The Dictionary of Pan-African Pentecostalism, Volume One: North America

The Dictionary of Pan-African Pentecostalism

Volume I: North America

Edited by
Estrelda Y. Alexander

THE DICTIONARY OF PAN-AFRICAN PENTECOSTALISM

Volume I: North America

Copyright © 2018 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Alexander, Estrelda Y., editor.

Title: The dictionary of pan-African Pentecostalism : volume I : North America / edited by Estrelda Y. Alexander.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-60899-362-8 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-4982-8477-6 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: African American Pentecostals—History. | United States—Church history. | Canada—Church History.

Classification: LCC BR1644.3 D3 2018 (print) | LCC BR1644.3 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 03/16/2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contributors to the Series

Appreciation

Introduction to the Series

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

Contributors to the Series

Estrelda Alexander, PhD

William Seymour College

Bowie, Maryland

Lewis Brogdon, PhD

Claflin College

Charleston, South Carolina

Glenda Goodson

Independent Scholar

Lancaster, Texas

Jorge Haustein

University of London

London, UK

Ida Jones, PhD

Moorland Spingarn Collection

Howard University

Washington, DC

Jermaine Marshal

William Seymour College

Bowie, Maryland

Joe Newman

First Assembly Christian School

Memphis, Tennessee

David Roebuck PhD

Hal Bernard Dixon Pentecostal Research Center

Cleveland, Tennessee

Candace Shields, PhD

William Seymour College

Bowie, Maryland

Alexander Stewart, MA

Independent Archivist

Irmo, South Carolina

Matthew K. Thompson, PhD

Southwestern College

Winfield, Kansas

William C. Turner, PhD

Duke University

Durham, North Carolina

Michael Wilkinson

Trinity Western University

Langley, British Columbia, CN

LaTonia Winston, MA

Trinity Evangelical Seminary

Deerfield, Illinois

Appreciation

No work of this magnitude is ever a singular effort. Accordingly, I wish to thank the contributors whose research and scholarship helped make this volume a reality. This work would not have been possible, however, without the dedicated and ongoing assistance of my friend and colleague, Alexander Constantine Stewart, who used the resources of his personal collection to provide information that was unavailable elsewhere. The wealth of knowledge he brings to the subject of black Pentecostalism, in general, and to the Oneness Movement, in particular, is invaluable. And his generous giving of his time and advice is greatly appreciated.

Introduction to the Series

To speak of oneself as black and Pentecostal provides only a partial identification. Black Pentecostalism is not a denominational distinction, but rather it is a multi-faceted tradition made up of very small, moderate sized, and large independent congregations; loosely organized fellowships and denominations with as much variety in structure, polity, doctrine and theology, as one can image. These groups are found on every continent on the globe where African descendants are located. Constituents meet in open tents and fields, in borrowed or rented storefront edifices, in reclaimed sanctuaries of former Christian and Jewish congregations that have outgrown their facilities or migrated from neighborhoods to which they are no longer attached. Yet, as the movement has matured and been relatively assimilated into the broader culture, they also meet on some of the most opulent megachurch campuses with the finest accoutrements and all the latest media and technology resources available.

What these groups share in common is an appreciation for and expectation of a direct personal experience of God through the supernatural baptism (outpouring or indwelling) of the Holy Spirit. Except for the Holiness groups, the majority of these bodies also share a common link to the early nineteenth century Azusa Street Revival and through it, to its leader, William Joseph Seymour.

Some groups within the tradition have existed for more than one hundred years— and among Holiness groups nearly a half a century more. Through processes of planting congregations, breaking away from white parent denominations, growth and repeated schism, realignment and amalgamation, however, new members of the community are constantly coming into existence, while others are going into demise. Some have been, localized and short lived, coming into and exiting the religious arena hardly unnoticed. Others have stood the proverbial test of time, having grown to considerable proportions and made a significant impact on the religious and social context of their respective cultures. Still others, have made contributions beyond their national or cultural contexts to forge religious trends that have been reflected, repeated and imitated in other segments of the Christian church as well as in secular society.

Additionally, for much of its life, the tradition has been one that is largely oral. Except for its most visible members, its history has not been documented in academic volumes or published popular history. Rather it has been recorded through domestic vehicles that have rarely caught broad attention. Sermons, official in-house organs, souvenir journals, obituaries, and legal documents help capture as much of its essence as is possible to convey. More importantly its stories have been told and retold, enacted and re-enacted in sermons, testimonies, and liturgies of multiple generations even as the movement has evolved into different forms that bear little resemblance to a founder’s visions or that of the generation that birthed the movement into existence.

Additionally within each context, Pan-African expressions of Pentecostalism are influenced by the culture of the people who are involved. While part of those cultures derives from the racial identity of their constituents, they are also colored by their geographical and linguistic contexts and the well of antecedent spiritualities from which they draw. Accordingly, while Pentecostalism within the African Diaspora is different from the Pentecostalism of the majority world, Pentecostalisms within the Diaspora also show distinctive elements from each other.

This variety makes the work of collecting, interpreting and reporting the essence of so vital a movement challenging. Yet, that essence of contemporary Pan-African Pentecostal spirituality, as a movement within the Christian Church borne out of the loins of a son of Africa, is well worth the effort. The volumes in this collection survey a broad range of black Pentecostal spiritualities. They include the Holiness movement with its language of sanctification and Holy Spirit baptism; classical Pentecostalism that insists on the experience of Holy Spirit baptism that is accompanied by the initial physical evidence of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues; the Charismatic movement that focuses more broadly on the presence of a range charismatic gifts as evidence of Holy Spirit Baptism; and Neo-Pentecostalism, which seeks to incorporate the more visible elements of Pentecostal spirituality without losing its own doctrinal identity. Further, the volumes also includes a number of quasi-Holiness or Pentecostal groups, which Deidre Crumley identifies as Spirit-privileged that share certain visible resemblances including a common language and many of the same rituals, yet hold underlying theologies that differs significantly from orthodox positions held by Pentecostals. Personality cults, some syncretistic African Initiated Churches, and groups that have incorporated non-Christian elements into their doctrine and worship are included in these volumes to point out disqualifying distinctions from Pentecostalism.

The task has been to identify major Pan-African organizations, individuals, and points in history that have shaped the fastest growing segment of the contemporary Christian faith. Further, it has been to bring to light their contribution to the broad Pentecostal movement, the broader Christian tradition movement as well as to other segments of society. Hopefully, this effort helps correct the false identification of Pentecostalism as a separatist cult that is unengaged with the world.

The first volume of this broad-ranging project takes its geographical focus within North America. The subsquent volumes consider broader global aspects of the movement outside North America.

Several conventions have been employed within these volumes to make this work more accessible for those who stand outside the movement. Language conventions, including standardizing colloquial jargon to bring it in line with broader religious terminology do not deny the reality of Pentecostal experience for adherents but acknowledge Pentecostals as part of the broader Christian tradition. Special titles are used sparingly, not for lack of respect for individual ecclesial structures and polities, but to make the volumes less encumbered and more readable and to overcome the ever-changing nature of the movement. Finally, the obvious variance in depth of coverage between articles in the dictionary does not reflect a lack of research effort or that shorter entries are, necessarily, less important. Rather, it reflects the significant lack of resources regarding some people and segments of the movement. Every attempt was made to provide full names and birth and death dates, but much of Pentecostal historiography excludes this information, even these efforts were not always fruitful. It is my hope, however, that the work that this collection represents will spur a level of interest that generates more research, so that at some point, fuller stories will be made available.

A

Adams, Joseph H. 1926–2003

The first presiding bishop of the United Way of the Cross Churches of Christ of the Apostolic Faith. Adams was born in Cascade, Virginia, where he lived all of his life. Adams earned his theology degrees from the Staunton Bible Institute and the Shiloh School of Theology in Stafford, Virginia. He entered the ministry in 1946, and served as associate minister of Shiloh Way of the Cross Church, later founding Bethel Way of the Cross Church in Danville, Virginia. He was ordained as an elder in the Way of the Cross Churches in 1953, and in 1969, he was consecrated a bishop.

In 1996, he joined Harrison Twyman, formerly of Bible Way World Wide, and James Pritchard, formerly of the Apostolic Church of Christ in God, to found the United Way of the Cross Churches International and became chief apostle of that body in 1997.

Unlike many black Pentecostal pastors of his generation, Adams was more than a local church leader; he was also a prominent community leader. After his death, a Virginia State Senate resolution recounted his numerous service awards including an Outstanding Service Award from the Henry County School Board, a Distinguished Community Service Award from the Men’s Roundtable Club, and an Outstanding Business Leadership for Minorities Award from Patrick County Community College. From 1970 to 1990, he served on the Henry County School Board, including a term as vice chairperson.

At one point, Adams, a charter member of the Sandy River Medical Center, was vice chairperson of its board. He also founded the Bethel Way Adult Center and the Bethel Way Recreation Center, and was appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board for the Aging by Virginia’s first African-American governor, L. Douglas Wilder.

Adams, Leonard P. 1866–1945

An early white Holiness evangelist who associated with Charles Harrison Mason’s African-American denomination, the Church of God in Christ. Adams joined with Mason in moving into the Pentecostal camp and remained with him after other white ministers broke with Mason to form the Assemblies of God. Adams was born near Waverly, Tennessee.

After attending law school, Adams worked as a teacher and lawyer before entering the ministry. His ministerial training was received through the Pentecostal Mission and Literary Institute in Nashville, Tennessee that would later become the Tribecca Nazarene University. He first aligned himself with a Holiness group, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He started evangelistic work in Tennessee, later moving on to Houston, Texas, and finally to Canada before returning to his home state and settling in Memphis, Tennessee in 1902 to establish a tent ministry. Around that period, he became acquainted with Mason, who at that time was still closely associated with Charles Price Jones.

Adams received his Pentecostal Holy Spirit baptism experience under the ministry of Gaston Bernard (G. B.) Cashwell who had come to the East directly from the Azusa Street Revival to spread the Pentecostal message to Holiness groups that had formed throughout the region. After experiencing the Pentecostal Spirit baptism in 1908, he joined the predominantly white Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). That same year, he established the Church of God Bible Institute and Training Home. But in 1910, following a disagreement with General Overseer A. J. Tomlinson, Adams left that denomination and defied Jim Crow culture to align his congregation, Grace and Truth Church in Memphis, with COGIC. Between 1910 and 1913, Adams and another white minister, Howard A. Goss, worked under Mason’s authority to establish white congregations within COGIC. Though Adams was present among other white ministers who had previously been credentialed by Mason at the 1914 Assemblies of God organizing meeting, he did not join the group in breaking away from Mason’s leadership.

From 1914 to 1918, Adams published a periodical that carried the name of his congregation, Grace and Truth. In 1917, Mason enlisted Adams as part of his strategy to plant COGIC congregations throughout urban communities. In 1918, he relocated to Birmingham, Alabama where he planted a new congregation, leaving the Memphis congregation to a white pastor named Snavel. That congregation eventually affiliated itself with the Assemblies of God. Over time, many of the white ministers and churches that had been under Adams’s supervision separated from COGIC to assimilate into other white Pentecostal organizations. By 1930, he had relocated again, this time to Austin, Texas, where reportedly, Adams’s group then included a few Latino members. When Adams later sought to break from COGIC and applied to the Assemblies of God to transfer his credentials, the denomination rejected his application, partly because of accusations that he had misappropriated some church funds while he was a member of the Church of God in Christ.

Further Reading:

McBride, Calvin, and Leonard P. Adams. Walking into a New Spirituality: Chronicling the Life, Ministry, and Contributions of Elder Robert E. Hart, B.D., LL.B., D.D., to the CME Church and COGIC: With Some Additional COGIC History. New York: iUniverse,

2007

.

Newman, Joe. Race and the Assemblies of God Church: The Journey from Azusa Street to the Miracle of Memphis. Youngstown, NY: Cambria,

2007.

Aenon Bible College

The official institution of higher education of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the largest of the African America, Oneness Pentecostal group in the United States. The school was founded in 1940 in Columbus, Ohio as the Pentecostal Bible Training Center by Bishop Karl F. Smith and LaBaugh H. Stansbury. For several years, the college served as the major institution for theological training for PAW leaders.

The school held its first classes in January of 1941 with twelve students. Initially, the course of study involved an eight-week curriculum, but this soon expanded into a two-year program. Eventually, a four-year bachelor degree was offered in theology and religious education, and later a Correspondence Studies program was established becoming the mainstay of the school.

Classes were originally held at Smith’s church, the Church of the Apostolic Faith. Property was purchased in 1944 for classrooms and dormitory space. In 1947, however, a fire caused extensive damage to the two-story structure. While repairs were being made, classes were again held at Smith’s church. Once the structure was restored, classes resumed. The next year, the school moved to Indianapolis, home of PAW headquarters, and was given the name Aenon, meaning springs, alluding to the waters of educational and spiritual refreshing that would spring from its midst.

In 1972 , Bishop Frank R. Bowdan established a west coast campus, Aenon School of Theology & Bible College, in Los Angeles. Dr. Howard Swancy, a graduate of the Indianapolis school, served as the first President of that branch. A year later, Dr. Norma Sylvester Jackson became dean and served for thirty-two years in various capacities until her death in 2005.

In 1978, a branch of Aenon opened in Philadelphia. In 1981, the main campus was moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, the new headquarters of the denomination. In 1998, Thomas Griffith was appointed president. The current president is Bishop Michael D. Hannah Sr.

Aenon is accredited by A.C.I. (Accrediting Commission International) and is the official academic, degree-granting Institution of Peace Apostolic Church, Inc. Degrees are transferable to other degree-granting institution, colleges, and universities. Aenon operates through host affiliate institutes throughout the United States as well as the Samuel Grimes Bible Institute in Liberia, West Africa.

Currently, the college primarily offers distance education. Through its affiliates in the United States and two affiliates in Liberia—the Samuel Grimes Bible Institute and the Haywood Mission—Aenon Bible College annually enrolls as many as ten thousand students.

Further Reading:

Golder, Morris. History of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. Indianapolis, IN: Author,

1973

.

Aenon School of Theology

The institution was established in 1972 by Pentecostal Assemblies of the World’s Bishop Frank Bowdan as the West Coast branch of the denomination’s Aenon Bible College in Columbus, Ohio. Howard Swancy, a graduate of Aenon Bible College, served as the first president of the West Coast branch.

A year after Bowdan officially established the school as an extension of the Ohio institution, Dr. Norma Jackson became dean and served for thirty-two years in various capacities. After her death in 2005, the college underwent a transition. In 2007, after several months of negotiations with the Midwest branch that had moved to Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Aenon School of Theology and Bible College reopened its doors.

Aenon School of Theology & Bible College (AST) is accredited by A.C.I. (Accrediting Commission International). It offers graduate leading to Master’s and Doctoral degrees and undergraduate studies leading to an Associate or Bachelor degree in Religious Studies, Christian Education, Christian Ministry, and Theology. Dr. Howard A. Swancy remains as president.

Affirming Pentecostal Church International (APCI)

The multi-racial, Apostolic Pentecostal denomination that is the largest LGBTQ-affirming Pentecostal denomination in the world was founded 2010 in Indianapolis, Indiana. APCI has established congregations in the United States, Albania, Kosovo, Portugal, Mexico, Taiwan, England, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Guatemala. It also has a heavy presence in Pan-African communities including Brazil, Montenegro, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa, Tanzania, Trinidad, Uganda, and Ghana. APCI also has extensive ministries in Nigeria, through their Chicago church, High Praises International Ministries.

Bishop Erik D. Swope-Wise—the white founding pastor of High Praises International Ministries in Chicago, Illinois—is presiding bishop, and African-American Bishop Donagrant McCluney, leader of an affirming Pentecostal congregation in Greenville, serves as Associate Bishop. Temporal authority, however, is vested in the General Board, led by General Overseer Will Horn.

The doctrinal stance of the organization is similar to that other Apostolic Pentecostal churches: the Oneness of God, water baptism by full immersion in the name of Jesus for forgiveness of sins, the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial evidence of speaking in other tongues, and holiness of life and heart. APCI adheres firmly to these teachings, and does not give ministerial credentials to those holding other beliefs.

The major distinction from other Apostolic bodies, however, is APCI’s stance on homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgendered lifestyles as being biblically acceptable. They base this view on their understanding of the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, as do other LGBT-affirming Apostolic organizations.

The denomination publishes a monthly, free online newsletter, The Apostolic Voice. It also operates a Bible college, Apostolic Institute of Ministry.

African-American Catholic Charismatics

The nearly 2.5 million black Catholics in America represent approximately ten percent of the African-American population, but only three percent of the American Catholic population. Many of these live in seven black dioceses of Louisiana, in the three dioceses around New York, and in those of Chicago, Washington, Miami, Los Angles, Detroit, and Galveston-Houston and Beaumont, Texas. It is in these urban center that black Catholic renewal movements have made their heaviest impact.

Charismatic renewal within the Catholic Church came about because of changes in Catholic liturgy and practice resulting from the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council. The changes allowed African Americans and others within the Church to incorporate culturally sensitive elements into masses within their local congregations. However, it also allowed Catholics to explore new varieties of spirituality without the direct guidance of Church leaders, opening the possibility for exposure to Charismatic Christianity. For black Catholics particularly, this exposure put them in touch with forms of Christian spirituality that resonated with their roots within African spirituality—such as Pentecostalism.

Black Catholic theologian, Diana Hayes, uses the term Black Catholic revivalism to describe this form of spirituality that joins the egalitarian Arminianism of Evangelical Christianity with the institutionalized ritual of Roman Catholicism, though not explicitly tied to an understanding Holy Spirit baptism. But spirited gospel masses replete with choirs singing the latest tunes appear to have become a staple in many urban black congregations such as St. Augustine in Washington DC that employed Howard University-trained Leon Roberts—who had been raised in the Church of God in Christ—to direct its gospel choir in the 1980s. Not only did the congregation experience phenomenal growth but it gained fame and national recognition.

Some congregations not only employed gospel choirs, but also incorporated Pentecostal elements as fervent preaching peppered with vocal amens and yes, Lord, lively congregational singing, laying on of hands, slaying in the Spirit, anointing with oil, and praying for divine healing. Statistics on the number of parishes that are involved in Charismatic spirituality are not available and the degree to which they employ charismatic ritual varies greatly.

A few parishes within the movement can be characterized as entirely or predominantly Charismatic. Others set aside one or more of their scheduled masses for Charismatic Worship. In both cases, there is also likely to be a Charismatic prayer group that meets outside the mass. Such venues have led to more room for women’s leadership than would be found in the traditional mass. The movement has also led to more involvement of Catholic faithful in ecumenical efforts with other Charismatics through such organizations as Women’s Aglow and the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Association. Yet, renewal within the Catholic Church has not meant an abandonment of Catholic dogma in favor of classical Pentecostal or evangelical theological forms, since the roots of Catholic renewal lie closer to efforts coming out of the 1960s Charismatic revival within the Episcopal Church.

While most black Catholic charismatics have remained within the Roman Catholic tradition, involving themselves in liturgical innovation made possible by Vatican II, one of the most visible, though controversial, expressions of black Catholic charismatic spirituality is the African-American Catholic Congregation founded in July 1989 by Fr. George A. Stallings. Stallings pastored St. Teresa of Avila, a predominantly black, Roman Catholic congregation in one of the poorest sections of inner city, Washington DC for twelve years. His congregation became known for enthusiastic worship featuring a crucifix with a black Christ, a full-immersion baptismal fount, and a gospel choir within what became a three-hour mass. Its highly charismatic ritual drew former Catholics back to the church and enticed Protestants to explore Catholic worship, increasing St. Teresa’s membership tenfold—from two hundred to two thousand parishioners before Stallings left to form his own organization, the African-American Catholic Congregation. Since Stallings’s departure, no other figure has come forward as the dominant leader.

Further Reading:

Hayes, Diana. Black Catholic Revivalism: The Emergence of New Forms of Worship. Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center

14

.

1–2

(Fall

1986

–Spring

1987

)

87–107.

African-American Catholic Congregation

One of the most visible expressions of African-American Catholic, Charismatic spirituality in the United States is the organization founded in 1989 by Father George A. Stallings after leaving the Roman Church to establish the new body with nine congregations. Within a year, thirteen congregations had approximately five thousand members in Washington DC, where the organization was founded—New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Richmond. While the Norfolk congregation had closed by the late 1990s, additional congregation rose up in Los Angeles and Richmond, leading to an estimated 7,500 members nationwide today.

Though Stallings refuses to label the blend of Catholic ritual and African traditional religion as charismatic or Neo-Pentecostal, decidedly Pentecostal elements are discernable in its worship and spirituality. The music, dancing, emotive preaching, baptism by immersion and ritual healing are interspersed with elements of traditional Catholic liturgy in its worship. Yet, the group retains elements that are distinct from Pentecostal understandings including openly supporting inclusion of gay or lesbian leadership and ministry in its congregations and maintaining an openness to intimate collaboration with those who stand outside the Christian tradition.

Seven years after the AACC founding, Father Cyprian Rowe, a Marist priest who had served as executive director of the National Office of Black Catholics, with the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, and on the board of the National Catholic Reporter, broke from the Roman Catholic Church to join Stallings. He was subsequently ordained a bishop. Rowe, who died in 2008, was an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church’s treatment of African Americans and the lack of black leadership in the church hierarchy. However, before his death, Rowe recanted his decision to rejoin the Marist Brothers.

Stallings made significant changes in structure of Catholic worship within his organization. He dispensed with the traditional one-hour mass to hold services that often ran three hours, blending African music, black literature, and African traditional rites including traditional liturgy and invocation of ancestor spirits. This controversial style drew criticism from Catholic hierarchy and, in part, led to his excommunication from the Church in 1989.

While the organization retains the strong social witness of the Catholic Church, including an emphasis on benevolence and political activism, it eschews more traditional Catholic teachings such as the ban on abortion and birth control, as well as its sanctions on homosexual activity, remarriage after divorce, women priests and bishops, as well as the requirement of celibacy for priests. The social witness goes far beyond traditional Catholic moral stances to embrace the full ministry of women, inter-religious dialog, and collaboration with groups as diverse the Reverend Sun Yun Moon’s Unification Church, Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, and the Inner Light Unity Fellowship, a predominantly gay congregation.

In 2002, Stallings’s openness to ordaining women clergy led him to elevate Wanda Cecelia Outlaw to the priesthood and appoint her senior associate pastor and administrator of his local congregation, Imani Temple. In 2006, dissident African Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo used Imani Temple as the setting for attacking Roman Catholic Church teaching by consecrating four married men—including Stallings—as bishops, an action for which he was excommunicated. In 2013, the congregation again stirred controversy when Bishop Emeritus Diana Williams, not only a woman but openly lesbian, married Bishop Allyson Nelson Abrams, a Baptist pastor from Detroit, Michigan. Abrams subsequently left her pastorate to establish a non-denomination fellowship in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

Further Reading:

D’Apolito, Rosemary Ann. An Analysis of the African American Catholic Congregation as a Social Movement. PhD diss., University of Chicago,

1996

.

African Episcopal Methodist Church, Neo-Pentecostalism in

Early black Neo-Pentecostals, as represented in John Bryant in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, sought to identify the roots of Pentecostal spirituality in a return to the African roots of black spirituality, and infuse this spirituality with a conscious attempt to engage issues of social justice as well as individual and communal wholeness. In doing so, they were incorporating the very elements of African spirituality that the early independent black church leaders, such as Allen and Payne, attempted to downplay.

In the mid-1960s, as a young seminary graduate serving in the Peace Corp in Africa, John Bryant became intrigued by the possibilities of spirited worship as he encountered a realm of the Spirit that he sensed could not be explained away. He saw people healed, going into trances and exercising spiritual power—all without the [Western] notion of Jehovah God or Jesus Christ. The experience led him to re-examine Christian Scripture to discover what it said about the spiritual dimension largely overlooked within traditional African American Methodism. For Bryant, this search led to the conviction that a more vibrant engagement with the Holy Spirit was warranted.

On returning to the United States and entering the pastorate, Bryant, who is considered the father of African-American Neo-Pentecostalism, sought to incorporate this spiritual realm into his own ministry within the most conspicuously Afro-centric denomination in America, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Bryant began with Bethel AME Church, a small Fall River, Massachusetts congregation that he saw grow from eight to sixty members in two years. Bryant later moved to the historic St. Paul’s AME Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he infused AME teaching and worship with his newfound Pentecostal sensitivity without losing the emphasis on the denomination’s historic affinity for involvement in social justice pursuits. He saw Pentecostal spirituality as the mechanism for connecting his congregation to their black cultural roots in Africa, identifying the Spirit as a liberator who could empower the African-American community.

During Bryant’s tenure, St. Paul’s young, urban, highly educated, middle-class congregation grew from two hundred to over three thousand members. In 1975, he returned to his native Baltimore and brought elements of Charismatic renewal to the historic 600-member congregation. Within two years, membership grew to over seven thousand, making the largest AME congregation in the nation a catalyst for African-American neo-Pentecostalism and positioning him to be elected a bishop in 1988.

While many AME traditionalists were initially disturbed by the push to import Pentecostal spirituality, the largest and wealthiest AME churches have incorporated neo-Pentecostal elements into their worship. The ten-thousand-member Ebenezer AME congregation, led by Grainger and JoAnn Browning in Fort Washington, Maryland, for example, went from twenty-five members to over one thousand in two years after incorporating the new spirituality. First AME of Los Angeles, Bridge Street in Brooklyn, New York, and Payne AME in Nashville, Tennessee, Allen AME in Jamaica, Queens, New York also saw substantial growth.

Within the AME Church, the neo-Pentecostal movement blends the new charismatic spirituality with the traditional AME progressive involvement in social justice issues and its afro-centric aesthetic sensibilities. A further distinction from classical Pentecostalism is the continued emphasis on an educated clergy and laity within the AME movement. Neo-Pentecostal pastors within the AME, like their other clergy colleagues, are generally college graduates and many, or most, have at least some seminary training.

While initially meeting resistance from some stalwarts, especially within more prestigious historic churches, the new neo-Pentecostal vitality within the more traditional black denominations, such as the African American Episcopal Church, has attracted a younger, more educated and upwardly mobile constituency, including more young black men. It has also sparked an upsurge in the number of people going into the ministry from these congregations.

Further Reading:

Gaines, Adrienne. Revive Us Again, Precious Lord. Charisma (

2003

)

37–38

.

Lawrence, Beverly Hall. Reviving the Spirit: A Generation of African Americans Goes Home to Church. New York: Grove, 1997.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Neo-Pentecostalism in

Unlike the African Methodist Episcopal Church, elements of neo-Pentecostalism are less visible within the AMEZ Church and only a small number of the more than 3,200 AMEZ congregations and 1,440,405 congregants throughout the country would openly characterize themselves as charismatic or Neo-Pentecostal. Yet, the neo-Pentecostal movement has not entirely missed the denomination.

Part of the resistance to the spread of neo-Pentecostal within the AMEZ tradition could be attributed to an experience with one of the movement’s earliest and most prominent proponents. Over two decades, John Cherry’s suburban Washington DC, Full Gospel AME Zion Church congregation grew from a twenty-person Bible study started in his home in 1981 to reach the present estimated 27,000 members, one hundred full-time employees, and television broadcasts on eleven stations, becoming the largest congregation in Prince George’s County, the wealthiest black county in the United States. In 1999, however, after a rancorous court battle, Cherry pulled the congregation out of the denomination, renaming it From the Heart Ministries.

Greater Centennial AME Zion Church pastored by W. Darin Moore in Mount Vernon, New York is another neo-Pentecostal AMEZ megachurch. Under Moore’s leadership, membership of the congregation has grown from eight hundred people to more than five thousand, and with the departure of Cherry’s church, making it now the largest of the more than two thousand AME Zion churches in the country. Moore grew up in Greater Centennial, a congregation that had been pastored by his grandfather, William Pratt. After his grandfather’s death, in 1995, the congregation retained Moore as pastor.

Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church boasts a membership of several hundred. By 2006, its pastor, Dennis V. Proctor, had served as pastor of the West Baltimore congregation for fourteen years. In that time, its neo-Pentecostal spirituality had not moved the congregation into megachurch status, but Proctor had become an outspoken defender of the new spirituality, while still acknowledging criticism from more traditional pastors who saw the black church’s involvement in the civil rights struggle as crucial.

By the end of the twentieth century, the denomination’s periodical, The AME Zion Quarterly, had published a few articles on the work of the Holy Spirit in the ancient and contemporary church, but gave no coverage to any resurgence of Neo-Pentecostalism within its ranks.

Bishop George E. Battle Jr., who served for some time in the Central North Carolina Conference before moving to the Northeastern Episcopal District, has been a voice for neo-Pentecostal renewal within the denomination. Battle has been an advocate of openness to the full gospel, and some see him as a breath of Pentecostal fresh air to the AME Zion Church. He was joined in his assessment by retired AMEZ Bishop Ruben Speaks, an avid supporter of charismatic spirituality within the AME Zion church. Yet Speaks is equally insistent that rigid classical Pentecostal definitions of Holy Spirit baptism as always accompanied by glossolalia are inadequate, and insistence that speaking in tongues is the only valid proof of Holy Spirit baptism belies the truth that not all who receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit speak in tongues. Still, tension caused by varying degrees of openness to Neo-Pentecostalism remains within the AMEZ church.

African Universal Church

One of two quasi-Holiness Pentecostal denominations with black nationalist sentiments that formed from the fragmentation of congregations that occurred after the assassination of Laura Koffey, founder of the African Universal Church and Commercial League. It traces its founding to the 1927 establishment and the 1928 incorporation of her original organization.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, the body was led by Clarence Addison, and though Koffy’s assassination most likely came at the hands of Marcus Garvey enthusiasts, Addison was heavily influenced by Garveyite Black Nationalist teachings. He was a strong opponent of the American Civil Rights movement and found support from white Southerners. He called integration sinful.

Sometime in 1930, Addison moved the headquarters of the group to East Orange, New Jersey, but by 1936 had reincorporated it in Louisiana. Its African headquarters are in Lagos, Nigeria. In 1934, the organization formed the Commercial League Corporation to assist its members with services such as life insurance and other necessities. The church also encourages the use of African Language by distributing free lessons written in Xhosa-Zulu and encourages total economic self-sufficiency of its members.

While the body holds a Pentecostal soteriology, like Koffey’s original group, it teaches that there are four specific experience for the believer: justification, sanctification, baptism of the Holy Spirit, and baptism with fire. Further, though, it observes the usual ordinances of the Pentecostal movement, water is not used for baptism nor wine for communion. The polity of the church is episcopal, and Addison held the position of Archbishop. Its assembly meets every four years.

In the 1930s, missionaries from the denomination traveled to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and to Nigeria to establish branches of the church. I. T. Wallace, a labor organizer and journalist, for example, established a branch in Nigeria in 1931.

The name and headquarters of the organization appears to have changed several times overs its life. Current headquarters for the group, which has approximately one hundred congregations, is apparently headquartered in Webster, New Jersey. It holds no relation to a parallel group with a similar name that also evolved out of Koffey’s efforts.

African Universal Church and Commercial League

The quasi-Pentecostal organization that grew out of the work of Laura Andorker Koffey in the mid-1920s. The group incorporated classical Trinitarian Pentecostal doctrine with Black Nationalist elements and Ethiopianism sentiments.

Initially Koffey worked closely with Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to recruit members for that movement until she fell into disfavor with Garvey who began to see her as a rival. She originally established her organization as the Universal African Improvement Association and Commercial League with plans to develop business enterprises that would join Africans and African Americans together in economic ventures. Her vision was to prepare African Americans to repatriate to the homeland, and she emphasized the relationship between African people and blacks in the United States.

Once she broke from Garvey’s group, using Miami as her center, Koffey began traveling throughout the south holding meetings that were a mixture of Pentecostal revival fervor and Black Nationalist ethos for her new organization. She taught followers Bantu as well as the Bible, within the group that generally held to classical Holiness Pentecostalism, but insisted that there were four specific experience for the believer: justification, sanctification, baptism of the Holy Spirit, and baptism with fire.

Following her assassination, her followers killed a Garveyite in retaliation, but initially did little to sustain the organization. Many of the local centers she had established became autonomous, disconnected churches each carrying on her tradition in their own particular manner, and overall interest in her organization within the United States waned and her work fell into decline for a short time. Eventually however, at least two groups—the African Universal Church, Inc. led by Eli B’usabe Nyombolo, a South African immigrant, and the African Universal Church with Clarence Addison at the head—emerged to carry on her legacy. Further, there were a number of smaller groups that came into and out of existence over the next fifty years including the Missionary African Universal Church, the Tabernacle African Universal Church and the African Unity Church. Historiography regarding these group often involves a confusing intermix of names, places, dates, and statistics.

Further Reading:

Bair, Barbara. Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands Unto God: Laura Koffey and the Gendered Vision of Redemption in the Garvey Movement. In A Mighty Baptism: Race and Gender, in the Creation of American Protestantism, edited by Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane,

38–61.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1996

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African Universal Church, Inc.

A quasi-Holiness Pentecostal denomination that was forged as one of the two bodies formed in the period immediately following the death of Laura Koffey, founder of the African Universal Church. After her death, her followers had dissipated into several autonomous congregations that were disconnected to Koffey’s original movement. Eli B’usabe Nyombolo, a South African who had recently migrated to the United State and became attracted to Koffey’s teaching, launched a concerted effort to resurrect and promote the movement Koffey had started.

Nyombolo built on Kofi’s message of connecting with African cultures and traditions. Church services were held in English and Bantu, a family of languages used by hundreds of ethnic groups in Africa. Church children learned from a Bantu primer. In 1944, he established the intentional community of Adorkaville in Jacksonville, Florida to honor Koffey’s memory and keep her teaching alive. The eleven plus African Community, originally consisted of homes, a church and community center. There were plans to build a school, an office building, as well as a building that could be used as an African Home for visiting African natives. The intention was to prepare African Americans to return to Africa and develop relationships between businesspeople in Africa and America. Members were taught African language and customs that were incorporated into their lifestyles. The organization was also involved in the import of crafts, goods, exported tools and equipment to Africa. Nyombolo never made it back to Africa himself. However, there was at least one known attempt of six individuals that were sent as pioneers.

By the early 1950s, the congregation had again began to drift apart. In 1953, however, three of the groups from Miami, Hollywood and Jacksonville reunited and reorganized as the African Universal Church, Inc. The group first elected John Dean as chair; he served until 1958, when Clifford Hepburn succeeded him, serving until 1970. Gloria Hepburn served until 1974, the same year that Audley Sears took office.

Fifteen years after its reorganization, the group made a renewed effort to locate Koffey’s family in Ghana when Earnest Sears traveled to that country for that purpose. He was successful in not only locating the family but also in bringing one of her family members, a nephew, back to the United States. Prior to his trip, the family had not learned of her assassination.

Presently there are seven affiliated congregations in Florida and Alabama with headquarters in Daphne City, Alabama. The doctrine of this body is similar to that of its sister organization, the African Universal Church.

All Nations Pentecostal Church

In 1916, Lucy Smith left Stone Church, the predominantly white congregation founded in 1906 by Holiness leader William Piper to form a small home prayer band with two other women. Two years later that group had become the beginnings of All Nations Pentecostal Church. By the 1920s the group of followers that had gathered around Smith was holding tent revival services throughout Chicago’s South Side. By 1926, the congregation had settled into its own facility, becoming the first church in Chicago built by a woman pastor, the first new church building constructed in the city by an African-American congregation in over two decades, and the only multi-racial congregation on the South Side of Chicago. By the 1930s the church had grown to a congregation of five thousand, the majority working class and poor blacks, whites, and immigrants from several countries.

From its inception, All Nations Church was led almost exclusively by women in a cultural climate where women’s ministry and leadership were largely opposed. Yet, Elder Smith was able to form fellowships with other black churches in South Side Chicago. Further, during the Great Depression, Smith’s alliances with prominent businessmen aided her in carrying out a substantial outreach ministry throughout Chicago’s South Side so that her church became the first African-American congregation in Chicago to regularly distribute food and clothing without regard to race.

The church was noted for its musical program that eventually included several choirs and a four-piece orchestra, and its refilling services, where Smith gave special prayer and attention to those seeking Holy Spirit baptism. All Nations Church became one of the first African-American churches to broadcast services on radio. Worshippers across the country flocked to her live worship services, drawn by Smith’s fiery preaching and the musical talent of her granddaughter, Lucy Smith (Collier), known as Little Lucy.

In the late 1940s, Elder Lucy Smith relinquished control of All Nations to her youngest daughter, Ardella Smith. At the time of Lucy Smith’s death in 1952, All Nations Church had become one of the South Side’s most influential congregations. Her funeral was one of the largest held in Chicago up to that time, as sixty thousand people viewed her body and fifty thousand lined the streets for the processional.

By 1955, conflicts over church debt and property led to a split and ended its radio broadcast. Those opposed to Ardella’s leadership reformed as a separate All Nations Pentecostal Church, devoted to the memory of their founder. Ardella subsequently left the ministry and converted to Catholicism. The former church building was demolished in the late 1950s after the entire east wall mysteriously collapsed.

Further Reading:

Wallace D. Best. Passionately Divine, No Less Human: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago 1915–1952.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

2005

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All Saints Bible College

The only undergraduate level, degree-granting institution serving the more than five-million-member Church of God in Christ. The four-year institution was established in 2002 in Memphis, Tennessee as a secular college alternative for COGIC youth.

Beginning in 1973, two years after Bishop James O. Patterson, Sr. laid out a vision for the C. H. Mason System of Bible Colleges, COGIC schools in the Tennessee Headquarters, the Tennessee 4th, and the Tennessee 5th jurisdictions began discussing a merger. In 1998, the three-jurisdictional Bible Colleges within the state merged with the jurisdictional bishops—G. E. Patterson, J. O. Patterson Jr., and Samuel L. Lowe—as co-presidents of the school. Benjamin L. Smith was appointed the first dean and was later succeeded by Perry C. Little.

In 2000, the then-presiding bishop, G. E. Patterson, and the COGIC General Board appointed Dr. Alonzo Johnson to guide the merging of the C. H. Mason Bible College of Memphis with the newly proposed All Saints Bible College. When completed in 2002, Johnson was tapped to serve as its first president. In 2003, Patterson appointed Little as the second president. In 2011, Bishop Charles Blake, who had succeeded Patterson as presiding bishop, appointed Dr. Granville Scruggs as the third and current president. The school is located on the grounds of the COGIC World Headquarters. The college houses the forty-thousand-volume Bishop G. E. Patterson Memorial Library, which was dedicated in 2012. While the school does not hold accreditation, it has articulation agreements with several local colleges within the immediate vicinity of the All Saints Bible College campus.

Allen, Oliver Clyde (O.C.) III

Presiding bishop of the United Progressive Pentecostal Church Fellowship. In 2003, he established the Vision Church International in Atlanta, Georgia as a welcoming and affirming community for the gay and lesbian community. Allen and his followers contradict classical Pentecostal understandings of homosexuality as a sin and insist that it is a biblically acceptable lifestyle. Located in the Bible Belt, a region known for its conservative sexual ethic, The Vision Church International has been cited by the liberal press as an alternative to sexism, homophobia and identity oppression in the Black Church. His congregation grew rapidly to become one of the fastest growing churches in the southern United States.

Allen has been an op-ed writer for CNN and honored by a host of community and national groups including the Georgia House of Representatives in 2012. He is a regional spokesperson for the National Black Justice Coalition LGBT Economic Empowerment Tour for communities of color and has worked closely with the United States Small Business Administration to provide support to LGBT and other minority entrepreneurs in the community.

A native of southern California, he completed his undergraduate at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and at Morehouse College in Atlanta and is currently completing degrees at Harvard University Extension School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the twenty-five years of his ministry, Allen has served as a youth evangelist, and as a lecturer around the United States, Canada, and Bermuda, and as a missionary in Ghana, West Africa.

He is CEO of the Vision Community Foundation that addresses socioeconomic and health gaps in the urban community by providing GED training, food distribution, clothes bank for homeless families, and HIV/AIDS counseling and testing. The Vision Community Foundation hosts a national Community Festival for over thirty thousand people on Labor Day weekend to promote community health and wellness. He has launched The Vision Center for Counseling and Behavioral Health to deliver mental and emotional counseling to the community, as well as ministries addressing women, men, youth, health, and wellness. He has held membership in the Joint College of African American Bishops, People for the American Way, and the Atlanta Council of Churches, just to name a few.

Allen and his partner, Rashad Burgess, to whom he considers himself married, and whom the congregation refers to as First Gentleman, are parents of two adopted children. In 2013, Allen and his family made history by being the first same-gender couple featured in the black periodical Ebony as one of the Top 10 Coolest Black Families in America. In 2014, Morehouse College inducted Allen into the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. International Board of Preachers.

Alliance of Apostolic Churches of Christ Jesus (AACCJ)

A Oneness Pentecostal fellowship of ministers formed in 1977 under the leadership of Albert E. Dixon Sr., a bishop in the Churches of God and True Holiness. The organization was birthed out of an earlier conversation between Dixon and Bishop Willie Frazier of The New Born Lighthouse Church of the Apostolic Faith, Inc.

These two men shared the vision with other Oneness leaders from several small Oneness bodies and independent Oneness congregations. The group was initially organized as the Apostolic Ministerial Alliance in Cleveland, Ohio where many of its first constituents were located. At the organizing meeting, Dixon was elected as president, Loyce Clark was elected vice president, and Raymond Worrell as secretary. Later, the name was changed to the Alliance of Apostolic Churches of Christ Jesus.

Timothy Herrington, pastor of Abundant Life Assembly of Grenada, Mississippi, is the current presider.

Alpha and Omega Pentecostal Church of God of America, Inc.

The Alpha and Omega Pentecostal Church of God of America, Inc., was founded in 1944 when Rev. Magdalene Mabe Phillips, a former member of the United Holy Church of America, began holding a Bible study in the dining room of her residence, along with an outreach ministry to feed hungry members of her community. She then established the original congregation, the Alpha and Omega Church of God Tabernacle in Baltimore, Maryland. It was incorporated in 1945.

At some point Phillips had left the United Holy Church, to join a Baptist congregation in Baltimore, and then joined the Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America, the denomination founded by Bishop Ida Robinson. She was pastoring in Baltimore when she left that organization to found her own group. The name was later changed to Alpha and Omega Pentecostal Church of God of America, Inc. There is no clear indication about what prompted the split, however, it could not have been over the leadership of women, since women had continually been at the head of the Mt. Sinai organization as presiding bishop and occupied many of the top organizational positions. Unlike Robinson, however, Phillips’s group never had a large measure of success nor garnered the momentum of the parent organization. In the summer of 1952, however, the denomination, became one of the first Pentecostal churches to have an inner-city summer camp for African-American youth.

It is not known what year Phillips stepped down, but she was succeeded by Charles Waters, who later left the denomination to form True Fellowship Pentecostal Church of America. John Mabe, brother of the founder, succeeded him as overseer. It is uncertain how many congregations pulled out with Waters, but by 1970, there were only four congregations in Mabe’s body: the Baltimore congregation, one in St. Augustine Florida, one in Philadelphia, and a mission church in Kingston, Jamaica with approximately four hundred total members. In the 1990s the organization had grown to eight churches.

Amos, Barbara M. 1957–

Prominent preacher, lecturer, teacher, church founder, and former bishop in the Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America. As a young woman of sixteen, the multi-talented Amos served for five years as a full-time musician for Grammy-award-winning gospel singer, Shirley Caesar, who mentored her in music and public speaking.

She left that circuit to begin her ministry by helping a struggling Norfolk congregation of six people, including the pastor and her husband. She took over that congregation in 1986. Within six months, the church was filled to capacity. In 1999, the year Amos resigned from the pastorate, the congregation had swelled to 2,700 and had established numerous outreach ministries including Faith Academy School of Excellence, established in 1992, to offer a curriculum concentrated in mathematics, science, and technology for students in preschool through the eighth grade.

That year, she became Executive Director of Dorcas, Inc., a nonprofit organization promoting spiritual, educational, and economic wellness in impoverished communities in America and globally. Dr. Amos traveled to Haiti and Africa and provided a myriad of resources to many impoverished communities around the world.

In the early 1990s, Amos was elevated to the office of bishop with the Mt. Sinai Holy Church, where she was appointed to oversee the denomination in North Carolina, and was being groomed by then presiding bishop, Amy Stevens to succeed her. Amos represented Mt. Sinai at the historic meeting that disbanded the white Pentecostal Fellowship of North America to establish the interracial Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America. As a charter member of the Executive Council of PCCNA, which represents over forty million Pentecostals around the world, Amos was the only female member of that group.

Though young Amos had been a member of the Church of God in Christ, the outspoken advocate for gender equality within the Pentecostal movement, she transitioned into the Mt. Sinai Holy Church because of its more liberal stance on gender equity than is usually found in African-America Pentecostal bodies. After Stevens’s death, however, the year after Amos resigned from her congregation, she stepped down from the bishopric of the Mt. Sinai organization after being rejected for the position of presiding bishop, when for the first time in the denomination’s seventy-five year history that positon was assumed by a man, Bishop Joseph Bell.

Subsequently, Amos founded Kinston Christian Center in Kinston, North Carolina. This ministry provides food, clothing, and a free after-school programing to assist families in the Kinston community and Faith Deliverance Christian Fellowship, a fellowship of Charismatic congregation.

Amos holds a BS degree in Criminal Justice from Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia and has done graduate studies in Social Work at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. She received a Master of Divinity degree from Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University and her Doctor of Ministry from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Apostle Church of Christ in God

The Apostle Church of Christ in God is a Oneness Pentecostal denominational that was founded in 1940 by five elders—J. W. Audrey, James. C. Richardson, Jerome Jenkins, W. R. Bryant, and J. M. Williams—who separated from the Church of God (Apostolic) largely over concern for the authoritarian manner in which Eli N. Neal, acting presiding bishop, conducted the affairs of the church as well as with some personal problems that Neal was experiencing.

Originally, three churches left with the elders, who established headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When Audrey was elected the new presiding bishop in 1952, Richardson was elected as a second bishop.

In 1953, after unsuccessfully seeking to be consecrated a bishop, Robert Doub, the overseer of Pennsylvania, challenged Audrey’s position as presiding bishop. When the majority of the denomination backed Audrey, Doub left to found Shiloh Apostolic Temple with his Pennsylvania congregations serving as its headquarters.

Ironically, Audrey resigned in 1956, and Richardson became presiding bishop, serving until his death in 1995. Richardson’s tenures spurred growth within the denomination. He began the Apostolic Gazette (later the Apostolic Journal), which served the church for many years. He also instituted a program to assist ministers in pursuing education. However, his efforts were frustrated by several schisms that slowed the denomination’s growth.

The most prominent schism occurred in 1971 when Audrey, the former presider, left to found an independent congregation. By 1980, membership had grown to 2,150 members in thirteen congregations being served by five bishops and twenty-five ministers. The denomination, headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a member of the Apostolic World Christian Fellowship.

Apostolic Assemblies of Christ, Inc.

A Oneness Pentecostal denomination founded in 1970 by Bishop George Marshall (G. M.) Boone, along with several schismatic former members of the Pentecostal Churches of Apostolic Faith. When Bishop Willie Lee—the presiding bishop of the Pentecostal Churches—died, questions regarding Bishop Lee’s former administration of the denomination led to a church splinter, and one group formed around Bishop Boone and Virgil Oates, who became the vice bishop of the new group.

The organization’s headquarters is located in Detroit, Michigan. The body is episcopal in governance. Boone started with seven congregations: by 1980, there were twenty-five churches and approximately 3,500 members. In 2008, the Assemblies reported seventy-seven member ministers in member churches nationwide. Currently there are 259 congregations worldwide.

The leadership of the AAoC consists of a presiding bishop and a board of bishops. The current presiding bishop is Donald Sorrells of Lockland, Ohio who was elected in 2012, when Boone moved to emeritus status. Within the denomination, women function as licensed and ordained ministers, evangelists, and pastors, as well as in jurisdictional and national offices, but cannot hold the episcopal ranks of elder or bishop.

Apostolic Church of Christ

The Apostolic Church of Christ is a Oneness Pentecostal denomination founded in 1969 by Bishop Johnnie Draft and Elder Wallace Snow, both ministers in the Church of God (Apostolic). Draft served for many years an overseer in the parent body and pastor of St. Peter’s Church, the denomination’s headquarters congregation. The separation was not schismatic; Draft expressed no criticism of the Church of God (Apostolic). Rather, he stated that the Spirit of the Lord brought him to start his own organization. The church maintains doctrine that parallels that of the parent group. It differs from its parent body, however, in its development of a centralized church polity. Authority is vested in the executive board, which owns all the church property. Doctrine follows that of the Church of God (Apostolic). Bishop Draft serves as the church’s chief apostle.

In 1992, the Apostolic Church of Christ, which is headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had six churches, six hundred members, nine ministers, six elders, and two licensed missionaries.

Apostolic Faith Church of Christ (Pentecostal)

The Oneness Pentecostal body was founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1969 by Johnny Draft and Wallace Snow, both of whom had been members of the Church of God (Apostolic). Draft was a former overseer and pastor of the headquarter church of the former denomination and pastor of the parent denomination’s headquarter congregation, St. Peters Apostolic Church. While there was no schismatic concern, Draft simply felt a desire to establish his own body. The polity of this body is almost identical to that of the parent, except that in the new body individual church property is not owned by the parent board.

ACC Headquarters are in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1992, the Apostolic Faith Church of Christ had six churches, four hundred members, nine ministers, six elders, two licensed missionaries, and one bishop. Draft serves as presiding bishop.

Apostolic Faith Church of God and True Holiness

In 1945, after thirty-five years in leadership of the Apostolic Faith Church of God, Bishop Charles Lowe separated from the Trinitarian denomination he founded under the auspices of Azusa Street Revival leader, William Joseph Seymour. Taking only one congregation with him, he established the Apostolic Faith Church of God and True Holiness as a Oneness Pentecostal denomination. Lowe presided as bishop until 1952 when he appointed Levi Butts in his place. In 1952, the body split when Bishops Jesse Henshaw and Willie Cross and Elder R. T. Butts left to form the Apostolic Faith Church of God Live On!

Lowe died in 1954. He was succeeded by Bishop Levi Butts, who served until 1980. At his resignation, Vice Bishop Robert Lewis Lyons Sr. became the presiding bishop. In 1990, the church, which is headquarted in Jefferson, Ohio, reported twenty-four congregations.

Further Reading

Montier, Gerald, and Carolyn Montier. Remembering the Past Apostolic Faith Mission Celebrating the Present Apostolic Faith Church of God. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris,

2011

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Apostolic Faith Church of God Giving Grace, Inc.

A Trinitarian convention of churches founded in the mid-1960s as the New Jerusalem Apostolic Faith Churches of God by Mother Lillie Perry Williams and Bishop Rufus Easter. The vision was brought into reality in 1975 with the official formation of the organization shortly before her passing, championed by her spiritual sons and daughters.

Williams began her first congregation in 1930 in Ante,