David's Church History 101 - Interesting Religious Groups I Have Encountered Over The Years

Last night, I had a very nice 3-hour conversation with a Tennessee pastor by the name of Jimmy Morrow.   With a small congregation in the town of Newport, TN, called the Edwina Church of God in Jesus' Name, Jimmy works a day job while pastoring his faithful flock.  Now, Jimmy may seem to some like another rural Holiness/Pentecostal pastor, which he is, but Jimmy's church has received a lot of media attention due to one important aspect of their faith that makes them a little different - they "follow the signs," as Pastor Jimmy calls it, based on a passage of Scripture found in Mark 16:15-20, and a portion of that passage says this - "and they shall take up serpents..."  Yes, Pastor Jimmy is a serpent-handling Holiness minister.  He is one of several I have come to know over the years as friends and even prayer partners, and although I don't personally advocate picking up rattlers as led, at the same time I have gotten to know these folks as people and have come to appreciate and admire them.  Also, they are like myself fellow Appalachian-Americans, and that means something too. 

Although limited educationally, Pastor Jimmy is by no means some illiterate hick - he is actually very intelligent in his own way, and has amassed an archive of very valuable information not only on Signs Followers, but also on his local history, his family tree, and on a lot of the history of Holiness movements in his part of Tennessee.   And, he has actually written a book entitled Handling Serpents which serves as more or less an official history of his particular Holiness tradition - I might add that this book is the first ever to be written by an actual adherent to the serpent-handling faith, and thus it is valuable because it is written by one who lives the religion rather than an outside observer.  In my opinion, Jimmy may not have a doctorate, or may not be recognized by any academic establishment, but he is a true scholar and historian just the same; he has truly taken the Scriptural mandate to "study to show thyself approved," and in some aspects he has a lot more brains even than many who have a lot of degrees adorning the "I love me" walls of their homes and offices.  And, I count it a privelege to have him as a friend, not to mention have enjoyed talking to and getting to know him as a human being (of which he is a fine example, I might add).

Serpent-handling has fascinated me personally not only as a native Appalachian-born Christian myself, but also it is something that, I must admit, gets my attention because it is so unique as a Christian tradition.  And, over the years I have read almost all the books on the subject, having my own copies of most of them in my personal library, as well as seeing a lot of film footage, etc.   However, I open this story not to talk about serpent-handling churches, as enough has been said, and therefore this is not a historical dissertation on the serpent-handlers - if you want those, read Pastor Jimmy's book as well as many other fine volumes out there, but especially his, as he is the most qualified as a part of his tradition to tell you about it, more so than I am.   However, there are literally hundreds of little fellowships of churches, associations, conferences, and small denominations in the US, all having a unique history, and I am doing this to introduce you to a few of them that have fascinated me over the years.   Some of them are regional churches - they are small groups confined to a certain geographic area.  Others are a little larger and have congregations all over the country, but they still carry a fascination for me.  And, that is what I want to talk about here. 

Church history is one of my favorite subjects - heck, history in general is interesting to me!  However, the histories of large mainstream groups are often too cumbersome, too extensive, and too boring in many cases to deal with, and generally I know all about the "big fish" anyway because their histories are readily available (there are now at least 6 books on the history of the Assemblies of God at this writing, just as an example, and the Southern Baptists have a whole set of encyclopedias dedicated to their story!).  What really fascinates me though are those little groups, some with unique origins and only found in certain places, and it is those I devote a lot of my research to.  I owe a lot of good people in those groups a great debt of gratitude, because many of them have provided some very rich resource material that I am using here now.   So, without further chitter-chat, let's begin.

One of the first groups I want to talk about doesn't have a lot of information available on them, but they go back a long way in my personal history.  Back when I was in high school, we lived in the town of  Terra Alta, WV, and on a small rural road just outside town called Salt Lick.  If you traveled due south on Salt Lick Road, it would lead you to the town of Rowlesburg, where I had a lot of deep roots (Rowlesburg is the location of the little Southern Baptist church where I was led to Christ in 1986, and also a home to our family for many years).  Before crossing a rickety bridge that took you into Rowlesburg, spanning the railroad tracks that converged on the town from the north, on the left side of the road was a high slope, and overlooking that rickety bridge was a tiny Pentecostal church that met in a prefabricated home the parishioners had converted into a church.  Back in the day, the Rowlesburg Pentecostal Church was pastored by Rev. Lawson Henline, who I believe was also the founding pastor.  I remember when I was in my junior year of high school that the Preston County News, our weekly paper, published some biographical information on Pastor Henline, and one of the things they mentioned was that he had recently been appointed a bishop in a small fellowship his church was part of.  I racked my brains for years trying to find out what the name of the group was, and recently I found it.  The Rowlesburg Church belongs to a tiny "Jesus-Only" Pentecostal fellowship, headquartered in Friendsville, MD, called the Emmanual Apostolic Church.  And, they are small - their website, www. eaciorg.com, lists only 7 congregations in their fellowship, with two in Maryland, 4 in West Virginia, and one in Ohio.   It was a great boost to finally find out who these people are, and I know just by the length of time the Rowlesburg church has been there the Emmanual Apostolic Church at least has a 35-year history, possibly longer.   It is unique in the groups I am discussing here because it is the only one that is part of the Oneness Pentecostal movement.  I personally don't agree with the Oneness view, because it is not compatible with the teachings of the Church, but at the same time I don't think they are some cult either - the ones I have met are very much Christians actually.  To make that point, this group has a lady evangelist, Rev. Leona Stepp, who is one of the most godly people I have come into contact with, and years ago some good friends of ours in Kirby, WV, introduced us to her ministry as she recorded an album of gospel songs.  Although now aged, as far as I know she is still alive and in Ohio, and I was able to have the privelege of talking to her a couple of years back.  As for Bishop Henline, he passed on some years back, and the church is now under the pastoral leadership of Pastor Franklin Hixenbaugh. 

The next group of churches are a denominational family with common roots, as all of them are geographically centered in southern Georgia and northern Florida and they are Pentecostal Baptists.  The first, and oldest group is the Holiness Baptist Association, which has its current headquarters just outside Douglas, GA, where they maintain a campground.  The Holiness Baptists got my attention back around 1988 or so when I was spending the summer at my dad's place in Brunswick, GA.  Looking through the local paper, I centered on the church ads and came across this church called the Antioch Holiness Baptist Church.   At that time, I was still a Southern Baptist myself, and this whole idea of Baptists being also Pentecostal fascinated me, so I had to find out more.  So, the following summer, I went to Dad's in order to work after graduating high school and save up some cash for my first semester of college, and at the time I began to attend this little Pentecostal Holiness church up the road from Dad's, where on June 21, 1989, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence according to Acts 2.  The lady pastor, Sister Mayfield, of that church was raised in the Holiness Baptist church, and she told me a little about it and then introduced me to one of their local ministers, Rev. Phillip Popwell.  Pastor Popwell served as an associate minister at the Antioch Church in Brunswick, and after a pleasant conversation with him, he sent me a copy of their Associational minutes for the 1988 year.   This proved valuable, and I have that copy in front of me now as I mention them.  According to the minutes book, which on the first page provides a brief history, the Holiness Baptists came into being when some local Missionary Baptists began to embrace the Holiness and later Pentecostal message.  Some of the churches, as a result, were expelled from the local Baptist association, called the Little River Association, in 1893, and in October 1894 they organized the Holiness Baptist Association in Wilcox County, GA.  As of the 1988 figures that I have in front of me, the Holiness Baptists had approximately 29 churches, scattered across southern Georgia as well as a church in Florida, and they had around 929 members.  Of course, that may have changed, as I am aware that the Antioch Church in Brunswick for instance doesn't seem to be showing up anymore in any research, meaning it could have been closed.  Nonetheless, the Holiness Baptists are still a small but vibrant fellowship, and I see a lot of their participation with other Pentecostal groups in revivals, etc., in a small paper I receive every other month or so called The Holiness Messenger.  My hope is that they continue to be a strong fellowship.

Like many religious groups, over the years schisms happened, and the Holiness Baptists were no exception.  One such break came in 1934 when a new group, called the Baptist Purity Association, was formed over the issue of using water rather than wine or juice in communion.  This is another group I had to find out more about, and finally in 2008 I was able to get in touch with one of their elders, Rev. Bobby Joe Hires, in Salem, FL, who sent me a large package with a number a wonderful and valuable resources on the Baptist Purity folks.  One of the books Pastor Hires sent me was a book written by his sister-in-law, Ida Turner Guitterez, entitled Sawdust Trail.  A small GBC-bound self-published book she wrote in 1987, it is the biography of her father, Rev. Luther Turner, who was more or less the founder of the Baptist Purity Association.  Turner, born in 1888, was born just outside Abbeville, GA, and grew up in a poor sharecropper family there.  Although a bit wild and unruly in his youth, Luther Turner was converted to Christ sometime in his teens around the year 1905 or so, as I reckon it from Ida's book on page 3, and although his conversion was not solid at first, he was born again under the ministry of an itinerant preacher by the name of Evangelist Clarence D. Cooper and soon after accepted a call to preach.  In time, he came to be identified with the Holiness Baptists after a short sojourn in the Church of God.  After moving to Perry, FL, around 1924, Turner later faced some opposition from both the Church of God and Holiness Baptists, Turner founded the Baptist Purity Association in 1934.  In belief, the Baptist Purity Church is a little more conservative than its Holiness Baptist forebears, and according to their Church Discipline they use only cold water in their Communion services, and strictly forbid the use of alcohol, tobacco, as well as gambling, and worldly entertainments are frowned upon.  The group also practices footwashing, believes in the Pentecostal experience, and they dress modestly.  As of their 2007 minutes, they have 8 congregations, with 6 in Florida and 2 in Georgia.  Their main "mother church" is in Salem, FL, and they have quarterly meetings.  Their current Associational Moderator, as of 2007, is Bobby Joe Hires (founder Luther Turner's son-in-law), who also graciously provided the information.  Fortunately, one of their congregations is very close by, in Plant City, pastored by Rev. Richard Joyner, and I am hoping to visit there sometime in the near future and formally introduce myself to these good folks.

Baptist Purity Church congregation in Abbeville, GA



A second break in the Holiness Baptists happened in 1977, when a group near Broxton, GA, formed the Calvary Holiness Association.  According to the Wikipedia article, they have about 17 churches and just under 500 members.  Although quite visible and actively involved in fellowshipping with other groups, the Calvary Holiness Association has been a hard nut to crack as far as getting information, despite a couple of calls to their campground headquarters in Broxton, GA.   Maybe in the near future I can get more information, including some history and minutes books on them.   Another schism occurred among the Baptist Purity folks in the 1940's, when one of their ministers, Rev. Riley Pridgeon, founded and evangelistic association up around Perry, FL and his church there, Antioch Revival Center.  Little is known about this group,  although I continue to research it.   Any rate, this is the basic family tree of the Holiness Baptist tradition in south Georgia.

A second group of Pentecostal Baptists that fascinates me evolved out of the Falcon, NC, revivals of  G.B. Cashwell, a Pentecostal Holiness evangelist.  The Piedmont region of North Carolina had been for a couple of centuries a strong center for FreeWill Baptists, and many of them, due to their Arminian theology, were impacted by the Pentecostal revivals of Cashwell in Falcon.   The major group of this movement, at least today, is the Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church.  Founded in 1959, it has about 28,000 members in over 150 churches (as of 1998, according to the Wikipedia article on the PFWBC), the majority in North Carolina but also with congregations in Virginia and South Carolina as well as about a dozen or so Spanish-speaking congregations in Florida (including one, I was surprised to find out, here in Tampa!).  Being it is a lot more mainstreamed as a church body, I am not going to devote a lot of space here to this group but rather to some interesting sister groups that came out of the same heritage.

The South Carolina Pentecostal Free Will Baptists, much more conservative in doctrine, formed the Free Will Baptist Conference of Pentecostal Faith at around the same time the NC congregations organized the PFWBC.  This South Carolina group is still vibrant today, and still very old-fashioned in their Holiness ways, and consist of about 20-some churches, mostly in South Carolina, and their headquarters in Turbeville, SC, just east of Sumter.  To me, they are the more faithful of the two groups.  Another group with similar heritage is the Trent River Freewill Holiness Association, headquartered in Clinton, NC.   This conference was established in 1946 by Rev. Ruben Jones, a Pentecostal Salvation/Healing evangelist with Free Will Baptist roots, and today his granddaughter, Dr. Teresa Ammons, is the current overseer.  They have a simple but informative webpage at http://www.freewillholinessassociation.org/, and around 17 congregations centered in eastern North Carolina.  I am indebted to Rev. Elmer Parker, of Hairs Chapel Freewill Holiness Church in Linden, NC, for his gracious assistance.  A third group connected with this tradition is the General Conference of the Evangelical Baptist Church, which was at one time centered around Goldsboro, NC but was recently resurrected in Arizona as a fellowship.   Although originally founded in 1935 under the leadership of Rev. William Howard Carter as part of the same Holiness outpouring that produced the above groups, the GCEBC developed a whole unique history.  It declined in the early 1990's and was recently rebirthed by a group in Arizona, where it is now headquartered.  No recent stats or other information are currently available, although they do have a website at http://gcebaptistchurch.com/aboutus.aspx in which their Discipline and other documentation are readily available.  I also have a copy, from the late 1980's, of their old Discipline as well from the original conference.  This is definitely a group to keep an eye on as it develops.

Another elusive group of churches, related to these other Pentecostal Free Will Baptists, are a group I note as "Free Will Baptist Holiness Churches."  Due to the fact that many of the dozen or so of their churches throughout the Carolinas I have researched has the title "Saint" in front of them, I surmise that these may possibly be African-American Pentecostal Freewill Baptists.  Thing is with them, unfortunately, are many unanswered questions - do they have a conference? Is there any historical information on any of their congregations?  I hope to find answers to all that in the near future.

Another group of Free Will Baptists, these being non-Pentecostal but Holiness in emphasis, came into being in 1931 in the foothills of southeastern Ohio.  They represented a conference of Regular Baptist churches and a conference of Free Will Baptists who became influenced by the Keswick expression of the Holiness movement, and called themselves the Christian Baptist Churches of God.   They are currently headquartered in Wheelersburg, OH, and have about 35 congregations scattered about Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia.  They still retain strong fraternal fellowship with the Free Will Baptists, and one of their ministers, Rev. Brian Baer, often speaks at campmeetings conducted by a very powerful Free Will Baptist evangelist from Rubyville, OH, by the name of Calvin Ray Evans.  I first came in contact with their Missions director, the late Mrs. Goldie Taylor, some years ago, and have been impressed with them since.  They are a very interesting group to say the least.

The Fellowship Christian Baptist Church, Grayson, KY

A final group I want to mention - there are others, but timie and space doesn't permit me at this time, although I may do a separate article on them - is a recent group of old-fashioned Holiness-Pentecostals that caught my attention a few years back.  These people are even more relative to me personally as one of their pastors was the son of my grandparents' late pastor in Parsons, WV.  In 1988, a minister of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) by the name of Rev. Dollas Messer was part of an effort to restore the Church of God back to its Holiness roots, which many members saw was being compromised by more worldly expressions taking root in Church of God congregations.  The effort met with resistance due to the more modernistic bent of much of the COG's leadership, and many ministers chose to disaffilliate with the denomination.   A group of 54 faithful met, according to a copy of the WPC Manual  I received from my good friend Elder Daniel Rhodes (his father, Pastor Bill Rhodes, pastored a small independent Full Gospel church in my hometown of Parsons where my grandparents once attended), at Dollas Messer's home in 1989 and founded what would become the Wesleyan Pentecostal Churches.   Thanks to modern technology, I have managed to get some of Bro. Messer's messages on CD, and he is a powerful evangelist, and his son Micah has become a good friend via Facebook networking also.  As of late, the WPC has 3 churches - Fayetteville and Washington in North Carolina and Canton, GA - and I don't have any recent membership stats on them unfortunately.  My good friend Elder Rhodes pastors in Washington, NC.  In recent years, Bro. Messer has become a widely sought-after speaker for a variety of conservative Holiness/Pentecostal fellowships, and his ministry is characterized by a strong integrity and a steadfast faith.  This group does have a webpage at http://www.wpchurches.com/index.html, and all three churches do have an internet presence as well.  

If time and space permitted - I will add more in part 2 of this later - there are other groups I wanted to touch on too, including the Living Word of Faith Fellowship of Panama City, FL (the Graceville Community Church, in Graceville, FL, was part of this, and was a church my wife and I liked attending yearly campmeetings at - they are a larger fellowship but are good folks), two Free Holiness Church conferences (one in the central Appalachians, the other in the upper Midwest), and the Free Pentecostal Holiness Churches, which through an excellent publication called The Holiness Messenger (http://www.holinessmessenger.com/) have a solid network of old-time Holiness/Pentecostal churches and fellowships that can be found across the country (some conservative Church of God and Assembly of God congregations are also part of that network as well).  Although I myself am now an independent Catholic (I probably need to devote a section to the Synod of Saint Timothy, my jurisdiction, as well) I have strong ties to old-time Holiness churches, as that is how I grew up and I still carry some of those convictions today with me.   All of these interesting and unique churches fascinated me with their history, but I also have gotten to know many of their people too, and that has been a greater blessing in itself.  Therefore, when I pick up with part 2 later, I will talk about some more of these groups.  Have a good night, and God bless.