2

Pilgrim Holiness Church: 1898-1905

Missional Expansion of a not-yet denomination

The Pilgrim Holiness Church was at its founding Missional more than structural or denominational. Both of its founders, Seth Cook Rees and Martin Well Knapp were evangelists with a deep burden for the world evangelization. Both believed and often said, “Holiness that is not missionary is bogus” thus holiness and missions were inevitably intertwined for Pilgrims. And, for both Rees and Knapp missions meant both around the world and across the street.

Knapp had founded a mission in an empty saloon in Cincinnati where more then 750 new converts were reported in a single year—prostitutes, drunkards, gamblers and all other manner of sinners. In 1898 Knapp founded an annual camp meeting at the fairgrounds which he renamed “Full Salvation Park” to reach the lost and call for new missionaries. Knapp’s God’s Bible School and Missionary Training Home founded in 1900 in Cincinnati started in a brick house and expanded by 1901 to more than a hundred students.

The movement was still ecumenical at this stage. The 1900 camp meeting in Cincinnati included ministers and members from 24 states and provinces with 500-600 seekers at the altar. A year later they reported ministers and members from seventeen different denominations and reported, “you could not tell the difference between a sanctified Quaker, and a sanctified Baptist or Campbellite.” Among the first missionaries who went out were Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, along with Wesleyan Methodists, Free Methodists, Salvation Army and independent holiness churches. In 1901 William Godby confirmed the interdenominational spirit of the movement by stating “All religious denominations are connected with this work It is avowedly and practically and unconditionally interdenominational…[1]”

Missionaries “went out.” In 1899 the “Go or send” fund was established in the Revivalist to raise money for holiness missionaries to preach holiness to the worldwide cadre of Christian missionaries and national workers already in place. When that didn’t raise much money the scope was quickly expanded to sending missionaries to evangelize nationals and gather them into churches. In 1901 Charles Stalker and Byron Rees (Seth’s son) were sent out as “Round-the-World missionaries.[2]” In a relatively short period of a few years the William Hurst family “went out” to South Africa, with Knapp’s sister, Elizabeth Ferle along with Beatrice Kinney joining the Hursts in Africa a few years later. Newspaperman C. O. Moulton and family went out to the Caribbean sponsored by Rees’ camp in Portsmouth. The Monroes went to China founding the South China Holiness mission. In 1903 Lee Gray went to India to join Gorham Tufts who was already a member of the Union and they were soon joined by Edna Warren, Bertha Cox and Thaddeus Vaughn. Willis Brand went out to Peru in 1903. The most prominent of all missionaries who went out at this time were Charles & Lettie Cowman who were on their way to the Orient as Methodist missionaries when they tarried in Cincinnati in 1901. Here they were confronted with Knapp’s Matthew 20:4 principle.[3] They soon resigned as Methodist missionaries and took the path of faith missions. Rees and Knapp gathered around the Cowmans and laid hand on them and this is how they became the first ordained ministers of the Union. This ordination may have been the first explicit “denominational” act of the soon-to-emerge “denomination.[4]” A year later E. E and Hazel Kilborne joined the Cowmans in India.

The independent entrepreneurial spirit was strong. The section above says the missionaries “Went out” not that bthey were “sent out” because none of these missionaries were really “sent” by the Union… they “went out” on their own under the Matthew 20:4 faith principle. Knapp’s faith principle pervaded missions[5]. Nobody got a salary and all lived on whatever the Lord supplied and “free will offerings.” This principle led to a flurry of independent entrepreneurial activites including separate mailing lists, book-selling, missionary micro-businesses on the field, and a host of independent organizations. A prominent example is the Cowman’s and Kilbornes mentioned above as missionaries to India eventually founded the Oriental Missionary Society. The Revivalist magazine had 25,000 subscribers by 1901 and funds were raised for missionaries, but no missionary was guaranteed any funds—they got them as the manager of the funds saw fit to supply them

The entrepreneurial cowboy approach may have prompted the first crisis if the not-yet denomination. In 1901 Martin Wells Knapp contracted typhoid fever and died at age 48 never knowing he founded a denomination. He left GBS and the Revivalist under the control of a self-perpetuating board of three women.[6] A disagreement (that still exists) arose concerning the funds raised for the “World-wide Holiness fund.” The trustees thought that undesignated funds could also go to stateside missions, including the “Beulah Heights school and orphanage” in Kentucky. Seth Rees believed firmly that the funds should all go exclusively to foreign missions. Neither side would compromise. Finally Seth Rees refused to have any cooperative relationship with the Revivalist group and their missionary work. Who knows what really happened? Some eye witnesses believed this difference led in 1905 to the resignation of Seth Rees as General Superintendent.[7]

Thus within eight years of the founding of The International Holiness Union and Prayer League both of its founders were out of leadership. A new General Superintendent would be elected and Seth Rees would be honored as a founder.[8] The new leadership would increasingly see the need to “tighten up” things a bit in order to form a proper denomination which brought all that is both good and bad about denominations. However, the independent entrepreneurial spirit would be hard to kill. It may still exisit to this day, indeed may be increasing. That’s what I think.

So what do you think?

During the first few weeks, click here to comment or read comments

Keith Drury   September 15, 2009

www.TuesdayColumn.com

To think about…

1. An ecumenical movement’s role in the body of Christ.
2. Sending missionaries vs. “going out” by faith.
3. Accountability for independent entrepreneurial agencies.
4. Did the “losing” of OMS influence leaders to become more of a “denomination?”
5. What examples today in the denomination are there of the “independent entrepreneurial spirit?

---

[1] (continuing) “and not, as some have supposed, undenominational, as nearly all the students and workers are members of some branch of the great Protestant church. The idea that some entertain of a new denomination started here is utterly untrue.”

[2] The “Go or send” fund only had a bit over $1100 in it including $100 each from Rees and Knapp—but they went anyway. Byron Rees dropped out in England but Stalker completed the trip. Does anyone know the story of Byron Rees’ dropping out?

[3] Knapp believed in the faith principle as described by Matthew 20:4 (“Go into the vineyard and whatever is right I will give you”) thus no missionaries served for a stated salary and were “faith missionaries” living on whatever came in.

[4] This “ordination” (if it was indeed such—I am not totally sure) may have been the first “denominational” act. The second came due to the need preachers and evangelists had for getting clergy rates for riding the trains to their evangelistic meetings. To get clergy rates they needed to be lawful ministers. Thus by 1902 the little 4-page pamphlet formerly containing the constitution of the Union was expanded into a larger book of government called the Manual.

[5] The principle also was followed at God’s Bible School where the entire staff served without set salaries and lived on whatever the Lord provided.

[6] The three women were Mrs. M. W. Knapp, Bessie Queen and Mary Storey. A court later forced the expansion of this board, but it was these three women only at first.

[7] I am interested in more on the Rees resignation if you have anything. His public statement at the annual conference in 1905 was that the development of the Union required more time than he was able to give. Some who were eye witnesses said this crisis was the real issue and he was simply fed up. Who knows? If you have studied this incident you are welcome to offer deeper information and incites.

[8] Rees actually returned to the office of General Superintend 21 years later—but that is a later story.