Boscobel,” Burning Bush, 6 May 1920, 4; “The Chain God Forged,” 6; and a memorial to Louis Boebel’s son, Albert L. Boebel, “Memorial,” Church Herald and Holiness Banner, 4 November 1965, 12. 22. Arthur L. Bray indicated that the actual figure of indebtedness reached $300,000. (interview by the author, 8 November 1991, Brooksville, Fla., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.) 23. Although colored by the perspective of the Hitchcock administration, the best source of information is in Harvey, Howard B. Bitzer, 114–16. 24. For descriptions of the funeral I am indebted to interviews with Kenneth Kendall (interview by the author, August 1991, Milwaukee, Wisc., tape recording), Henry L. Harvey Jr. (interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Hartford, Conn., tape recording), Lillian Johnson Harvey (interviews by the author, April 1991 and 22 November 1995, Hampton, Tenn., tape recordings), and Arthur L. Bray (interview by the author, 8 November 1991, Brooksville, Fla., tape recording). All tape recordings in the William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. The announcement of Harvey’s death appears in “Rev. Edwin L. Harvey, Deceased,” Burning Bush, 4 February 1926, 4. 25. On Harvey’s funeral, see the 4 March 1926 issue of the Burning Bush. Especially relevant are Marian Madison, “The Last Tribute of His People,” Burning Bush, 4 March 1926, 9, 16; J. Howard Barnes, “Personal Glimpses,” 14; J. T. Johnson, “God’s Blessing Invoked,” 14; Bernard Totzke, “Editorial: Brother Harvey’s Last Days,” 4–5; and W. S. Hitchcock, “The Brevity of Life,” 2–3, 15. This issue has considerable material on the history of the Movement including Helga A. Stabell, “My Introduction and My Farewell to Brother Harvey,” 8, 15; and Martin Wells Knapp’s old secretary F. L. Potter, “Living Influence,” 7–8. See also the moving tribute to Harvey by L. F. Mitchel, “A Fragrant Memory,” Burning Bush, 20 January 1927, 4. 26. On Hitchcock’s message at the 1925 Camp Meeting, see Leslie F. Ingram, “Sunday—The Last Day of the Feast,” Burning Bush, 10 September 1925, 16; and Harvey, Howard B. Bitzer, 115. 27. Harvey, Howard B. Bitzer, 119–20. On Hitchcock’s ability to raise money, see John Wesley Hubbart, “The Opening Service of the Camp Meeting,” Burning Bush, 15 August 1929, 9. Edna Hounshell Clark, her husband, and her young family were among those “sent out” from Waukesha. Fondly remembering her years in Waukesha, she remained a supporter of the Movement (interview by the author, August 1991, Oshkosh, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). Muriel Whipple Haddon, a Bible School student at the time Hitchcock replaced Harvey, was much more critical of the new regime. (interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Mystic, Conn., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 28. Veteran MCA leaders, such as Louis Goetz and Henry L. Harvey, actively sought to spread the gospel while canvassing. Younger canvassers concentrated on sales. Frequently, canvassers did take part in evening and Sunday evangelistic services. Significant revivals near the central Wisconsin community of Greenwood, in 1927, and the northeastern Wisconsin community of Gillette, in 1931, were a result of the

NOTES TO PAGES

156–161

211

evangelistic services conducted by canvassers. In 1941, Hitchcock abandoned all North American evangelistic outreach. 29. On the 1927 camp meeting, see the 1 September and 8 September issues of the Burning Bush. The quotation is from Mrs. Charles Sammis, “Wednesday Worship,” Burning Bush, 1 September 1927, 8. On the revival, see Harvey, Howard B. Bitzer, 180–218. I am especially indebted to the thoughtful comments of the late Henry L. Harvey Jr. and the late Arthur L. Bray. 30. Mrs. E. L. Harvey, “Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the Camp,” Burning Bush, 23 August 1928, 9. Also I am indebted to interviews with Kenneth Kendall, Ruth Capsel Hobbes (interview by the author, August 1991, Lake Geneva, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.). 31. In 1931, Henry L. Harvey Sr., for years his brother’s loyal associate, was still publicly acknowledging his “lapse” of faith. See Henry L. Harvey Sr., “I Touched a Button,” Burning Bush, 8 January 1931, 7. 32. Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association of Wisconsin, Adopted November 15 1930 (Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1931), 14, 22. Among articles in the Burning Bush that insisted that the church’s teaching had not changed was W. S. Hitchcock, “The Property Question,” Burning Bush, 8 March 1928, 4. 33. Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association, 23–25; Christian Ritter, “A Hard–Time Testimony,” Burning Bush, 26 February 1931, 7. 34. Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association, 17, 23. In 1937, Arthur L. Bray, a teacher at Waukesha, was told he could get married. Partly due to his frustrations with the double standard that favored certain members of the church, he withdrew from the Movement. The subject of marriage came up often in my interviews. Henry L. Harvey Jr. and Creo Peters Harvey told the delightful story of Henry requesting that Creo be sent to aid him in India, his proposal to her, her acceptance, and their letter to Waukesha announcing their engagement (Henry L. Harvey Jr. and Creo Peters Harvey, interview by the author, 15 September 1991, Hartford, Conn., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena,Calif.). As Bray suggests, one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Burning Bush Movement was the dedication of its members. I am especially indebted to Arthur L. Bray, Kenneth and Mabel Kendall, Elbert and Dorothy Ison, Henry L. and Creo Peters Harvey, and Ruth Hobbes for their descriptions of MCA marriage policies (see Elbert Ison, interview by the author, August 1991, Muskego, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.); Mabel Kendall, interview by the author, August 1991, Milwaukee, Wisc., tape recording, William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.).

AFTERWORD

1. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies, 1936, Part II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1941), 665–667. “Ten Years Ago,” Waukesha Freeman, 2 August 1950. On the Wesleyan Covenant Church, see John M. Pike, Preachers of Salvation:

212

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161–165

The History of the Evangelical Church (Milwaukie, OR: Evangelical Church of North America, 1984), 398–401. Also in my possession is a brief typescript “History of the Wesleyan Covenant Church,” written by Kenneth Kendall in 1993. 2. Frank Spencer Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States, 2nd ed., (New York: Abingdon Press, 1961), 105. 3. On MCA missions, see the Annual Missionary Brochure, 1988–2003. 4. The quotation is from, “Constructive Holiness––Jeremiah’s Commission,” Immanuel Herald, May 1928, 1–2. Among the articles on divorce in the Immanuel Herald are “More About the Tidwell–Nazarene Church Matter,” Immanuel Herald, March 1928, 7–11 and “Nazarene Church and the Tidwell Divorce and Re–marriage Case,” Immanuel Herald, April 1928, 11, 21–23. 5. Allan Farson, Ken Farson, 1917–1988: A Book of Memories (Glendale, Calif.: By the author, 1991), 30. Co–founder and Chairman of the Board of the Western Behavior Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California, Richard Farson is the author of Birthrights (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1968). In 1936, Duke Farson Jr. blending fact, fiction, his experience in the MCA and stories he had heard about God’s Bible School and the Pillar of Fire, wrote a fictitious account of his experience of being raised in a religious community. See Duke Farson, Raised a Communist: Life in a Religious Commune (Los Angeles: Farson Studio Publications, 1936). Although Farson contended that the work’s models were all drawn from the MCA, the Pillar of Fire and God’s Bible School, his intentional mixing of the institutions has made this work difficult to use. In response to a letter I wrote to her, Duke Farson Jr.’s daughter Frances Ingram wrote that her father, “wrote many essays trying to unburden fundamentalists of those forms and superstitutions connected with the Christian religion that he had endured in his early years.” Letter to the author, March 6, 1992. 6. Following Kenneth Farson’s death in 1988, Allan Farson prepared a biographical essay on his brother and the family’s odyssey. I am indebted to Allan Farson for much of the information in this section. For material on Bernard Farson’s family, see Farson, Ken Farson. 7. One of Lillian Harvey’s last books was a compilation of holiness and evangelical teachings on money. In it, although not emphasizing the communitarian model, Lillian Harvey insisted that Jesus’ economic teachings were a central aspect of his ministry. Like the early MCA, she believed that Jesus’ advice to the rich young ruler was normative. After meeting one’s obligations, all other financial resources should be committed to carrying out ministry and meeting human needs. See Lillian G. Harvey, Covetousness: The Sin Very Few Ever Confess (Hampton, Tenn: Harvey & Tait, 1995), 37. Also see, Edwin F. Harvey, “Radical Religion,” Burning Bush, 25 May 1933, 4.

Works Cited

I. ARCHIVAL SOURCES

A.

ASBURY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Christian Holiness Association Collection Arthur Greene Papers Delbert R. Rose Papers Hannah Whital Smith Religious Fanaticism Collection

B.

BULLARD (TEXAS) COMMUNITY LIBRARy

Burning Bush Collection

C.

FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

William Kostlevy Papers Metropolitan Church Association Papers

D.

SMITH COUNTY (TEXAS) HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Burning Bush File

E.

WAUKESHA COUNTY (WISCONSIN) HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Metropolitan Church Association Collection

II. AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

Bowell, Gary. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Richland Center, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

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Bray, Arthur L. Interview by the author. Tape recording. 8 November 1991. Brooksville, Fla. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Clark, Edna Hounshell. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Oshkosh, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Garr. A. G. Jr. Interview by the author. Tape recording. January 1993. Charlotte, N.C. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Haddon, Muriel Whipple. Interview by the author. Tape recording. 15 September 1991. Mystic, Conn. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Harvey, Creo Peters. Interview by the author. Tape recording. 15 September 1991. Hartford, Conn. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Harvey, Henry Jr. Interview by the author. Tape recording. 15 September 1991. Hartford, Conn. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Harvey, Lillian Johnson. Interviews by the author. Tape recordings. April 1991 and 22 November 1995. Hampton, Tenn. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Hobbes, Ruth Capsel. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Lake Geneva, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Ison, Dorothy Goetz. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Muskego, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Ison, Elbert. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Muskego, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. James, Esther Shelhamer. Interview by the author. Tape recording. 15 February 1995. Wilmore, Ky. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.) Kendall, Kenneth. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Milwaukee, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Kendall, Mabel. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Milwaukee, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. Whipple, Alice. Interview by the author. Tape recording. August 1991. Lake Geneva, Wisc. William Kostlevy Papers, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

III. PRIMARY SOURCES: POPULAR PERIODICALS

Annual Minutes, Free Methodist Church, 1916. Annual Missionary Brochure (Metropolitan Church Association) (1988–2003) Apostolic Faith (1906–8) Beulah Christian (1900–1902) Beulah Items (1889) Boston Herald (1901) Burning Bush (1902–present) Chicago Daily News (1901) Chicago Tribune (1901)

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215

Christian Witness (1890s–1918) Earnest Christian (1861–93) God’s Revivalist (1901–31) Guide to Holiness (1900–1901) Herald of Holiness (1914–42) Immanuel Herald (1919–29) Milwaukee Sentinel (1906) Minutes of the Rock River Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1890–1903) Nazarene Messenger (1900–1912) The New York Times (1942) Northwest Christian Advocate (1893–1903) Pentecostal Herald (1897–1915) Pentecostal Messenger (1909–13) Revivalist (1890–1900) Waukesha (Wisconsin) Freeman (1906–7, 1926) Zion’s Herald (1893–98)

IV. PRIMARY SOURCES: BOOKS

Anderson, T. H. B. Experience of Rev. T. H. B. Anderson, D.D. n.p.: By the Author, n.d. Aycock, Jarrette E. Tithing: Your Questions Answered. Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 1955. Bartleman, Frank. From Plow to Pulpit: From Maine to California. Los Angeles: By the Author, 1924. ———. Witness to Pentecost: The Life of Frank Bartleman. New York: Garland, 1985. Bowne, Borden P. The Atonement. Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1900. ———. The Christian Life: A Study. Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1899. Brasher, John Lakin. Glimpses. Cincinnati: Revivalist Press, 1954. Brushingham, J. P. Catching Men: Studies in Vital Evangelism. Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1906. Carradine, Beverly. Graphic Scenes. Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Office, 1911. Carroll, H. K. The Religious Forces of the United States, Enumerated, Classified and Described on the Basis of the Government Census of 1890. New York: Christian Literature, 1893. Collected for Keeps: Hymns of W. T. Pettengill. Dundee, Ill.: Metropolitan Church Association, n.d. Constitution and By-Laws of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League. Cincinnati: n.p., 1897. Cowman, Lettie B. Charles E. Cowman: Missionary, Warrior with Portraits, Illustrations and Maps. Los Angeles: Oriental Missionary Society, 1939. Damon, C. M. Sketches and Incidents; or Reminiscences of Interest in the Life of the Author. Chicago: Free Methodist Publishing House, 1900. Dayton, Donald W., comp. Three Early Pentecostal Tracts. New York: Garland, 1985. Discipline and Rules for Christian Conduct of the Metropolitan Church Association. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1952.

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Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association of Wisconsin, Adopted November 15 1930. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1931. Dolbow, Andrew J. Story of My Life: Its Dark and Bright Side. Chicago: Christian Witness, 1895. Dunn, Lewis R. Manual of Holiness and Review of Dr. James B. Mudge. Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1895. Farson, Allan. Ken Farson, 1917–1988: A Book of Memories. Glendale, Calif.: By the Author, 1991. Farson, Duke. Raised a Communist: Life in a Religious Commune. Los Angeles: Farson Studio Publications, 1936. Farson, Richard. Birthrights. New York: Macmillan, 1974. Finney, Charles G. Lectures on Revivals of Religion. Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1868. ———. The Promise of the Spirit, edited by Timothy L. Smith. Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1980. Fitt, Arthur Percy. Moody Still Lives: Word Pictures of D. L. Moody. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1936. Garrison, S. Olin. Forty Witnesses Covering the Whole Range of Christian Experience. New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1888. Godbey, W. B., and Seth C. Rees. The Return of Jesus. Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Office, 1898. Goodwin, J. W. Tithing: The Touchstone of Stewardship. Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, n.d. Haddon, Muriel Whipple. Homespun Lore. Mystic, Conn.: By the Author, 1998. Hartzler, H. B. Moody in Chicago; or The World’s Fair Gospel Campaign. Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1894. Harvey, Edwin L. Sermons on Bible Characters. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1909. Harvey, Henry. Howard B. Bitzer. Siwait, Allahabad, India: Metropolitan Church Association, 1936. Harvey, Lillian G. Covetousness: The Sin Very Few Ever Confess. Hampton, Tenn.: Harvey and Tait, 1995. Henry, G. W. History of the Jumpers; or, Shouting Genuine and Spurious: A History of the Outward Demonstrations of the Spirit. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1909. The Highway and the Way; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 3. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1907. Hills, A. M. A Hero of Faith and Prayer; or, The Life of Rev. Martin Wells Knapp. Cincinnati: Mrs. M. W. Knapp, 1902. Historic Account of the Apostolic Faith Church: A Trinitarian-Fundamentalist Evangelistic Organization. Portland, Ore.: Apostolic Faith Church, 1965. Hughes, George. Days of Power in the Forest Temple: A Review of the Wonderful Work of God at Fourteen National Camp-Meetings, from 1867–1872. Boston: John Bent, 1873.

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Ingler, Arthur F. Burning Bush Songs, No. 1. Chicago: Metropolitan Church Association, 1902. ———. Canaan Melodies. Kansas City, Mo.: Publishing House of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, n.d. ———, ed. Joy-bells of Canaan; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 2. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1905. James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, Green, 1902. Jolley, Jennie A., comp. As an Angel of Light; or, Bible Tongues and Holiness and Their Counterfeits. New York: Vantage, 1964. Knapp, Martin Wells. Christ Crowned Within. Albion, Mich.: Revivalist Office, 1888. ———. Impressions. Cincinnati: Revivalist Publishing House, 1892. ———. Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies; or, Devices of the Devil Unmasked. Cincinnati: Office of the Revivalist, 1898. ———. Pentecostal Aggressiveness; or Why I Conducted the Meetings of the Chesapeake Holiness Union at Bowens, Maryland. Cincinnati: By the Author, 1899. ———. Pentecostal Letters. Cincinnati: Office of God’s Revivalist, 1902. ———. Pentecostal Messengers. Cincinnati: Revivalist Office, 1899. ———. Pentecostal Preachers. Salem, Ohio: Convention Bookstore, n.d. ———. The River of Death and Its Branches. Cincinnati: Office of the Revivalist, 1898. Lawson, J. Gilchrist. Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, Gleaned from Their Biographies, Autobiographies, and Writings. Chicago: Glad Tidings, 1911. Madison, Marian L. The Fountain Spring House. n.p., n.d., 1961. Merrill, S. M. The Second Coming of Christ, Considered in Its Relation to the Millennium, the Resurrection and the Judgment. Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1879. Messenger, F. M. Catacombs of Worldly Success; or History of Coarseller Dell. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1910. Metropolitan Church Association. Bible Lessons: A Treatise on Evidences of Religion, Sin, Repentance, Consecration, and Holiness. Salem, Ohio: Allegheny, 1989. Milk and Honey; or Burning Bush Songs, No. 4. Waukesha, Wisc.: Metropolitan Church Association, 1911. Mitchel, Louis F., comp. Nuggets No. 2 from Black Susan. Springfield, Mass.: Christian Workers Union, 1902. Moore, H. H. The Republic to Methodism. Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe, 1891. Moore, Mark Reynolds. Fifty Years and Beyond: A History of the Chicago District of the Church of the Nazarene. Kankakee, Ill.: Chicago Central District of the Church of the Nazarene, 1954. Morrison, Henry Clay. Some Chapters of My Life Story. Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1941. ———. Will God Set Up a Visible Kingdom on Earth on Earth? Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1934. Mudge, James. Growth in Holiness toward Perfection; or Progressive Sanctification. New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1895.

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Brown, Kenneth Orville “Leadership in the National Holiness Association with Special Reference to Eschatology, 1867–1919.” PhD diss., Drew University, 1988. Bundy, David D. “Visions of Apostolic Mission: Scandinavian Pentecostal Mission to 1935.” PhD diss., Uppsala University, 2009.

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Cooley, Steven Dale “The Possibilities of Grace: Poetic Discourse and Reflection in Methodist/Holiness Revivalism.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1991. Day, Lloyd Raymond. “A History of God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, 1900–1949.” Master’s thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1949. Gaddis, Merrill Elmer “Christian Perfectionism in America.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1929. Lee, James William. “The Development of Theology at Oberlin.” PhD diss., Drew University, 1952. Lenhart, Thomas Emerson. “Methodist Piety in an Industrializing Society, Chicago, 1865–1914. PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1981. Morriss, Timothy R. “To Provide for All Classes: The Methodist Church and Class in Chicago, 1871–1939.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2007.

Index

African Americans, 104–5, 116–17, 145, 154 Allegheny, Pennsylvania, 147 Amy, West Virginia, 136 Anaman, Henry, 153 Anti-Catholicism, 44, 48–49 Apostolic Faith Church (Portland, Oregon), 134 Apostolic Faith Movement, 133–34 Assemblies of God, 108 Azusa Street Revival, 127–34, 204n12 Barker, George W., 121 Barnes, J. Howard, 154–56, 158 Bartlemen, Frank, 202n3, 204n12 Bible School. See Metropolitan Holiness Training School Bitzer, George, 152 Bitzer, Howard, 152, 157, 200n34 Bitzer, Warren, 152 Bitzer Memorial School, 162 Blinn, Elizabeth, 136 Blinn, Gilbert, 157 Boebel, Louis, 153 Bolton, S. Henry, 84

Booth, William, 10 Boscobel, Wisconsin, 153 Boston, Massachusetts, 5, 116, 121, 136, 147 Boston Convention of 1901, 77–85 Boston University, 21 Bothwell, Ontario, 121 Bound Brook, New Jersey, 122–24, 201n43 Bowell, Gary, 201n43 Bowne, Borden P., 21, 24–25 Bray, Arthur C., and Alma White, 122, 124 in Boscobel, Wisconsin, 153 career with Metropolitan Church Association, 206n37 on ministry of the Burning Bush, 92 in Red Cloud, Nebraska, 136–40 and W. S. Hitchcock, 157 Bray, Arthur L., 157, 159, 162, 211n34 Bray, Martha Dammarell, 137–40, 206n37 Bresee, Phineas, 73–74, 129 Brooks, John P., 170n3 Brushingham, John P., 73, 184n22

232

INDEX

Buffalo Rock (Illinois) Camp Meeting, 35, 56–57, 111–12, 114–15, 180n35 Buffalo Rock Orphanage, 101 Buffum, Herbert, 129, 202n4 Bullard, Texas, Metropolitan Church Association community in, 145–48, 151, 207n2 Burning Bush (magazine) founding of, 91–102 and Pentecostalism, 128, 134 purpose, 89, 186n12, 190n15 relocates to Waukesha, Wisconsin, 111–12 Burning Bush Exposed, 124 Calcutta, India, 127, 132 Camp meetings, 19, 41–42, 106. See entries for individual camp meetings. Canvassing, 156–59, 161, 210n28 Capsel, Charles L., 114 Carradine, Beverly, 26, 40–41, 64, 91, 177n1 Cartoons, 10, 91, 94–95, 151 Central Evangelical Holiness Association, 23 Charlotte, North Carolina, 132 Chesapeake Holiness Union, 32 Chicago, Illinois, 42–49, 46–47, 92–93, 147, 164. See also General Holiness Assembly; Metropolitan Church Association Chicago (Illinois) Convention of 1901, 60–73 Christian and Missionary Alliance, 19, 28 Christian Worker’s Union, 103 Church of the Nazarene, 128–30, 151–52, 163, 203n6 Church Press, 163–64 Cincinnati, Ohio, 33, 137, 174n35. See also God’s Bible School; Knapp, Martin Wells Clark, Dougan, 21

Comeouterism, 19, 22–24, 34–36, 82, 186n13 Communal living, 9–11, 18, 111–15, 117, 194n3 Cook, Glenn A., 130, 134, 182n4, 203n6, 204n14 Cowman, Charles, 57–58, 83, 101, 180n40 Cowman, Lettie Burd, 57–58, 83, 101, 180n40 Crandon, Wisconsin, 120, 136 Crawford, Florence L., 134 Cronon, William, 42 Curtis, D. S., 104, 193n35 Damon, C. M., 11–12 Danville, Illinois, 101–2 Danville, Virginia, 129–31, 203n9 Date, Henry, 116 Dayton, Donald W., 12 Dayton, Wilber T., 162 Dearborn, Michigan, 161 Demonstrative worship at Boston Revival of 1901, 79, 84–87 at Chicago Convention of 1901, 63, 70 decline in Holiness Movement, 188n27 E. F. Walker on, 86 image, 78 Metropolitan Church Association defense of, 52–54 and Metropolitan Church Association revival of 1926, 156–57 Seth C. Rees on, 187n16 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, 114, 135 Denver, Colorado, 161 Deright, Edward F., 120, 137–40, 149, 206n37 Des Plaines (Illinois) Camp Meeting, 46–47, 50–52 Detroit, Michigan, 116, 152 Discipline of the Metropolitan Church Association, 158 Divorce and remarriage, 127–28, 130, 133, 151–52, 203 Dixon, W. C., 137

INDEX

Dolbow, Andie, 60, 66–70, 78, 182n9 Douglas (Massachusetts) Camp Meeting, 35, 85, 105, 115 Dundee, Illinois, 161 East Congress Street Mission (Chicago, Illinois), 150–54 Entire sanctification, 19, 23–24, 27, 52, 97–98 Evangelical Church of North America, 161 Erickson, Clarence, 200n34, 204n15 Erickson, R. L., 120, 132, 136, 201, 204n15 Evanston, Illinois, 21, 44–46, 178n10 Ewald, M. J., Mrs., 99 Faith healing, A. B. Simpson on, 21–22, 29 A. G. Garr on, 127 criticized by Industrial Workers of the World, 6 in Metropolitan Church Association, 119–20, 143, 200n34 Farson, Allan, 163 Farson, Annie Butcher, 50, 130 Farson, Bernard, 51, 162–63 Farson, John, 54, 179 Farson, Kenneth, 163 Farson, Leach, & Company, 49–50 Farson, Marmaduke M. (Duke) accused of fanaticism, 73 bankruptcy, 150 at Boston Revival of 1901, 78–79 character and personality, 55, 58, 113 in Chicago, 63–65 conflict with Alma White, 123 on divorce and remarriage, 130, 203n5 as financial backer of the Metropolitan Church Association, 112 financial support of missions, 55–56 friendship with A. G. Garr, 129–30 and Immanuel Church, 162–63 and New England Revival of 1902, 103

233

partnership with E. L. Harvey, 9, 50–51, 53–57, 149 portrait, 146 purchase of Buffalo Rock, Illinois property, 57, 180n35 purchase of property for Western Avenue Tabernacle, 54 relinquishing of private property, 110, 197n10 Rockford Convention of 1902, 102, 192n29 roles in Metropolitan Church Association, 112 separation from Metropolitan Church Association, 150–51 in Waukesha, 135 Farson, Marmaduke M. (Duke) Jr., 115, 212n5 Farson, May Arthur, 163 Farson, Richard, 212n5 Farson, Warren, 115, 150, 163 Fergerson, E. A., 66–67, 70, 78–79, 119 Finney, Charles G., 85, 107, 109, 125, 193n1 Fogg, Susan, 104–5 Fordham, Charles B., 121 Fordham, Ernest Osborne, 121 Fort Dodge, Iowa, 136, 147 Fountain Spring House, 108, 112–14, 119, 150, 161. See also Metropolitan Church Association; Waukesha, Wisconsin Fowler, C. J., 73, 91, 94 Free Methodist Church, 10–12, 14, 96, 101 Fuller Theological Seminary, 162 Gaddis, Merrill, 8 Gaebelein, Frank, 142 Garr, A. G., on healing, 200n34, 203n10 in India, 131–32 and Pentecostalism, 127–33, 135, 203n6

234

INDEX

Garr (continued) separation from Metropolitan Church Association, 124 work on Burning Bush, 92 Garr, Hanna Erickson, 132, 204n15 Garr, Lillian Anderson, 92, 127–35, 202n4 Garretson, Carolyn, 122–23 General Holiness Assembly (Chicago, Illinois), 72–76, 80–81, 98, 184n20 Georgetown, Texas, 68 Gillette, Wisconsin, 210n28 Glasgow, Scotland, 164 Glossolalia, 30, 33 at Azusa Street Revival, 127, 191n15 in India, 131–32, 203n6, 203n9 Godbey, W. B. Burning Bush attacks, 91–92 at General Holiness Assembly, 76 on premillennialism, 26, 60 role at God’s Bible School, 80, 82–83, 186n13 God’s Bible School, 58, 80–81, 94, 186n13, 212n5 God’s Revivalist, 27, 29, 33–34, 80–83, 104–5 Goetz, Louis, 153, 210n28 Gospel Art Calendar, 143, 156 Gospel music, 115–17 Greene, Arthur, 34, 84, 104 Greenwood, Wisconsin, 210n28 Grosvenor, William, 105 Grosvenor-Dale Textile Mills, 105 Haddon, Muriel Whipple, 210n27 Hanson, Ella, 101 Harris, Thoro, 116–17 Harvey, Creo Peters, 211n34 Harvey, Daniel, 50 Harvey, Edwin F., 145, 157, 164 Harvey, Edwin L., and Alma White, 124–25, 145 at Boscobel, Wisconsin, 153

at Boston Revival of 1902, 78–79 at Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting of 1902, 97–98 character and personality, 113 in Chicago, 49–55 death and funeral, 145, 152–54 discontinues Scripture Text Calendar, 146 experiences entire sanctification, 41 founds Burning Bush, 91–92 founds Metropolitan Methodist Church, 49–50 and Glenn A. Cook, 204n14 lawsuit instigated by F. M. Messenger, 149 and New England revival of 1902, 103–4 portrait, 30 on professional clergy, 119 relationship with Martin Wells Knapp, 80 relinquishes personal property, 97–98, 110 resignation as Metropolitan Church Association president, 154 roles in Metropolitan Church Association, 112–13 and Western Avenue tabernacle, 54 Harvey, Gertrude character, 55 conflict with Alma White, 123 experiences entire sanctification, 41 on influenza pandemic of 1918, 150 life in the Fountain Spring House, 111–12 marriage, 50 at New England Revival of 1902, 103 relinquishes private property, 98 retirement to Chicago, 158 roles in Metropolitan Church Association, 154, 156–58 as songwriter, 115 struggle with relinquishing property, 56 on tithing, 197n10

INDEX

Harvey, Henry L. Jr., 157, 164, 188n27, 200n34, 211n34 Harvey Henry L. Sr., 50, 56, 86, 127, 146, 154, 157–58, 210n28 Harvey, Lillian Johnson, 152, 164–65, 186n11, 212n7 Hatfield, John T., 57, 73 Henry, G. W., 87 Hill, Christopher, 168n6 Hill, Joe, 6 Hills, A. M., 60, 68, 72, 81–82, 92, 185n9, 187n16 Hitchcock, W. S., 121, 152, 154–59, 161–62 Hobsbawm, Eric, 168n6 Hoffnagle, Anna, 103 Hofmann, Heinrich, 142 Hogue, W. T., 72 Hollingsworth, Charles, 100–1, 115, 118, 136 “Holy Jumpers,” 6–9, 78. See also Demonstrative worship Holy Rollers, 5–7 Hopewell, Ohio, 121 Hounshell, Edna, 148 Hubbart, John Wesley, 122, 124, 136, 150–51, 157 Hughes, George, 72–75, 170n3 Hughes, John Wesley, 90 Hull House, 48–49, 51 Hymnody, Burning Bush, 114–17 Immanuel Church (Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California), 151, 157, 162 Immanuel Souvenir Calendar, 151 Immigrants, missions to, 43–44, 46–47, 178n15 India, A. G. Garr in, 131–32 Henry L. Harvey Sr. in, 164, 200n34, 211n34 Metropolitan Church Association mission in, 101, 132–33, 147, 162

235

Scripture Text Calendar sold in, 141–42 Industrial Workers of the World, 6–8, 10, 168n7 Influenza pandemic of 1918, 150 Ingler, Arthur F., 103, 115, 124, 201n43. See also “Pearly White City” (hymn) Ingler, C. K., 124, 201n43 Ingram, Leslie, 152 Inter-Church Holiness Convention, 188n27 International Apostolic Holiness Union and Prayer League, 29–30, 63, 94, 147, 186n13 International Revival League, 28 International Revival Prayer League, 28 J. S. Whipple Hospital, 162 Jacobson, Annie, 100 Johnson, John T., 152, 155, 158, 164, 208n6 Jolley, Jennie Arnold, 85 Jones, Charles Edwin, 186n12 Jones, E. Stanley, 15–16, 195n5 Journalism, muckraking, 10, 85, 94–95, 190n10. See also Burning Bush (magazine) Kaufman, A. H., 70 Kent, L. B., 57 Keswick Movement, 19–20, 97, 110 Kewanee, Illinois, 102 Kilbourne, E. A., 71 Knapp, Lucy Glenn, 27 Knapp, Martin Wells, at Chicago Convention of 1901, 70–72, 76 consequences of the death of, 79–85 on demonstrative worship, 32–33 early life and ministry, 26–34, 174n29 early ties to the Metropolitan Church Association, 57–60 inspiration for Scripture Text Calendar, 140

236

INDEX

Knapp, Martin Wells (continued) and L. L. Pickett, 89 and National Holiness Association, 28–30, 33–36, 59 on premillennialism, 174n29 on private property, 32 relationship with Bessie Queen, 186n11 separation from Methodist Episcopal Church, 56, 58–59, 63, 186n13 and Seth Cook Rees, 28–30, 35–36, 79 on stewardship, 109 use of visual aids, 176n50 Knapp, Minnie Ferle, 79–81, 94 Kraft, Susie, 101 Kulp, George B., 70, 183 Lafayette, Louisiana, 124 Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 161 Lee, John Wesley, 96–97, 103 Leeds, Maine, 116 Lehman, F. M., 110, 115, 117–18, 199n27 Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies, 18, 30–32 London, Jack, 5–6 Los Angeles, California, 124, 127–34, 151, 162–63, 204n12 Louisa, Kentucky, 121 Lounsbury, Floyd Glenn, 164 Madison, Marian, 155 Manchester, New Hampshire, 103 Martin, I. Guy, 115 McClure, S. S., 94 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 163 Meinung, Elizabeth, 136 Message of Victory Evangelism (MOVE), 164 Messenger, Frank M. arrest in Waukesha, 136 at Boston Revival of 1901, 78–79 and cartoons, 95 conflict with Alma White, 122–23 as contributor to God’s Bible School, 84

as contributor to God’s Revivalist, 105 departure from Metropolitan Church Association, 140–41, 207n39 at E. L. Harvey funeral, 154–55 on faith healing, 120 lawsuit against E. L. Harvey, 148–49 at New England Revival of 1902, 103–6, 193 role in New England Holiness Movement, 34–36 roles in Church of the Nazarene, 141 roles in Metropolitan Church Association, 110–15, 130 See also Scripture Text Calendar Messenger, Mary Young (Mrs. Frank), 106, 113 Messenger Publishing Company, 141, 151, 162 Methodist Episcopal Church, 23, 26, 28, 43–54 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 22–23, 27, 68 Methodist Federation for Social Action, 48 Metropolitan Church Association, and African Americans, 104–5, 116–17, 136, 145, 154 Bible School. See Metropolitan Holiness Training School. camp meetings, 43, 54–55, 135, 154, 156–58, 190n15. See also Buffalo Rock (Illinois) Camp Meeting in Chicago, 98–106 criticism of, at Boston Convention of 1901, 79 from Crandon, Wisconsin, 121 by Henry Clay Morrison, 55 by L. L. Pickett, 89–91 by S. B. Shaw, 73 by Seth C. Rees, 187n16 by W. E. Shepard, 199n27 defense of demonstrative worship, 52–54 on divorce and remarriage, 127, 130

INDEX

education. See Metropolitan Holiness Training School finances, 137–40, 141, 145, 148–51, 143–57 on healing, 119–20, 143, 200n34 missions, foreign, 101, 162. See also names of specific countries and regions. missions, United States, 101, 116, 147, 152. See also names of specific cities. muckraking journalism, 94–95 music and hymnody, 114–17 in New England, 102–6 numbers of members, 113, 146–48, 159, 161–62 orphanage, 111–12 and Pentecostalism, 130–35 policy on marriage, 159, 211n34 press coverage of, 63–64, 71, 100, 102–3, 135–36 on private property, 107, 110–11, 117–19, 138, 153, 158 publishing, 87, 91–94, 115–16 roots in Holiness Movement, 52–54 roots in Methodist Episcopal Church, 50–54 separation from Methodist Episcopal Church, 59 Metropolitan Holiness Training School, 98–101, 114–15, 150, 156 Metropolitan Methodist Mission, 35–36, 40–41, 49–53, 179n21 Mexico, 162–63 Millenarianism, 7, 10, 109, 168n6 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 121, 147, 152, 154, 161–62 Mitchel, Louis F., 84, 104, 115–16, 129, 193n35 Mokstad, Aaron E., 119–21, 151 Moody, D. L., 20, 42–43 Moody Bible Institute, 65, 153 Moore, H. H., 43–44 Moore, R. Laurence, 8

237

Morrison, Henry Clay, 15–16, 22, 54–55, 67, 89 Mount of Blessings Camp Meeting, 33, 56, 80, 82, 103 Mudge, James, 23–24 Müller, George, 97, 109 Munsey, Frank, 94 National Holiness Association, Des Plaines Camp Meeting of, 51–52 and General Holiness Assembly, 72–73, 75 and Martin Wells Knapp, 28–30, 33–36, 59 in New England, 25, 103–4 origins, 18–20 on private property, 118, 121 New Salem, North Dakota, 152 New York, New York, 116 Newport, Tennessee, 121 Norberry, John, 35, 70–71, 78–79, 84, 104 North Attleboro, Massachusetts, 35, 83, 103–4 North Grosvenordale, Connecticut, 34–35, 83, 103–6 Noyes, John Humphrey, 11 Oriental Missionary Society, 180n40 Otis, S. G., 103–4 Pacifism, 149, 174n39 Palmer, Flora Lucas, 115, 155 Palmer, Phoebe, 41, 98 Parham, Charles, 134 Park Street Congregational Church (Boston, Massachusetts), 79 Parker, John, 109 Parsons, A. A., 137–40, 206n37 Paynesville, Minnesota, 147 “The Pearly White City” (hymn), 37–38, 70–71, 183n15 Peniel Holiness Church (North Grosvenor, Connecticut), 104 Pennington, John, 84

238

INDEX

Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. See Church of the Nazarene Pentecostal Collegiate Institute, 104, 193n35 Pentecostal Union, 84, 96. See also White, Alma Pentecostalism, 127–35 Periodicals, holiness, 115, 190n9 Pettengill, Clara Libby, 116 Pettengill, William T., 114–17, 122, 157–58 Pickett, Deets, 189n3 Pickett, J. Waskom, 189n3 Pickett, L. L., 15–16, 22, 89–91, 174n29, 189n3 Pilgrim Holiness Church, and Metropolitan Church Association, 70, 78, 81–84, 102, 104, 193n, 187n19 and National Holiness Association, 74–75 in New England, 105 origins, 28–30 and Seth C. Rees, 174n39 on stewardship, 110 Pillar of Fire Church. See White, Alma Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 121, 136 Plockhorst, Bernard, 142–43 Portsmouth (Rhode Island) Camp Meeting, 35, 78 Potter, Florence L., 81, 93, 185n10–186n11 Premillennialism, and General Holiness Assembly, 72–74, 184n20 impacts the Holiness Movement, 170nn27–29, 173nn26–27, 174n29 and National Holiness Association, 25–26, 28–29, 33–34 Southern holiness leaders and, 14–15 Private property, ownership of Charles G. Finney on, 107, 109, 193n1 Martin Wells Knapp on, 32 Metropolitan Church Association on, 97–98, 107

National Holiness Association on, 121–22 Pentecostalism and, 134 Providence, Rhode Island, 23, 28, 59, 84, 193n38 Quakers. See Society of Friends Quakertown, Connecticut, 120 Queen, Bessie. See Standley, Bessie Queen Racine, Wisconsin, 101–2, 192n29 Ramabai, Pandita, 132 Red Cloud, Nebraska, 137–40, 205n20–206n37 Reed, Catherine, 137–39 Rees, Byron, 58, 83, 101, 180n40 Rees, Frida Marie Stromberg, 78 Rees, Hulda Johnson, 28 Rees, Paul S., 77 Rees, Seth C., at Boston Revival of 1901, 78–81 at Chicago Convention of 1901, 65–68 and Christian and Missionary Alliance, 20 defense of women’s ministry, 175n41 on demonstrative worship of the Metropolitan Church Association, 187n16 founding of Portsmouth (Rhode Island) Camp Meeting, 35 at the General Holiness Assembly, 70–75 late career, 187n19 and Martin Wells Knapp, 28–30 and Metropolitan Church Association, 58–60, 82–85 on premillennialism, 25 separation from International Apostolic Holiness Union and Prayer League, 187n19 separation from Metropolitan Church Association, 187n16

INDEX

as target of Burning Bush criticism, 91–92, 94 Reid, Isaiah, 33–34, 72, 75 Revivalist. See God’s Revivalist Ritter, Christian, 159 Roberts, B. T., 11, 118 Robinson, Reuben A. (Bud), 60, 65–70, 79, 96, 162–63 Rock River Conference (Methodist Episcopal Church), 50, 59 Rockford, Illinois, 101–2, 155, 191 Rosser, C. W., 124 Russell, Elbert, 21–22 Sacramento, California, 202n3 Sallman, Warner, 142 Salvation Army, 6, 12–14, 22, 48–49, 149, 169n24 San Jose, California, 202n3 Sandford, Frank, 134 Saratoga Springs, New York, 104 Scripture Text Calendar, 106, 140–43, 145, 148–49, 206n38 Seymour, William J., 133–34 Shaw, S. B., 60, 72–75, 95, 196 Sheffield Avenue Methodist Church (Chicago, Illinois), 65, 71 Shelhamer, E. E., 188n23 Shepard, W. E., association with Phineas Bresee, 185n7 at Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting, 96–99 and Burning Bush, 92–93, 189n7 at General Holiness Assembly, 73–75, 187n19 and Los Angeles mission, 129–31 and Messenger lawsuit, 208n8 recruited by Pillar of Fire, 124 return to Church of the Nazarene, 129, 203n6 role in organizing Metropolitan Church Association, 102 separation from Metropolitan Church Association, 117

239

Simpson, A. B., 20, 30, 54, 58 Smith, Alfred, 120 Smith, E. W., 149, 154, 156 Smith, Joseph H., 129 Smith, Timothy L., 6, 49 Socialism, 9, 11–13 Society of Friends, 25, 58, 78 Songbooks. See Hymnody; Metropolitan Church Association South Africa, 162, 191n22 Spring Valley, Minnesota, 152 Springfield, Massachusetts, 103 St. Louis, Missouri, 161 Stabell, Helga A., 120–21, 155 Stalker, Charles, 58, 83, 91, 101, 180n40 Standley, Bessie Queen, 80–83, 94, 186n11 Standley, Meredith G., 80–83 Stead, W. T., 43, 48–50 Steele, Daniel, 21, 24–27, 34, 121 Stein, Esther, 153 Stewardship, 109–10, 195n5, 196n8, 197n10 Storey, Mary, 80–83, 94, 186n13 Swenson, Gustaf, 101 Tabernacle concept, 53–57 Tait, Barry, 164 Tait, Trudy, 164 Taiz, Lillian, 12–13 Taylor, B. S., 74 Thompson, E. P., 168n6 Tithing. See Stewardship Toronto, Ontario, 116 Updegraff, David B., 25 Vandever, J. L., 147, 151 Wacker, Grant, 131, 148, 203n9 Walker, Edward F., on demonstrative worship, 86 at General Holiness Assembly, 73–74

240

INDEX

Walker, Edward (continued) as Metropolitan Church Association speaker, 52–54, 61 as target of Burning Bush criticism, 94 Walker, Pamela, 12–13 Ward, Harry E., 48 Waterloo, Iowa, 152 Watson, George D., 26, 174n29 Waukesha, Wisconsin, 10, 133, 145, 153, 158–59 economic crisis of 1918, 149–50 reaction to Metropolitan Church Association, 135–36 See also Fountain Spring House; Metropolitan Holiness Training School Wesley, John, 108, 117–18 Wesleyan Covenant Church, 161 Wesleyan Methodist Church, 162 Western Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church (Chicago Illinois), 49–51, 54 Western Avenue Tabernacle, 54–57 Whipple, Alice, 204n10 Whipple, John Samuel, 120, 141 White, Alma, aligns with Metropolitan Church Association, 84

attempt to take over Metropolitan Church Association Los Angeles mission, 129–30 at Buffalo Rock Camp Meeting of 1902, 96–97 at General Holiness Assembly, 74 and New England Revival of 1902, 103 participation in Metropolitan Church Association ministry, 91, 100, 129, 148 separation from Metropolitan Church Association, 122–24, 200n39, 200n42 Wiley, William, 193n38 Willard, Frances E., 45–46 Williams, J. A., 156, 158 Wilson, George W., 25 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 45, 178 Women’s ministry, 76, 175n41 Wood, J. A., 72 World War I, 149 World’s Columbian Exposition, 42–43 Zimmerman, Charles, 153 Zion Illinois, 134