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THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
SOCIETY FOR PENTECOSTAL STUDIES
on the
Campus
of
EAST COAST BIBLE
COLLEGE, CHARLOTTE,
NC
PRESIDENTIAL
ADDRESS
November
12, 1981
TRUE KOINONIA: PENTECOSTAL
HISTORICAL REALITIES
HOPES AND
Bishop
Ithiel Clemmons
Beloved
colleagues,
brothers and
sisters,
it has been a great privilege for me to serve this
year
as President of so
distinguished
an associa- tion of scholars as the
Society
for Pentecostal Studies. I am
doubly honored to have been called
upon
to serve
during
the 75th Anniver- sary
of the Azusa Revival-a revival that has come to be viewed as
Ithiel Clemmons (Ph.D. candidates, Union Theological Seminary, New York), serves as a bishop
in the Church of God in Christ. He pastors a church in New York City. Bishop Clemmons is Immediate Past President of the
Society for Pentecostal Studies.
– 46-
1
This
Society
traces
Pentecostaliam’s
a
major
American contribution its
beginnings
phenomenal
Christianity,
its
challenges
to traditional tribution to Protestant,
newal accounts
to
Christianity.1
to that 20th
Century Awakening.
spread
in this
century,
with its claims to valid
primitive
Christian Faith and its con-
Orthodox Church re-
around the
Catholic and Eastern
for an estimated 35-50 million adherents
world. This is indeed one of the
fascinating aspects
of recent Church
of this
august body
with some
But not
being
one who succumbs to fear and
trembling
or
history.
I assumed the mantle of
presidency trepidation.2
backs
away
from
ideological encounter, opportunity
to search for
previously material,
to reassess some
commonly inadequate
closing
of the conscious and unconscious
in
light
of these new source materials,
ledge
about the founders of this
revolutionary
Magazine,
the
year
has
provided
me an undisclosed
primary
source held views that have
proven
and to
press
for a gaps
that exist in our know-
Christian Movement.3
3
1 My mentor and teacher, Dr. Henry Pitney van Dusen, following the distinguished and
prophetic
Frederick Dennison Maurice said to John L. Sherrill of Guideposts
“I have come to feel that the Pentecostal Movement, with its emphasis on the Holy Spirit, is more than just another revival. It is a revolution in our day. It is a revolution comparable in importance with the establishment of the original Apostolic Church and with the Protestant Reformation” cf. John L. Sherrill, They Speak With Other Tongues (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co.,1964), p. 30 cf. Henry van Dusen,
Son and Father (New York: Scribners and Sons, 1958).
Spirit,
groups America, etc.).
‘
2My church follows its founder, the late Bishop Charles Harrison Mason in working with
like SPS (e.g., Pentecostal World Conference, Pentecostal Fellowship of North
Our approach is one of love and cautious optimism. It is not always clear to us what such groups mean by brotherhood or unity, yet we are open to find out.
tionary.
brethren cated race,
3Mrs. Leona Hale, a powerful leader of the Church of God In Christ in Southern California from 1913 to the present is 101 years of age. In a taped interview with her she gave solid examples of how this movement was socially as well as religiously revolu-
There was for example two men both with the same last name-Lee. One Ed Lee was black-the first man to receive the Pentecostal experience April 9, 1906 at Bonnie Brae Street. The other, Owen Lee, an Irish Catholic was one of the first white
to receive the Pentecostal
experience. Both of these brethren were dedi-
to Brother Seymour’s vision of a
Spirit-filled fellowship without barriers of
sex or class. Mother Hale claims that Owen “Irish” Lee would often groan in his spirit, longing for the glorious days he experienced at the beginning. Taped inter- view with Mother L. 0. Hale (Memphis, TN: Nov. 1979) cf. C. W. Shumway, A Study of the Gift of Tongues (Unpublished A.B. dissertation, University of Southern Cali-
17 and 28.
fornia, 1914), pp.
– 47-
2
,
founders
shamefully neglected American
religious two reasons:
This
evening,
I want to lift
up
the contribution of just one of the
of the 20th
Century
Pentecostal
in Pentecostal historiography
Movement who has been historiography
in particular, and in
in
general.
I wish to do this for
One,
the most obvious, is that
Bishop
Charles Harrison Mason,
founder of the Church of God
In Christ,
is the focus of my own
doctoral studies and it makes
practical of
deepest preoccupation.* Secondly, Pentecostal
reflective of a mind-set
sense for me to hold to
my
area the shameful
neglect
of such
giants
as C. H. Mason, W. J.
Seymour
and G. T.
Haywood
is
that has informed
from its
very beginning
that we must deal with
honestly,
of
Christ,
before the
veracity
of Pentecostal
established and before the Pentecostal
of the Pentecostal Movement
of Charles Harrison
make in this address.
Pentecostal
historiography
in the love
origins
can be
adequately bodies that have
emerged
over
Modern by
historical racism.
Azusa
1980);
a
re-publication
personal
Seymour’s
The
Story of Bishop
Charismatic
Department (University
of Birmingham
these 75
years
can fulfill their raison d’etre.
The
original
vision has been lost
largely
because the black
pioneers
have been
shamefully neglected. church
history
needs to close this
gap
created
Before
taking
a
summary
and brief look at the basic contribution
Mason,
I want to call attention to three
literary works that have attended the diamond
jubilee
of the Azusa Revival. Two of these works relate
directly
to the central
point
that I seek to
These works are:
1)
Frank Bartieman, Street,
foreword
by
Vinson
Synan (Plainfield,
NJ:
Logos International,
of “How Pentecost
diary published by
Bartleman
death; 2)
Dr.
Douglas
J.
Nelson,
For Such A Time As This:
William J.
Seymour,
A Search
Roots;
a doctoral dissertation
Came to Los
Angeles;”
a in
1925,
three
years
after
for
Pentecostav
completed
for the
Theology at
Birmingham, England, May
Documents on the Charismatic Press, 1980).
This is Father Charismatic Movement.
1981); 3)
Kilian
McDonnell, OSB, STD, Ed., Presence, Power, Praise,
Renewal,
3
vol., (Minnesota:
McDonnell’s
Magnum
Liturgical Opus
of the
for his
enlightening
My distinguished colleague,
Dr. Vinson
Synan,
is to be commended
introduction to Frank
Bartleman’s
diary.
It is
*In November, 1982, the Church of God In Christ will celebrate its 75th Anniversary of becoming a Pentecostal religious body in America. Charles Harrison Mason and Charles Price Jones had founded this body over ten years earlier as a Holiness body in Jackson, Mississippi. C. H. Mason had been divinely inspired to call his body The Church of God In Christ, in 1897, while walking along a street in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is one of the oldest bodies in America.
– 48-
3
extremely helpful, especially Bartleman
man. Bartleman in 1925-two revival-seeks
to those who have not read the Frank story
in From Plow to Pulpit. It help s us to get a portrait of the
decades
following
the watershed
to recall those
early days
in an effort to answer the question
that
constantly tugged
at
him,
“What
happened
the Azusa Street revival?” Bartleman
to the
glory
of was not alone in seeking an answer
to this
question.
It was the
deep sigh
of many of the old timers. “What
happened
to the
glory?”
Bartleman’s has
bequeathed
formed the social and
religious research tools
available for historical
understand Bartleman
evaluate the
reliability
attempt
to answer that
question
Psychohistory)
that we have
we are able to better
ever beset
by
to us a valuable account of the
religious
milieu which
context of the revival. With the new
(e.g.,
Erik Erickson’s
interpretation today,
as a man of his times and to more
accurately
of his
diary.
His life seemed
poverty
and misfortune. Times were hard for him and he was
given
The sainted Ruth Fisher
perceived as a man who walked with his head in a cloud. I suppose it is not diffi-
to bouts of
deep depression.
cult to belittle such an
impractical tive
spirit
whose attachment
him
person. Yet,
he was a
deeply
sensi-
to a hidden world of the
Spirit
was over- whelming,
whose sense of the transcendant sustained his soul and
purposes
of livelihood. He received
thrust him
beyond
the immediate brilliant
but one such
gestalt
observation:
flashes of historical and
spiritual insight.
The
following
is
everywhere
we were all
baptized
the divine-human
Lawrence5to Robert
We had been called to bless and serve the whole
body
of Christ,
Christ is
one,
and His
‘body’
can be but ‘one.’ To
divide it is to
destroy it,
as with the natural
body.
‘In one
Spirit
into one
body.’
I Cor. 12:12. The Church is
an
organism
not a human
organization.4
In brilliant flashes of
insight,
he could
perceive
the moments when
encounter transcended the
entrapment
gories
of class and caste. Yet, alas, like his brethren from B. F.
Mapes
Anderson6
of social cate-
with few
exceptions
(Hollen-
4Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street, op. cit., p. 69.
1916).
5B. F. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored (St. Louis: Gospel Publishing House,
One of the earliest chronicles from within a classical Pentecostal body.
6 Robert Mapes Anderson, VL’sion of the I)tsinherited- ?’he Making of American Pentecostalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
– 49-
4
weger, Lovett, Tinney, Synan,
Menzies, Nelson), he was so bound to the social a
priori
of white culture that the tremendous
people
of color to the Movement was at best
peripheral.
these
spiritual
and ecclesiastical hour comers to
the
movement,”
reading
contributions of
Even when giants
were
perceived
as “eleventh-
This is not a chauvin-
drawn from a careful
Bartleman’s
stealing
of the
Bartleman
Apostolic
Faith
Newspaper; end of the revival? Bartleman standing
the readiness movement,
the most
part,
unreliable his obvious
entrapment spiritual sensitivity.
their
genius
was seen as derived from white culture rather than from divine revelation.
istic or cavalier
put-down
of
my colleagues
in the fields of Pentecostal theology
and
history.
This is rather a conclusion
of the literature. How else does one
interpret
insight
that “the color line was washed
away
in the blood”
(p. 54)
and yet,
be so blind to W. H. Durham’s divisive activities? How else could
so
completely gloss
over Clara Lum’s
an event that marked the
beginning
of the
is indeed a valuable
of Los
Angeles
for the
revolutionary
but save for brief flashes of
exceptional
as an historian
in social a
priori
white
categores, despite
his
source for under-
spiritual
insight,
he
is,
for of the movement because of
The social a
priori
of white culture that informed and continues
to inform
particular
white
theologians
and historians of the Pentecostal
Movement is
especially
revealed in the intensified and renewed drive since the 1950’s to hail Charles Fox Parham as the father of the con-
movement at the
expense
of William J.
Seymour, the man whom God
truly
used. This is due not so much to devious
temporary pentecostal
intention of
particular theologians context in which their
thinking centuries of
English
Protestant perceptively observed,
unfortunate
and historians as it is to the social occurs. It is an
expression
of two
which as Peter
Gay
has so
superiority
its due.”7 It is story
of Pentecostal
origins have become so enclosed
theology
“gives
God His
glory, assigns
men their
places, gives
events their
meaning-and Anglo-Saxon
that in
telling
this marvelous
in America that these brilliant chroniclers
within their own social contexts that
they
are lured to treat their dis- torted visions of
reality
as the whole truth. And
they
feel
they
must destroy
other stories which bear witness that the
history
of the move- ment can be seen from another
perspective.
7Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America (Berkeley, CA: 1966), p. 10 quoted alao in Robert T. Handy, A Chafan Amerkm. Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 7.
– 50-
5
this 75th
Anniversary
of the Azusa Street revival has to be one of the most
significant
Historians inside
Fortunately,
called forth a
study
that is destined works on Modern Pentecostal and outside the Movement account of
Bishop
W. J.
Seymour, cance. Walter
Hollenweger,
origins
ever
produced.
have had little interest in an accurate
notwithstanding
his crucial
signifi-
in a personal communication to me this
past summer,
wrote of Dr.
Douglas
J. Nelson’s
…
Doug
Nelson has
convincingly Seymour,
would have
undoubtedly
doctoral dissertation:
shown that without William J.
revival. There
there would have been no Pentecostal
been some form of revival as America has had
many,
but
nothing compared
revival is about.8
Mission
represented
to what the Pentecostal
Azusa
Nelson has
convincingly argued
that William J.
Seymour’s
the restoration of human
equality
in the
body
of Christ for the first time since the first Christian Pentecost and
early
Christianity. Seymour’s leadership pean civilization, something and remains lost.
Seymour brought
that was
missing-and
“beloved doctrine
community” above all others:
gave something
to western Euro-
since was
rejected together
the
apostolic
vision of
of
glossolalia creating
the
one
no barriers or walls with the
early practice
of human
equality. Seymour championed
There must be no color line or
any
other division in the Church of Jesus Christ because God is no
respecter
persons.
This inclusive
fellowship
more from interracial
equality
of is not a human construct but a
“As
long
as
divine
glossolalic community
of human
equality. Spiritual power sprang
than from
glossolalia.9
the
practice
of glossolalia remains alienated from its roots in Christian
the color
line,
it must be at best
socially
irrelevant.
it
requires
oneness
beyond
To be
genuinely Christian, social vision of its historic roots.”10
Nelson is a white American
expression
within the
larger
of the United Methodist
an interested
clergyman
Church,
a retired
Chaplain (LtC)
U. S.
Army,
who since 1975 has been
in the Pentecostal/Charismatic
participant
Movement.
8Walter Hollenweger, letter to Ithiel Clemmons, July 5, 1981.
Seymour
9Douglas J. Nelson. For Such tt Time As This. The Study of Bishop William J.
and the Aiusa Street Revival (an unpubliahed Ph.D. dissertation at the of
University
Birmingham May, 1981. Birmingham, England) pp. 9-16, 294-296.
1OIbid., p. 16.
– 51-
6
Nelson’s twentieth portrait
study century,
is
significant we are
presented
mour’s
perspective. voted considerable a
thorough analysis
attention
because for the first time in the
with a
full, detailed, accurate
for the first
of the leader of the Azusa
revival. Moreover,
time,
we are able to see fully what that revival was about from
Sey-
Other writers like Brumbackll have indeed de-
to
Seymour
and Azusa
Mission, along with
of the Pentecostal Movement. Nelson is not the first to hold
up
the interracial element. He is the
first, however,
glossolalia
as
being
all
important
grasp
the connection between racial, egalitarian fellowship of that revival’s
powerful
attention.
to
and the
inclusive, inter-
and the source Nelson’s evidence is so over-
whelming
as to prompt Professor James Cone to
say
to me after
reading his
study:
“The histories are
going
to have to be rewritten.”12 is the
story
of a
people
in a situation
Other wherein
they
are
grasped
Here
of dialectic encounter with an by
the One who is other than self.
often
against
struggle.
transformed the social context.
Truth in this sense was not derived from human consciousness. Truth in this context was an event that occurred to
people
the human will
bringing
about a true koinonia.13 Faith for these
people was not
simply
a
feeling
of inwardness
Faith became an event that
transcended,
separated
from the historical
challenged
and
drawn from heretofore over-
looked
primary materials, called into account as
inadequate.
If Nelson is true
(and
his
evidence,
is
overwhelming), past
conclusions must be
caricatures of this
morally impeccable
racism has caused to be
shamefully
1961),
We are now able to correct those
Christian leader that historical portrayed.14
1 lcarl Brumback, A Sound From Heaven (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House,
cf. Nils Bloch-Hoel, The Pentecostal Movement: Origin, Development and Dis- tinctive Character (Oslo, Norway: U’niversitetfarlaget, 1964).
l2personal Conversation with Professor James Cone at Union Theological Seminary, October 21, 1981.
13G. B. Cashwell is a classic example of such an experience and personal-social revolution.
photographs effectively
l4Evea scholars like Lovett and
Tinney will have to correct- the one-eyed cari- cature that is traced back to the racist L. A. Times article of April 17, 1906. Bartleman avoids that. He truthfully states that Seymour is blind in one eye. Seymour’s later
show that he was not one-eyed, nor did he have a glass eye. Nelson deals
with all caricatures of Seymour.
– 52-
7
Nelson’s
finding
corroborates primary
source materials heretofore
glected
and
underestimated;
my
own research
based
on other overlooked. Even more than
Sey-
shamefully
ne-
in the
origin,
rise
mour,
Charles Harrison Mason has been heretofore
despite
his
importance
and
spread
of the Pentecostal Movement. It was C. H.
Mason,
not C. F. Parham,
who
grasped
and stood with
Seymour
in the revival that united glossolalia
with the Pauline vision of an all-inclusive
ship
m wtiich there is “… neither male nor female …
lenged
the racist
presupposition
egalitarian
fellow- Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, …
3:11).” Early
twentieth
(Galatians 3:28,
Colossians
century
America did not have the social fabric that could abide a fellow- ship
that transcended race and class. The dream was
certainly
in accord with the American dream. But its radical,
racial, egalitarian praxis
chal-
of American
society.
Mason and Sey- mour stood
together
in this Pauline vision overlooked
by white America
in American
slavery’s
“Invisible Institution”
deep
in the earth where enormous
but created and nurtured like diamonds
black anthracite coal.
was a continual source of strength 1922. Mason’s
significance
functions and receive reduced (as
historians have
pointed combination of charismatic gave
the
fledgling
movement siders
(Parham)
and outsiders A. J. Tomlinson
pressure
bears on
influence
ministerial
churchmanship
that to endure
despite
efforts
by
in-
Primary
source material reveals that C. H. Mason and C. P. Jones influenced W.J.
Seymour
before he met Charles Fox Parham at Houston in
August
190515 and that Mason’s seminal and
supportive
for him until his death in September,
went far
beyond giving legal
ecclesiastical status to
independent clergy
so that
they
could
perform
clergy
rates on the nation’s railroads
out).
Mason
brought
to the movement a
gifts
and ecclesiastical
strength
(L.
A.
Times)
to crush it. White leaders
and J. H.
King,
fast friends of
Mason’s,
attend the
organizing meeting
of the Assemblies
Mason, although
the
meeting,
chose to attend
anyway,
and bade them God’s
speed.
He was com-
primary
vision of
healing
divisions. Yet he was wise
enough
to know that blacks would
always
be constricted in their
worship
and
perpetually relegated
would allow doctrinal differences
cause of doctrinal differences. who sent out letters
announcing prayed
for the brethren, mitted to Pentecostalism’s
refused to of God in 1914 be- overlooked
by
those
whites in
leadership.
Whites break
fellowship.
Mason
recognized their
significance,
way
of
fellowship.
but would not allow these differences
to a position of inferiority with
to doctrinal differences, retained
to stand in the
15Nelson, For Such a Time As This, op. cit., p. 166.
– 53-
8
Seymour
and
Haywood
both died at
age
52 in 1922 and 1932 re- spectively.
Evidence is that
they
both died of broken hearts
brought
on by resurgent
racial attitudes in America. When white leaders
tragically locked the Pentecostal Movement behind walls of race and class, how- ever,
Mason endured and unheld the radical
spiritual
and social vision of the Azusa revival. He refused to divorce
glossolalia
and koinonia. He lived as a leader, an
apostle
and an :,?,-.elesiastical statesman.
One of the earliest white
holiness-pentecostal
converts wrote of the tremendous influence of C.H. Mason on his life and
thinking
as well as on the lives and
thinking
of thousands of other whites as well as blacks. He wrote:
“I first met … Mason and C.P. Jones … at
Conway, Arkansas, on the 19th
day
of
November,
1904. I had
only
been
preaching a little over a
year.
I was
walking
down the street at
Conway, and I heard someone
preaching.
I was several blocks
away
and something
said to
me,
‘There is a public sale on and the auctioneer is
speaking pretty
loud.’ As I walked on towards the
gathering, I was soon convinced that it was not a
public sale;
that it was preaching by
a colored man. When I arrived, I found two or three thousand
people standing
around a cotton
wagon
in which Brother Mason stood
preaching.
At the conclusion of the
sermon,
Brother C. P.
Jones,
who was also in the
wagon, sang
two
songs;
one en- titled ‘Take
your
Burdens to the Lord and Leave Them There’ and the other ‘I am
Happy
With Jesus
Alone, Though
Poor and Deserted Thank God I can
Say,
I’m
Happy
With Jesus Alone…’ ”
,
‘
“The sermon and
songs
neld the crowd
spellbound
for dome- thing
like an hour and a
half, after
I arrived. That
day
Brother Mason made an
impression
on me that I have never
forgotten and can never
forget ….
I doubt if there has ever been a minister who has lived since the
day
of the
Apostles
who has shown the sweet
spirit
to all
people regardless
of race, creed or color or has preached
with
greater power
…”
“In
1916,
he conducted a
great Camp Meeting
for the whites of
Nashville, Tennessee,
where more than
7,000 attended each night.
I …. heard of the
highest politicians
of America speak complimentary
of
Bishop
Mason … I heard leaders of several
organizations say:
‘If Brother Mason was a white
man, we would
gradly step
aside our
organizations.’ ”
l6Dr. James L. Delk, He Made Millions of People Happy (Hopkinsville, KY: n.p., 1944), pp.
708.
– 54-
9
“Right
here I wish to
say
that the
spirit
of
looking
at color lines and not
looking
at the
lowly
Nazarene has and is
sapping the real
joy
out of many Holiness and Pentecostal Movements of
modern
days.”17
on
Seymour’s
acquainted
in America.
My
of a meeting.”
Seymour
In 1952 at 86
years
of
age,
he was at the World Pentecostal Con- ference in London,
England, praising
God and
blessing
the
people.
He lived
longer
than
any
founder of a major denomination
father, Bishop
Frank
Clemmons,
met
Bishop
W. J.
Seymour
in Harlem
last
trip
East before his death. At the corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, W. J.
Seymour
asked him if he was
with C. H. Mason.
My
father
replied “Yes,
as a matter fact, Bishop
Mason is in New
Jersey
now
attending
asked
my father
if it was
possible
for him to
get
with Brother Mason.
My
to East
Orange,
New
Jersey, home of Elder James Wells,
pastor
of the Old Tabernacle Church of God in Christ. There my father witnessed the
moving
scene of C. H.
father took William J.
Seymour
Mason
and W. J.
Seymour
weeping
to the
on each others’ shoulders and
_ ‘
praising
God in
power
and
glory.
This was in the
early
20’s
(1921-22);
Mason and
Seymour
were close.
It was Mason to whom
Seymour
had turned for advice about
marriage
in 1908. C. H. Mason told me as we travelled
together by train
to New York
City
in 1952 that he warned
from Baltimore, Maryland, Seymour against possible
interracial
Mason’s Mason
passed bequeathed
A
community
suggested, given
the make
up
of his
congregation.
advice. The rest is
carefully
documented
away
on November
marriage
that
might
have been
Seymour
followed
by
Nelson. When 17, 1961,
he and
Seymour
had
spirituality.
class and caste was the
and
successful in
tight, closed,
as
powerful
as was the Puritan vision that
Puritan-Evangelical
vision, though numerically
country-club
distinctive character.
to the Christian Church a unique Pentecostal
of the
Spirit transcending
original driving
vision of Pentecostalism-a vision as
sweeping
of a Christian
America.
Like
vision of which it is
part,
the Pentecostal
and
materially
caste of wealth and
power,
is still a victim of its loss of
The true koinonia for which the world so desperately longs
and awaits has
slipped
Bishop
William
Joseph Seymour community
and died.
Bishop
Charles
17Ibid., p. 9.
55
from its
grasp.
pointed
the
way
to the beloved
Harrison Mason
gave
the
10
fragmented community enduring significance.
The fact that
Seymour and Mason were both black Americans caused them to be
shamefully neglected.
But their vision of a Glossolalic-Inclusive New Testament Kcinonia still remains a challenge to the modern church. These
giants can be
neglected
but
they
cannot be
ignored.
– 56-
11
