Re-thinking Who We Are as a People of Faith

I am a lifetime affiliate of the Church of God that I refer to as the Anderson Convention. I was born into it. I have enjoyed a heritage at Grand Junction Camp Meeting, the Lester Lake Farm of sixty acres (then) where Warner, Fisher, Byrum, Michels and Company worshipped and celebrated together and evangelized from, after relocating Gospel Trumpet Publishing efforts in 1886 to downtown Grand Junction. That was the place of my spiritual rebirth.

The village of Grand Junction was actually little more than a rural community, burned over via the Chicago Fire. It had no infrastructure such as banks or even something as vital as water. They did have a common water well from which people could carry water to their abodes. The  village also acquired a four-way railroad intersection that prompted the Saints to envision  as to how they could go anywhere in the world from there with their published message. It was primitive at best and you get a good taste of that story in Noah Byrum’s series republished as THE BOOK OF NOAH Stultz/ Welch).
It is so easy to miss much of the beauty of these pioneers of our faith. They were mostly young. They were youthfully zealous. Their message was radically extreme; but, it was clear cut. It separated the sheep from the goats. Warner himself was a master at flailing Babylon, something I never could do well. They berated the denominational world with their “come-out” message that promised an ecumenical unity they sometimes fell far short of. When we view all of that from our contemporary  perspective, it is difficult for us to view them as little more than ultra-conservative radicals with a Gospel agenda.

It is even more difficult in our political climate today to recognize them as the breath of fresh air that they were in actuality.  Several examples quickly become obvious to me, examples that take me beyond the dogma being taught to that of recognizing the transitioning social climate. Professional scholars and historians and their ilk understand this well, but we of non-academia sometimes fail to read well the sign posts along the way.

As I read my current very non-religious book, I picked up at the library; it gives me the history of voting in America--THE EMBATTLED VOTE IN AMERICA by historian Allan Lichtman. I don’t know his faith or his politics but I find him to be a distinguished historian at American University. In reading  Lichtman, I am made to remember that D. S. Warner, a Patron-Saint in my journey of faith, lived in a social climate very different from what I do. This is especially apparent when I read Lichtman's review of women’s suffrage. 

For example, in 1867 the equal Rights Association petitioned a New York constitutional convention to enfranchise women and “abolish the burdensome property qualifications for black men.” Among my favorite stories is that of Sojourner Truth and how she became a women’s rights advocate in Akron about 1851, in addition to already being an Abolitionist and former slave; all of which came out of her journey from being a Sojourner to finding  the Truth—an illiterate but highly effective Holiness Camp Meeting preacher, that held her own among the men during the great Miller revivals of the midcentury that birthed Adventism.

Now Horace Greeley (NY) turned against these ladies, echoing the “the pragmatism that had limited the scope of Fifteenth Amendment protections for black voting.” D. S. Warner lived in this closed, male-dominated society where women had few legal rights, scarcely owned property, and were considered hardly capable of understanding the political affairs of the day. Warner lived in this era of gross inequity between whites and the inferior black slave race while attending a college that led the way in teaching women and equalizing blacks under the holiness teaching of Charles G. Finney Oberlin). 

This calls to my mind the involvement my wife and I experienced when our first-born purchased her first house and the gender-gap she experienced ln Kentucky State Laws as related to women, property rights, and matters of credit (very male dominated) and in my own contemporary time.

Yet; I find Warner and his Company of Saints practicing racial accommodation and equality. I find among those Saints a host of black Saints rejoicing in their newfound freedom and acceptance. I see Female preachers teaching men and publically acknowledged as Spirit-filled leaders and extended equality. Mother Sarah Smith left her husband at home and became the senior member of Warner’s evangelistic party, while doing double duty as supervising matron and keeping everything on the up and up in Warner’s mixed group of evangelistic travelers going about the country in revivalism.

I see these Saints proclaiming an all-inclusive, unifying Message to an exclusive society where denominationalism and racism dominated, where competition ran rampant, and produced hate-filled vitriolic communication. It was not a pretty sight! The Saints offered an opportunity to take a forward step, a very progressive and inclusive step forward to live outside the boundaries of bitterness and rancor and competition, and enjoy unifying Love, Joy, and Peace, in a fellowship where every person God accepted became acceptable.  Competition was out. Cooperation and mutuality was in. The Message was as inclusive as God is and as exclusive as only God can be. And, you need not worry about what the other guy thinks - “man rule.”

Too often we miss the beauty of much of this. We fail to see the liberality and progressiveness of it in comparison to the narrow context in which it was experienced and endured. In many respects, those early Saints were a breath of fresh air. They brought clean air to a polluted society.

It behooves every one of us today to reevaluate our own lives, and the standards we think are proper, and move into our new year with their youthful fervor, their “fresh air” of inclusiveness and equality and racial reconciliation and social concern for people needs that justice and reconciliation and renewal always demand.

From walkingwithwarne.blogspot.com … 

In the political jargon of 2019, the principles within the Church of God message are inclusive,  people-centered, need-oriented, and grace-filled--full of justice, reconciliation. and interpersonal harmony. Twenty-Nineteen is not a time for Pharisaical gathering of our traditions and personal issues, it is a time for emergency action that results in belief and behavior becoming one and the same.