“On Account of Conditions That Seem Unalterable”: a Proposal About Race Relations in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) 1909–1929*

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PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Volume 25, No. 2, Fall 2003

“On Account of Conditions that Seem Unalterable”: A Proposal about Race Relations in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) 1909–1929*

H. Paul Thompson, Jr.

“One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.” —Elizabeth Bowden

The saying that the most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning at eleven o’clock is attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. But racial segregation has prevailed not just in single-race congregations, but in whole denominations that cater to only one race or ethnic group. The Civil Rights Movement compelled many American churches to face the difficult matter of race for the first time, but American Pentecostal churches struggled with racial integration as early as 1906. Growing out of the late- nineteenth-century Holiness movement, and first organized as the Christian Union in August 1886, the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) attempted to combine blacks and whites into one organization during the height of Jim Crow. But truthfully, between 1909 and 1929, the Church of God was neither fully “integrated” nor a “whites only” church. Rather than undergo a split along race lines comparable to other Pentecostal denominations, in 1922 the Church of God created a parallel structure for its black congregations (initially only those in the South). Why was this unique arrangement made when other Pentecostal groups split into two or more completely separate organizations?1 Although Ian

* Special thanks is due to Dr. David Roebuck, Director, and Louis Morgan, Archivist at the Hal Bernard Dixon, Jr. Pentecostal Research Center, both of whom were extremely help- ful in orienting me to the world of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) and guiding me in my research. 1 Cheryl Sanders examined race relationships in denominations from both the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions, in Saints in Exile (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 18- 21. She identified five basic patterns: The first is the black Holiness denomination that remained black and rejected glossolalia (e.g., Church of Christ Holiness, U.S.A.). Second is a black Holiness denomination becoming a Pentecostal one (e.g., United Holy Church of

“On Account of Conditions that Seem Unalterable”

MacRobert and Mickey Crews claimed that whites in the Church of God ranged from giving no resistance to separation to being “more than happy” with it,2 and David Edwin Harrell said the story of blacks “followed the same path of segregation”3 as other denominations, the evidence leads to more complicated conclusions. Howard Nelson Kenyon, citing the institu- tion of the church as the “only opportunity for black-led initiative” in the South, attempted an explanation that corresponds with our knowledge of the time and place, but his use of writers from a later time to explain the thinking in the first twenty years of the church oversimplified the reality of what was occurring in the Church of God at that time.4 The circumstances preceding this partial split went beyond the ubiquitous, systemic racism of the times, and it is an oversimplification to treat this split as analogous to the experiences of other Pentecostal denominations at that time. Serious conflicts within the Church of God in the years leading up to 1922 may shed more light on the partial split than purely racial considerations.

Overview of Pentecostal Race Relations Before 1922

The Azusa Street Revival of 1906 preceded, and perhaps spawned, a short-lived period of interracial cooperation at the outset of the Pentecostal Movement in the United States. Whether one believes the origins of the Pentecostal Movement begun at Azusa to be interracial—as do Vinson Synan and Howard Nelson Kenyon5—or African-American—as do

America). Third is an originally interracial Holiness denomination that splits into two different denominations along race lines (e.g., Fire Baptized Holiness Church). The fourth type is an originally interracial Pentecostal denomination splitting into two racially separate denominations (e.g., Pentecostal Assemblies of the World). “A ﬁfth type is an interracial Holiness or Pentecostal denomination with local congregations, caucuses, conventions, and/ or educational institutions serving its black constituents” (e.g., Church of God–Anderson, IN and Church of God–Cleveland, TN). While the Church of God (Anderson) divided like the Church of God (Cleveland), it also never adopted the doctrine of glossolalia. 2 Mickey Crews, The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 165; Ian MacRobert, The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA (London: Macmillan, 1988), 67. 3 David E. Harrell, Jr., White Sects and Black Men in the Recent South (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971), 42. 4 Howard Nelson Kenyon, “An Analysis of Racial Separation within Early Pentecostal Movements” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Baylor University, 1978), 49-50. 5 See Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States (Grand

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