Led to the Mountains: The Church of God in Christ Comes to Utah
2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/26428652.90.1.03
ISSN2642-8652
AutoresAlan J. Clark, Henry McAllister,
Tópico(s)Religion and Society Interactions
ResumoOn September 29, 1989, Pastor David Franklin Griffin passed away. Many civic and religious leaders from across the community attended his funeral services. He was a stalwart pillar in Ogden's community, having pastored the Griffin Temple Church of God in Christ since 1946. A few years earlier in February 1985, the Ogden Christian community awarded Griffin the honor of Pastor of the Year for his service to his church and city. Bishop Nathaniel Jones, Jr., Jurisdictional Bishop for the Church of God in Christ in Utah, gave Pastor Griffin the nickname “Mr. Church of God in Christ” because he “eats, sleeps, wakes up, walks and talks and possibly dreams about the people of this ‘Grand Old Church.’”1Pastor Griffin's devotion to preaching proved itself to a miraculous degree on one occasion. Elder Roland E. Hurrington, pastor of the Mount Zion Church of God in Christ, had invited Elder Griffin to give a sermon at his Salt Lake City church. Then in his later years, Elder Griffin suffered from a few ailments but never turned down an opportunity to preach. While in the middle of his sermon, Elder Griffin stopped breathing and collapsed to the floor. Fortunately a nurse was present among the members of the congregation and rushed to his assistance, eventually resuscitating him. Elder Griffin, knowing no limits on the importance of preaching, got up and finished his sermon to the astonishment of the congregation. Not even the specter of death kept him from his calling.2Despite his lifetime of service, very few Utahns knew about Pastor Griffin or the Church of God in Christ, to which he devoted his life. This article seeks to remedy this oversight by outlining the history of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) in the state of Utah. Since the 1930s, African Americans began migrating to Utah and establishing COGIC congregations in various cities. Their Pentecostal theology and worship separated them from the tiny group of African American churches already operating in the state and required church members like David and Daisy Griffin to devote years of service organizing churches and developing their own social networks within the African American community that existed in Utah for much of the twentieth century. Their resilience and endurance in forging a home in the West enriches the history, diversity, and heritage of Utah.Although a few Black individuals colonized Utah with the Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, the African American community was very small in the early territorial years; the 1850 territorial census counted twenty-four free and twenty-six enslaved Blacks in Utah.3 The ending of slavery in the United States and the coming of the railroad to the West allowed for increased migration, and the 1900 census listed 672 Blacks residing in Utah. By 1910 the Black community in Utah nearly doubled to 1,144 African Americans in the state, with most residing in Salt Lake City. Around two hundred Blacks lived in Ogden. During the Great Depression and the Great Migration of African Americans from the South, more men and women headed west in search of work, but few picked Utah. The population barely changed by 1940, with 1,235 African Americans in Utah. Yet, as with other minority populations, the massive amount of military and federal industrial growth in Utah during the 1940s and 1950s dramatically increased the size of the community. Known as the Second Great Migration, beginning around 1941 many African Americans left the South to pursue employment opportunities elsewhere. Their population in Utah doubled by 1950 and nearly doubled again by 1960, arriving at 4,148 (about 0.5 percent of the state population).4The community grew steadily through the second half of the twentieth century, numbering 17,657 people in 2000, followed by another surge in growth to approximately 43,000 by 2014. Growth was not evenly distributed across the state, however. According to a study of the 1990 census, African American households were only found in 40 percent of Utah's cities.5 Most of the demographic growth occurred in urban areas in and around Salt Lake City and Ogden. Despite rapid growth in the early twenty-first century, the African American population remains one of the smallest demographic minorities at about 1.2 percent of the statewide population—smaller than the Hispanic, Asian, and Native American populations in the state (15.1 percent, 2.5 percent, 1.3 percent respectively).6The same racial segregation and Jim Crow-era discrimination that plagued the rest of the country existed in Utah, but it manifested itself in different ways. Opportunities for work primarily determined where African Americans lived in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and elsewhere in the state. Railroad companies employed large numbers of African Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and correspondingly the segregated areas of Salt Lake City and Ogden included the neighborhoods adjacent to the train stations.7 Although Utah did not have the same kind of state-sponsored segregation as existed in the South, municipalities and residents employed their own methods to keep communities apart. Real estate covenants and private businesses excluded Blacks from living in certain neighborhoods or frequenting certain business establishments. Ogden in particular, because of the large Black community that worked for the railroad, used these mechanisms to segregate the city. Anna Belle Weakley, who owned and operated the Porters and Waiters Club on Ogden's 25th Street, described the social segregation of Ogden as “unannounced segregation.”8 Because segregation was not mandated by law, African Americans had to intuit the social rules. A few businesses catered to everyone, but most did not. As Eric Stene pointed out in his discussion of the 1940s, “Ogden's Twenty-fifth Street was segregated; Whites stuck to the north side of the street, and Blacks stayed on the south side, along with Italians, Asians, and Hispanics through the decades.”9 Even after passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the climate of segregation continued, most forcefully in real estate. As late as the 1990s, 60 percent of Utah's cities still had no Black residents.10 Even after restrictive covenants were removed, a cultural desire to maintain segregation seemed to remain and made it complicated for African Americans to purchase homes outside of traditionally Black neighborhoods.11Despite these racial barriers, the lure of work and a better life continued to draw people to Utah from the east. For most of the new arrivals, religion guided their day-to-day activities and functioned as the center of community life. This had been the case since the 1880s and 1890s when African Americans began organizing churches in Salt Lake City and Ogden. Reverend James Saunders led the organization of the Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1890.12 Emma Jackson began holding prayer meetings for Baptists in her home in 1892, and the Reverend A. E. Reynolds became the first permanent leader of the Calvary Baptist Church.13 African American churches proliferated in the early twentieth century with the addition of several more Baptist churches and the Liberty Park Seventh Day Adventist Church.14With very small congregations and slow population growth, Black churchgoers struggled greatly to develop their own communities in the state, but their struggle resulted in increased diversity and vivacity within the Utah African American community. Churches functioned as worship centers as well as social centers. They provided individuals opportunities for leadership roles and allowed them to make work connections. The churches also provided relief and economic support to their members.The Church of God in Christ emerged in the late nineteenth century out of the Holiness movement among African American Baptists in the South. The Holiness movement grew out of the established Protestant churches with an emphasis on the doctrine of sanctification. Many Protestants felt that the denominational churches had strayed from the path of Christian devotion and instead pursued social status and acceptability. The Holiness movement forcefully reemphasized the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfectionism. The movement created contention during the nineteenth century among Protestants, and many individuals left the established denominations in pursuit of a Christian experience centered on a sanctified Christian life.Originally organized as a holiness church in 1895 by Charles Price Jones and Charles Harrison Mason, the Church of God in Christ split over the importance of William J. Seymour's Azusa Street Revival and the foundation of Pentecostal worship and theology.15 Upon visiting Seymour's Los Angeles revival in March 1907, according to Mason's biographer, Mason “experienced a radical ideological upheaval, ultimately resulting in a doctrinal reformation of the Church of God in Christ.”16 When Mason shared his Pentecostal experience with Jones, Jones rejected the Pentecostal view of speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They parted ways, and in August 1907 C. H. Mason became the first “Chief Apostle” and leader of the Church of God in Christ, newly transformed into one of the most prominent Pentecostal churches in the United States.17 With a strong emphasis on evangelism and an intensely charismatic worship style, COGIC has grown into one of the largest predominantly African American churches in the United States. The denomination estimates there are 6.5 million members, rivaling the membership of the National Baptist Convention, USA Inc.18 It is also arguably the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States.19Because of its foundation in Pentecostal theology, members of COGIC do not usually worship with other African American churches.20 Their numbers are among the smaller in Utah, with approximately two to three hundred strong.21 With very few members and no initial support from the surrounding churches or general population, individuals like David and Daisy Griffin worked tirelessly establishing COGIC congregations among other Protestant and Pentecostal churches in Salt Lake City and Ogden. COGIC did not often establish strong ties with other Pentecostal churches and congregations—though connections were sometimes made, as evidenced by the interfaith meeting between Pastor Griffin's and Pastor Leo Waggoner's congregations. More often, when the monthly fellowship meetings rolled around or churches reached out to one another through interfaith activities, COGIC congregations found themselves without invitations. They shared ethnic and racial struggles with other minoritized groups as non-whites, but their beliefs about Pentecostal worship and theology separated them from their racial and ethnic communities. Living in Utah as double minorities because of their religious views, African American Pentecostals encountered opposition from almost every direction. They faced the opposition with endurance and resolve, laying the foundation for some of the oldest continuously operating Pentecostal churches in Utah. As Pastor Griffin said in his daily prayer, “Lord don't let me die until I finish my work, for no man can do my work for me.”22No one deserves more credit in establishing the Church of God in Christ in Utah than Alberta Harris Jennings. Born around 1902 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, her family worshiped with the Baptist church. As an adult living in Beaumont, Texas, Alberta heard the teachings of the Church of God in Christ and felt called to the work of evangelism. Bishop C. H. Mason believed increased national evangelism would not only preserve “the best features of Slave Religion but also a commitment to replicating the nonracist early church and [creating] a just society.”23 COGIC missionaries fanned out across the country. Feeling the call, Harris (not yet Jennings) uprooted in 1938 and sought out a place without any COGIC congregations. Through the inspiration of the Spirit and the encouragement of her local leader, Bishop D. M. Paige, she decided upon Salt Lake City.24During the first few years of her Utah ministry, Harris struggled not only to hold services but also to make a living.25 She came to Utah with no contacts and joined a segregated community of about seven hundred African Americans in Salt Lake City. Despite having attended Texas A&M College, Harris could only find domestic work. Her preaching drew few listeners beyond concerned members of the Salt Lake City Council. Although COGIC did not recognize women as preachers, Harris could hold street meetings at Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City and revivals at churches willing to host her. When Harris began holding outdoor services, the Salt Lake City Council investigated the outdoor meetings due to concerns of public disturbance but ultimately allowed them to continue.26 Reportedly her favorite worship song was “God's got a hold of my hand and He's leading me.” She felt led to Salt Lake City, despite not knowing anyone or having ever visited. Her evangelizing style, spontaneous and unconventional, contributed to the Pentecostal revivalism in the state.27 A few other Pentecostal churches existed at this time in Utah, including the Assemblies of God and the Church of God, Cleveland, but these denominations evangelized primarily to white audiences. The Assemblies of God in particular, having decided to break away from COGIC in 1914, did not evangelize among the African American community in Utah. In her outdoor services, Harris did not place any limitations on who could participate together.Women played important roles within COGIC during the early twentieth century. Bishop Mason saw women's value within the community and as evangelists. He established a women's department in 1911 and often sent husbands and wives together into the “mission field” to establish congregations.28 Anthea Butler explained how Church of God in Christ women “appropriated the southern revivalist traditions of outdoor preaching and canvassing from door to door for converts, and these techniques bore fruit in the urban locales to which they migrated.”29 Marrying home mission work with home life, “church mothers” performed the important work of community building, caring for both the spiritual and temporal needs of those around them. According to Ithiel Clemmons, “they were unashamed to have street worship services, to approach and talk to gangs of roving, idle youth.”30 The combination of preaching and caregiving helped women confront the difficulties of urban life.The role of “church mothers” transformed into a formal title for COGIC, reflecting the role of women as “mothers in Zion.” Anthea Butler argued that “COGIC church mothers’ quest for spiritual empowerment by means of ‘the sanctified life’ provided the moral, spiritual, and physical fuel that enabled them to negotiate for and obtain power both within the denomination and outside it.”31 In the early twentieth century, Black women faced many impediments to social mobility and leadership. Harris exemplified the willingness of Black Pentecostal women to engage societies that sought to limit and ignore them by means of her spirituality.Fueled by her resolve to establish a church, Harris managed to earn enough money to purchase property at 552 West 300 South near the Rio Grande train station in Salt Lake City around 1939.32 She and her husband Jack built a small home and meetinghouse on the property. They named it the Mount Zion Church of God in Christ. Elder W. C. Caldwell became its first pastor.33With a church secured, Harris provided a platform for other evangelists to launch additional missions around the state. She also prompted the establishment of a new geographical jurisdiction in the western United States for COGIC. Around this time, an evangelist named Isaac Finley was preaching in Oregon and Washington. He subsequently traveled around the West extensively, considering where to start new churches. He preached in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada, then made his way to Pocatello, Idaho. Finally feeling the call to preach in Utah, Finley connected with Harris in Salt Lake City and offered his support. This led COGIC to appoint Finley to the position of Overseer in 1938 for Utah, Idaho, and Nevada.34Racism in the mid-twentieth century complicated COGIC growth in Utah. Racial aggression had surged in the 1920s, including the brutal lynching of Robert Marshall in Price, Utah. The Salt Lake Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organized in 1919, held an “antilynching mass meeting” to protest the acquittal of Marshall's lynchers.35 The Ku Klux Klan operated briefly in the state, appearing in 1921 and seemingly disappearing by 1926, but according to Larry Gerlach failed to take root due to opposition from high-ranking Latter-day Saint church leaders.36The racism that African Americans dealt with in Utah was often more subversive and less overt. In other parts of the country, communities faced racism in public disputes, protests, and violent encounters. In Utah, racism typically emanated from systemic stereotypes and infrequent interactions with diverse populations. Henry McAllister moved from Arkansas to Utah in 1973 and worked at Hill Air Force Base. Reflecting on racism in Utah, he said, It was more subtle. It was more covert rather than just straight out. Down south you knew where you stood. You knew where you couldn't go, shouldn't go. But some of the same issues that we had down south are present here in Utah. . . . In Utah they'd be accommodating, but I tell you, you really want to see how they feel, try to date one of their daughters. And you find out the ugliest and the nastiest things that came out. Their true feelings came out from that.37Members of the Church of God in Christ struggled with this kind of racism throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Alberta Harris dealt with opposition to her outdoor services from various municipal and church organizations. Utah members of COGIC recall that even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints requested Harris explain to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles the brand of Christianity she preached.38 The Salt Lake Tribune reported on March 25, 1943, that “a revocable permit to conduct religious services in a tent . . . was granted by city commissioners to the Rev. W. C. Caldwell of the Church of God in Christ.” When the same paper reported on the permission granted to the Assemblies of God for a tent revival, they apparently had no need to emphasize the “revocable” nature of the permit.39 But it served as a reminder to Elder Caldwell to preach with caution. Without formal segregation laws, municipal courts could use the acceptance or rejection of city permits as mechanisms of discrimination.Elder Brealey B. Mike also faced such cultural opposition, but with far less subtlety, in establishing a congregation in Ogden. Mike moved to Utah for work in the late 1930s. Initially, he met with Alberta Harris Jennings at her street meetings in Salt Lake City. When Bishop Isaac Finley and Mother Jennings encouraged Elder Mike and his wife to begin a church in Ogden, they relocated. Prentiss Jones opened his home for meetings to Elder Mike around 1938. In 1941, Elder Mike purchased a lot at 28th Street and Wall Avenue in Ogden, where he built a small home and held tent meetings with Elder Caldwell of Salt Lake City.40 In the winter, Mike and Caldwell held meetings in the “Little House,” as they called it. They would carry the beds out to make space for the service. Elder Ralph R. Girley and his wife attended meetings with Elder Mike until starting their own church in Ogden. It took several more years to complete the church building on the property because every time they tried to begin work, white neighbors would complain, which led the city to put a temporary stop to the construction. The building was finally dedicated in October 1948 as the 28th & Wall Avenue Church of God in Christ.41Church growth proceeded more quickly in Ogden than in Salt Lake City, despite the former's smaller African American population. Elder Mike died in 1956 after pastoring the Wall Avenue church for fifteen years. Elder John Parker succeeded him in the pastorate and continued until 1971. Nearby in Ogden, Elder David Franklin Griffin felt called to the ministry. Griffin's parents had joined the Church of God in Christ in Arkansas in 1908. In 1936 Griffin believed the Lord had called him to be a preacher, and over the next decade he preached as a deacon and elder in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Oregon. His work in the military kept him moving. But after he married Daisy Green in 1945, Griffin took a job with the Southern Pacific Railroad in Salt Lake City. They initially joined Jack and Alberta Jennings at the Mount Zion congregation before relocating and beginning a church of their own in a community building at Washington Terrace, Ogden. The first few years saw many moves, from homes to trailers to boxcars. In 1949, Griffin mortgaged his car to get a loan to purchase a lot in West Ogden on 26th Street. Finally in May 1952, they finished construction on their own building and dedicated it for worship. Affectionately known as the “Church by the tracks,” the West Ogden Church of God in Christ (later renamed the Griffin Temple Church of God in Christ) would eventually become the jurisdictional headquarters for the state of Utah.42Several other congregations laid their foundations in the 1940s. Elder Ralph R. Girley and his wife Seretha left Elder Mike's congregation in Ogden to establish the Lincoln Avenue Church of God in Christ. In 1964, the congregation purchased a former Latter-day Saint ward house on the corner of 30th Street and Wall Avenue; in gratitude of Bishop Isaac Finley's leadership and work to purchase the building, they renamed the congregation the Finley Temple Church of God in Christ. Members continued meeting there until 2013, when Pastor Henry McAllister and his wife Daisy sold the old building and purchased a new property in Clearfield. Renaming the church the Journey of New Beginnings Church of God in Christ, Pastor McAllister continues to lead the congregation at the present.43Around the same time that Elder Girley began his congregation, Elder Millard C. Thomas and his wife Janie transferred with the military to Camp Kearns in 1945. They worshipped at Mount Zion under R. E. Hurrington until starting a new Salt Lake City congregation called Ebenezer Church of God in Christ in 1952.44 When the Mount Zion congregation closed its doors, Ebenezer remained as the oldest congregation in the capitol city. Today there are two Salt Lake City area congregations: Kingdom Church of God in Christ pastored by Bishop Bobby Allen, and Full Gospel Deliverance Center Church of God in Christ, located in West Valley City and pastored by Apostle Jervis Lee. While others have come and gone, four congregations continue to hold weekly services in Utah.45Most African Americans lived in Salt Lake City and Ogden, but a few lived or worked on farms in central Utah or in mining towns, which sometimes boasted sizable Black populations.46 In the multicultural Carbon County, the white population predominating in Price were informally segregated from many of the racial minorities primarily living in Helper. Many immigrants made their way to Utah as strike breakers, and some continued living in Utah through the mid-twentieth century. African Americans in these communities became part of a mixed workforce that included recent immigrants and US citizens.47The limitations of rural life in a mining community may have provided moments of toleration and interfaith activity not often seen in Utah's urban areas. With fewer congregations to attend and fewer physical structures in which to attend, churchgoers sometimes relied on denominational cooperation to create worship services despite theological differences. The Church of God in Christ opened a church among the coal camps sometime around 1946.48 Billed as a church “for all races and denominations,” the local church held services in Helper, Spring Glen, and Sunnyside under the direction of J. R. Green.49 Green hoped to develop a church that interacted with the entire mining community, and he often reached out to others for support. As they constructed a chapel in Helper on the foundation of the old Catholic Church, they held a “chair rally” for donations of “any extra chairs or benches that would give his congregation something to sit on while attending services.”50 The COGIC congregation hosted barbecues to fundraise for the construction of the chapel and permitted an African American Baptist church to use the building as well after its completion.51 Green must have reached out to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; in 1948 Pastor Green received a $100 check from Latter-day Saint president George Albert Smith as a donation. Green and others expressed their appreciation for the “generous gesture of tolerance and good will from the dominant church in Utah.”52Yet the remote living arrangements of the coal camps and towns also revealed racial tensions. A Black man named Howard Browne remembered an incident at a pool hall in Price, one of the few places in Price where Blacks could go. During a card game an altercation occurred among Browne, a Mexican American man, and a white man: Something came up in the card game that this Mexican had said something to him and [the white man] said, “do you know who you're talking to?” He says, “You're talking to an American White Man.” And so this Mexican fellow just said real low, he says, “I'm just as much of an American as you are.” And so this guy says, “You can't be as much American as me as Black as you are.” . . . Well, he done made me hot then. I said, “Hell, you can't be as much American as he nor me.” I said, “I come from the Cherokee tribe. And your people came over here and took this country away from us. So how in the hell are you going to be as much American as me or him!”53This incident illustrates the feelings of Utah Latinos and African Americans as they wrestled with racial discrimination and bias. Whites discriminated against Latinos and complicated their place in American society. Howard Browne, who reportedly had African American and Native American ancestry, found more accepting allies in non-whites who experienced similar discrimination. But African Americans endured the lion's share of racism in Utah, despite being the smallest minoritized group. Even work culture in the mines, where European immigrants worked alongside African Americans, reinforced racial hierarchies.54To unify the fledgling congregations and create more support for a statewide community, Bishop Isaac Finley and bishops who succeeded him strongly supported the annual holy convocations in Utah. These meetings brought together the various small congregations. There they celebrated the achievements of the COGIC community and participated in charismatic worship, which included speaking in tongues, prayer circles, holy dance, and ecstatic worship.55 These meetings also brought in speakers from other locations and encouraged past leaders to return and support the community. Bishop Isaac Finley and Mother Jennings, no longer residents of Utah by the early 1950s, maintained their roles from a distance as state bishop and state mother, respectively. Bishop Finley found the convocations to be important enough that he donated funds to purchase an old Latter-day Saint church building large enough to comfortably accommodate all of the congregations during the annual convocation. When Bishop Finley returned to take over the pastorate of Lincoln Avenue in 1955 upon Elder Girley's death, the building also served as the home location for what became known as the Finley Temple Church of God in Christ.56The holy convocations of the Church of God in Christ constituted the majority of times that these congregations found their way into local newspapers.57 The convocations allowed them the opportunity not only to come together as a religion, but also to remind the cities around them about their existence and importance within the state. Bishop C. H. Mason, the founder and Senior Bishop of COGIC, and other national bishops for the denomination made appearances. New local leaders received assignments. Over time, these convocations even received recognition from local officials for their services to the community. When the Utah jurisdiction held its 75th anniversary in 2013, Utah governor Gary Herbert and the mayors of Salt Lake City and Ogden all expressed their appreciation for “your congregations’ efforts to succor and uplift people from all walks of life, both spiritually and temporally, throughout the past seventy-five years.”58Members of COGIC also shared strong interfaith relationships with other churches in Utah. Tommy Vigil, pastor for the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus, remembered as a child how his father's church (Harold Vigil pastored the Apostolic Assembly), Griffin Memorial Church of God in Christ, and the United Pentecostal Church occupied three of the four corner lots around his home on Lake Street. Vigil recalled how these Pentecostal churches supported each other, despite differences in race and ethnicity.59 France Davis, who pastored the Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City from 1974 to 2019, recalled the “marvelous interdenominational organizations in Utah” and the associations between them that he considered to be unique to the state.60 Close friends with Elder David Griffin and Bishop Bobby Allen, Davis has worked together for years with COGIC in ways that are almost unheard of in other parts of the country. These relationships prevented feelings of isolation and provided support for these small congregations. Summarizin
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