5
Did
the Pilgrims Split from the Nazarenes?
The
Seth Rees Conflict in
1912-1917
We
wish that holiness churches didn’t have messy stories like the Rees incident in
To
present this story with the full emotion of the time, the following account
describes the same conflict from two different perspectives. The whole truth
will probably never be known on this earth. Only God knows and fairly judges
the hearts of men and women. But since we are telling the story of the Pilgrims
we cannot avoid telling this messy story, though it is more a part of the
Nazarene story than the Pilgrims. Here are two ways to “remember” the Rees
incident in
From one perspective From
another perspective
|
Seth Cook Rees was passionate about holiness
evangelism. Everywhere he went hundreds—even thousands—came to Christ and
were sanctified. His thunderous preaching as the “Earth Quaker” was used by
God to strike fear in and trigger confession from sinners all across the
nations and around the world. A loving man who was feared by anyone guilty of
sin or not committed to pure holiness teaching. Rees
was minding his own business in the cause of evangelism and missions when he
was called by Phineas Bresee to hold
a revival meeting in Rees
soon found he faced strong resistance from President Ellyson.
He then discovered that Ellyson had worked behind
the scenes to persuade the church to not call Rees as pastor in the first
place. Rees preached on anyway in spite of this underground resistance to his
powerful preaching. While
Ellyson and others resisted, ordinary people did
not resist. Students were sanctified, faculty found new fervor and the church
flourished, becoming the third largest Nazarene church at the time. Rees had
been a traveling evangelist so he understood resistance to preaching; he had
faced similar resistance in revival meetings and know it was often rooted a
person’s own private sins. Knowing
that the holiness movement was essentially a revivalist movement Rees
constantly preached for revival—repentance, confession, restitution and a
moving of God. When a young minister (closely connected with the Bresee
family) surrendered after some “mistakes” he had committed, Rees made the
case public believing sin cannot be hidden but should be confessed to and
repented of. Some disagreed and thought the man’s sin should have been kept
quiet. President
Ellyson continued to resist Rees’ preaching and a
group of nay-sayers developed on campus. When a
female student secretary accused President Ellyson
of impropriety Rees believed he now understood why Ellyson
had feared Rees’ preaching—he was hiding sin in the camp. Could Rees ignore
this behavior and let it pass because the man was President? He could not. He
expected the President to resign. Having been elected to the board of the University
he would not sweep this matter under the rug and called for Ellyson’s resignation. Even Bresee agreed that Ellyson had to go and finally he was removed. As a result
Rees’ good ally in revival, H. Orton Wiley was promoted from dean to
president. Then a mighty revival broke out on campus in 1914. There was
spontaneous confession, prayer, heart-searching, contrition, and restitution.
This was exactly what Rees had been working for. He redoubled his efforts to
preach in the Spirit and revival fires burned hotly. But when the Lord
revives His work the Devil revives also revives his work too. Detractors charged Rees with human
manipulation and stirring up emotions to extravagance. Rees had seen dozens
of revivals like this in his nationwide preaching and his heart rejoiced at
the Spirit being poured out on students and faculty alike. Rees
and H, Orton Wiley were as one man in loving the work of the spirit. But
others criticized and discounted the work of God. As Rees became more
familiar with some of the detractors he came to understand why. Professor A.
J. Ramsey was teaching that teaching that God’s righteousness was
imputed, not imparted to humans. Ramsey’s teaching was downright opposed to
the central message of the Church of the Nazarene and of any other holiness
group. Rees did what any pastor who cares for what students are taught—he
raised the issue. Either Ramsey should teach what the Nazarenes believed or
he should go to another college where he would fit better. Even H. Orton
Wiley agreed that Ramsey was a theological threat. Rees
also faced opposition from a neighboring pastor, Fred Epperson for his
approach. Rees might have understood opposition from professors, but why
would a fellow pastor be a detractor of revival? Convinced there was a cadre of
revival-resistors in The
Rees enemies next orchestrated a move to elect Howard Eckel,
a bitter foe of Rees, as District Superintendent. They could not get
enough votes to produce an election so, when the DS vote was deadlocked, they
moved on to elect University trustees. His enemies organized a move to get
Rees off the board of the University and they succeeded. When the Assembly
then returned to the DS election they got their anti-Rees champion into
office, Howard Eckel One of Eckel’s
first acts of triumph was to close Rees’ “Hillcrest Home for Fallen
Women.” There would be more acts to
come. The
acting president of the University, George Fallis,
weakly led the University and gave little concern for holiness and revival.
Even the students compared what the Nazarenes said in the Manual with what
they got at the University and simply lost confidence in Fallis.
Students got up a petition of non-support, and when a group stood up in
chapel to state their non-support, half of the students walked out of chapel
in agreement. Rees was a bystander in this incident though he did agree with
the concerns of these students—and it wasn’t just Fallis,
for there were other faculty members who simply did not believe in holiness
the way the Nazarenes taught it in the manual. Rees
had no intention of leaving the Nazarenes. He was off the University board
and his enemies were gaining ground. Next, out of the blue the University
Trustees kicked his local Nazarene church off their campus. Rees had no other
recourse but to find another place for his Nazarene church to meet. The
vibrant congregation of 400 members complied and moved off campus starting
their own building. Then
the fateful day arrived. On Sunday morning The
congregation and pastor were hurt and blistered by their excommunication
without trial. They were forced to organize independently and called
themselves what they felt like--“Pilgrims” in a strange land. By the time the
Nazarene General Superintendents ruled Eckel’s
actions out of order they were too hurt to trust the denomination enough to
return. |
Phineas Bresee, founder
and a General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene had a big vision.
He dreamed of founding in In
1912 a new Nazarene congregation that was meeting on the campus of the
University called the nationally prominent evangelist Seth Cook Rees
to be their pastor. President Ellyson knew this was
trouble and tried to influence the church against bringing Rees. The church
elected the popular evangelist anyway.[2] Though Rees
had Quaker roots he saw his work as warfare and his followers as warriors and
he saw anyone who disagreed with him as enemies. As a traveling evangelist he
was able to show up, fire his guns and walk away, leaving the pieces for the
local pastor to clean up. He was simply unprepared to work in the
collaborative environment of a university church and campus. Rees
had a history of expecting to have his own way. In 1905 when the
Cincinnati/God’s Bible School missions board refused to bow to his demand
that missions funds had to exclusively go to foreign missions instead
of also supporting stateside orphanages he simply resigned as the leader of
the Union and went off to Chicago to run his own show. Now the
independent-minded Rees became the pastor of the new campus church at the new
Rees
was a revivalist through and through; believing the best state of the church
was to be in constant revival—what he considered normal Christianity. Rather
than reach outside to the poor and unevangelized,
Rees focused more on sin in the church (and on the campus) which he believed
was a barrier to bringing true revival. When a female student secretary
accused president Ellyson of an indiscretion, Rees
demanded Ellyson be fired for this “sin in the
camp.” Rees had been elected to the board of the University so he pressured
for action. Fearing Rees’ national prominence and local power, even Bresee
acquiesced and Ellyson was soon gone. Bresee himself
now feared the powerful Rees. Bresee did not return to the presidency, so H.
Orton Wiley was promoted from dean to president of the Then a mighty revival broke out on campus in 1914. There was
spontaneous confession, prayer, heart-searching, contrition, and restitution.
Rees fanned the flames of revival by beginning a series of fiery sermons on
judgment and confession, whipping everyone up with emotional intensity and
extending the revival for five more days, all accompanied by singing,
shouting, crying, wailing and confession until the entire campus was afire. H
Orton Wiley was impressed but others worried that Rees was a power-grabbing
trickster who had extended a true revival with human-manipulation for his own
purposes. When the high emotions of revival died, the emotion was transferred
to cleaning up imagined sin and supposedly bad theology on campus. The
campus and community became divided into “sides.” Only Bresee’s
intervention kept them together but the division continued. Rees then
questioned what was being taught in the theology department, especially
turning his guns on Professor A. J. Ramsey who was teaching doctrines
not up to Rees’ standards of holiness. Rees
also aimed his guns at Fred Epperson the neighboring Nazarene pastor
of Pasadena First church who was not suitably revivalistic
for Rees’ tastes. Rees’ people organized and went to District Assembly cocked
and loaded to get their own people into office, and to take control of the
district and University trustee election process. The district deadlocked on
electing a DS so they moved on to elect trustees of the University. The
delegates saw what was happening and did not elect the trouble-making Rees to
the University board. After defeating Rees they returned then to the election
of DS and the Assembly put a no-nonsense man who was a foe of Rees, Howard
Eckel into office. Even
though Rees had lost his Trustee seat he next attacked the University for
cooperating with unbelievers—the University intended to enter a float in the
Los Angeles Day Parade. He persuaded enough students to protest the idea so
that no volunteers showed up to make the float.[3] Rees then
quietly prompted a group of students to rise in chapel to denounce acting
President George Fallis for “not being a
holiness president.” Half of the student body walked out of chapel in a show
of non-support. Then Rees’ people began to circulate an anonymous petition
against faculty who “did not believe in holiness.” The
board of the university saw Rees as the trouble-maker he was so they ordered
Rees and his church off campus. Rees left the campus and began building a
facility in town where he committed an act of sedition for Nazarenes—he put
the title to the property in his own name. That was the final straw for DS Eckel. It was obvious that Rees planned to get control of
the university and lead a secessionist movement out of the Nazarene church. Eckel took the bull by the horns and showed up at the
Sunday morning service on Rees’
trouble-making almost destroyed the University. He took with him several of
the faculty and half of the student body for his church and new school. The
resulting turmoil and financial crisis virtually vetoed Bresee’s
vision for a single nationwide Rees
was a narrow-minded manipulating preacher who manipulated people to build his
own kingdom and to destroy the work of great men. He wanted to be a Nazarene
General Superintendent himself but finally self-destructed and wound up
presiding over his own split-off church and a small bible school collecting
unto himself a few other malcontents which he called the “Pilgrim Church of
California.” Unable
to foist his peculiar brand of conservative revivalistic
holiness on the Nazarenes, He eventually took his band of Pilgrim
conservatives into merger with his former International Holiness Church which
he got renamed the Pilgrim holiness Church. Stymied in his own hope to
become a General Superintendent of the largest holiness denomination, he had
to settle for becoming a repeat-General Superintendent of the much smaller |
Of
course, this is an embarrassing story for everybody. I have been more depressed
writing it than you got reading it. However the messy story might be redeemed if
we remember that conflicts like this still happen occasionally in the church.
Maybe examining the ‘two sides” in a past conflict like this could teach us how
to head off similar conflicts in the future. That’s what I think.
So what do you think?
During the first few
weeks, click here to comment or read comments
Keith Drury
To think about….
To read more on the Rees-Pasadena conflict consider these sources:
a. An excellent and
revealing view from the Nazarene (and University) perspective is found in Promise
and Destiny—Grace in the History of Point Loma Nazarene University by
Ronald B. Kirkemo See especially pages 42-55
b. Paul Rees gives his
(and his father’s) perspective in the biography: Seth Cook
Rees the Warrior-Saint See section 09 -- Battle Scars and Re-Formed
Lines.
c. The “official” Pilgrim
view is found in The
Days of our Pilgrimage—History of the Pilgrim Holiness Church by Thomas and
Thomas
d. See here the paper
written by Petar Neychev,
student at
e. See also Timothy
L. Smith’s Called Unto Holiness for a Nazarene take on the conflict.
[1] In 1917 the General Superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene made a ruling interpreting the Manual that District Superintendents may disorganize churches only if they are “too weak to continue their work or when they persisted in a “hopelessly unorthodox or immoral” course.” The 1919 General Assembly also chimed in by rejecting such disbanding, but it was too late for Rees and his congregation to return by then.
[2] There apparently was some “history” between Rees and Ellyson, but I do not know this story. If anybody knows the story please contribute it for the record.
[3] However, a number of other students did show up on a truck for the parade.