Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Holiness camp meetings began at Vineland, New Jersey, in 1867. Phoebe Palmer’s interpretation of John Wesley’s second blessing as an identifiable, emotional experience was preached in midwestern and southern plains states. [1] It does not appear to have been heard in Craven and Pamlico counties in the 1880s when African Americans were holding camp meetings.
Instead, white churches had revivals. [2] Methodists held two in New Bern in 1883. [3] Baptists in the city staged revivals in 1885 [4] and 1887. [5] Disciples of Christ in Pamlico County had too few clergymen to met more often than the mandated once a quarter. [6] The Bethany congregation at modern-day Arapahoe held a Fourth of July picnic in 1883 that drew 600 people and featured both vocal and instrumental music. [7]
Free Will Baptists may have heard rumors of the Holiness movement from their senior members. Local churches were organized into conferences that issued Disciplines that defined their beliefs. The network between them was maintained by delegates, who were appointed by each conference, attending meetings of the others.
The Cape Fear Conference, based in Wilmington and Onslow County, adopted Wesley’s view that sanctification "commences at regeneration" and continues with one "constantly growing in grace" in 1883. [8] The Greenville conference separated itself in 1886, [9] and considered uniting with the Cape Fear one. [10]
Three years later, in 1889, the Cape Fear Conference accepted Holiness doctrine. It revised its Discipline to say sanctification was "an instantaneous work of God’s grace in a believer’s heart whereby the heart is cleansed from all sin and made pure by the blood of Christ." [11]
Upper- and middle-class Northerners began having summer vacations near beaches. Lewis Miller and John Vincent converted a camp meeting ground on New York’s Lake Chautauqua into a resort in 1874. [12] New Bern Methodists held a weekend camp meeting in Vanceboro in 1889 at a site accessible by the steamer Trent. [13] In 1890, it lasted two weeks. [14] The next year the New Bern newspaper reported "the camp ground is situated on the north side of Neuse river in a beautiful grove near the church." [15]
The economy crashed in February 1893. Banks had no funds to offer credit to farmers in the spring of 1894. National unemployment went from 3.7% in 1892 to 12.3% in 1894 and stayed high until 1898. [16] Membership in the Cape Fear Conference increased by 26%. [17] That was greater than the more normal increase of 6.7% registered by the Eastern Free Will Baptist Conference. [18]
In 1894, during the depths of this depression, people from New Bern began attending camp meetings held along the shore in Carteret County, just east of New Bern. [19] The Trent ferried them to Hunting Quarter in August. [20] In June, the local paper noted people from New Bern were
"fairly represented in the congregation and numbers of the summer visitors at the seaside also went over. About a thousand people were on the grounds during the services and at one time a hundred boats of many kinds and [. . .] lined the shore for half a mile or more." [21]
The Wade Shore meeting was held near Morehead City, and featured nine Methodist ministers.
Local Methodists probably did not hear Holiness doctrine at these camp meeting. The church hierarchy had begun criticizing Palmer’s views as a distortion of John Wesley’s theology. [22] A. B. Crumpler was raised in Sampson County southwest of Goldsboro, [23] and ordained at the annual Methodist conference in New Bern in 1888. [24] He had to go to Missouri to become sanctified in 1890. [25]
When times grew bad, preachers began arguing society had entered the final phase before Christ’s return. The Holiness movement became more radical as it absorbed elements of premillennialism, a desire to restore the original church, and a search for more demonstrable signs of sanctification. The Southern Methodist hierarchy responded by denouncing the movement in 1894. [26]
When Crumpler returned to North Carolina in 1894, the "Bishop of North Carolina would not credential him without sanction from Bishop in Missouri." He turned to evangelism in Dauphin, Samson, and neighboring counties. [27]
In December 1895, Crumpler went to the Methodist conference in Elizabeth City [28] to request reassignment as an evangelist rather than circuit rider. [29] "On his way home, he stopped at New Bern where he ‘accidentally preached to the colored people in a meeting in the morning’ and for the white people in the evening at ‘Hancock Street’." [30]
His belief that God did not discriminate was more radical than his Holiness theology. He may have had to speak to African Americans and whites in separate meetings, but he preached the same message to both groups.
In May 1896, Crumpler was back in Sampson County where his revival in Dunn ignited a regional awakening. When he was preaching his "‘Sermon to the Colored,’ whites began to crowd in with blacks under the tent." [31]
The success in Dunn led to more invitations. A New Bern newspaper reported Crumpler would be holding "a series of Tent meetings at Stones Bay" in Onslow County in November 1896. [32] In December it noted he was at Kinston. [33]
The Methodist hierarchy tried Crumpler for insubordination in 1899. [34] He withdrew from the conference to form the Holiness Church the next year. [35] Among the tenets defined in its 1901 Discipline was the general view that
"a person will know unmistakably that he is God’s child, by feeling God’s spirit bearing witness with his spirit that he is a child of God." [36]
It added the Holiness belief in sanctification removed all remnants of original sin "through the blood of Christ." [37]
This language was not very different from that of Free Will Baptists. In 1898, church elders explained the denomination did not accept original sin, the belief underpinning Wesleyanism. Still, individuals had to overcome their propensity to "transgress God’s Law." [38] This was done through baptism, the death of the original self, [39] and a new birth "of the Spirit" as one of "God’s children." [40]
Preachers in the Cape Fear Conference were the most open to Crumpler. Joseph Campbell suggested individuals from other denominations joined the Free Will Baptist church when they were excommunicated by their own churches. [41] Conference membership increased by 18% in 1896. [42]
The Western Conference responded to the surge in potential members in 1894 by reaffirming full immersion baptism was required for membership. [43] The Central Conference withdrew from the Eastern one in 1895, but maintained the same Discipline. [44] While the Eastern Conference included the counties on Pamlico Sound, which lay between the mainland and the Outer Banks, [45] the Central Original Conference included the areas most affected by Crumpler. [46]
In 1906, a member of the Holiness Church went to hear William Seymour at Azusa Street in Los Angeles. [47] When Gaston Cashwell returned, he held a month-long revival in Dunn. Attendees soon were "speaking in tongues, singing in tongues, laughing the holy laugh, shouting and leaping and dancing and praising God." [48]
The Holiness Church was divided over using tongues as the sole evidence of attainting Holiness, as distinct from one of God’s gifts. [49] In 1908, Crumpler and others left what then became a Pentecostal denomination. [50] Many of the members of the Cape Fear Conference followed Cashwell. In 1911, they formed their own Pentecostal Free Will Baptist church. [51]
End Notes
1. Phoebe Palmer and the post-Civil War camp meeting movement were discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
2. Superficially revivals and camps meetings were the same: both sought to convert people. While their goals and sermons may have been the same, the social experiences differed.
Revivals were conducted in local churches by the local ministers, perhaps with the aid of someone from the district level to reinforce theological orthodoxy. They followed Charles Finney’s suggestions to break the wills of potential converts before their neighbors. [52]
Camp meetings were held at a distance, often in a field or woodland. Individuals attended with their family or friends, but mingled with strangers. While revivals were held on successive evenings, camp meetings lasted all day. Different preachers took turns, so more than one interpretation might be heard. During breaks between speakers, there was more time for singing.
3. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 5 May 1883. 1.
Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 9 November 1883. 1. "[Unclear name] closed the series of revival meetings at the M. E. church." ME was the Southern Methodist church.
4. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 28 May 1885. 1.
5. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 8 May 1887. 2.
6. Charles Crossfield Ware. Pamlico Profile. New Bern: Owen G. Dunn Company, 1961. 59. The mandate was discussed on page 25.
7. Ware. 12. James B. Bennett told him "in early days we had preaching four times a year." [53]
8. Vinson Synan. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 64. Emphasis added.
9. T. F. Harrison and J. M. Barfield. History of the Free Will Baptists of North Carolina. Ayden, North Carolina: Free Will Baptist Press, 1898. 387.
10. Harrison. 390.
11. Synan. 64–65. Emphasis added.
12. Wikipedia. "Chautauqua."
13. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 4 September 1889. 1. It was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
14. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 6 September 1890. 1. It was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
15. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 22 July 1891. 1. It lasted for two weeks and was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
16. David Whitten. "Depression of 1893." Economic History Association website. Edited by Robert Whaples. 14 August 2001. His source was Christina Romer. "Spurious Volatility in Historical Unemployment Data." Journal of Political Economy 94:1–37:1986.
17. Meeting minutes of the Cape Fear Conference reported 1,419 members in 1892 [54] and 1,789 in 1893. [55]
18. Meeting minutes for the Eastern Conference were less reliable. Leaders reported 8,318 in 1890, [56] 7,907 in 1891, [57] nothing in 1892, and 8,874 in 1893. [58] The 1891 number did not fall in the chronological order of minutes, and so was hard to interpret. If the 1891 number was wrong or represented a different part of the Conference, then the change between 1890 and 1893 may have been one of slow, steady increase.
19. Carteret County was shown on the map included with the post for 15 March 2020.
20. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 12 August 1894. 1. William S. Powell and Michael Hill located Hunting Quarter in The North Carolina Gazetteer. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010 edition. 258.
21. "Wade Shore Camp Meeting." The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 26 June 1894. 1. One word in the OCR text was not decipherable. The reference to "summer visitors" may suggest Northerners, who were familiar with Holiness meetings, were important sponsors of these particular events. They even may have been responsible for introducing the Northern Methodist idea into the area.
22. In 1887, the editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review wrote:
"The holiness association, the holiness periodical, the holiness prayer meeting, the holiness preacher, are all modern novelties. They are not Wesleyan. We believe that a living Wesley would never admit them into the Methodist system." [59]
23. R. Michael Thornton. Fire in the Carolinas. Lake Mary, Florida: Creation House, 2014. 16. Sampson County was the "on" west of Duplin County on the map posted on 15 March 2020. It had been settled by Scots-Irish migrants in 1745. Descendants of New Bern’s original Anabaptist soon joined them. [60]
24. "Rev. A. B. Crumpler." The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 13 December 1895. 1.
25. Thornton. 40.
26. Synan. 39–40.
27. Daily Journal, 13 December 1895.
28. Thornton. 51.
29. Daily Journal, 13 December 1895.
30. Thornton. 51.
31. Thornton. 51.
32. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 10 October 1896. 4. Onslow County was mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020 and was shown on the map with the same post.
33. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 24 December 1896. 1. Kinston was mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020 and was shown on the map with the same post.
34. Synan. 63. He was acquitted, and withdrew voluntarily.
35. A. B. Crumpler. The Discipline of the Holiness Church. Goldsboro, North Carolina: Nash Brothers, 1901. 3–4. Quoted by Joseph Enoch Campbell. The Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1898-1948. Franklin Springs, Georgia: Publishing House of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1951. Reprinted by Wipf and Stock Publishers of Eugene, Oregon, in 2016. 219–220.
36. Campbell. 225.
37. Campbell. 226. This language had been used by Palmer. When she was wrestling with her failure to feel salvation, she argued with herself: "I am either a child of God, or I am not." [61] She thought longer, and compared loving God to loving her parents. In her journal, she concluded
"I know I love them, and on the same principle I know that I love God, and therefore I KNOW that I am a Child of God." I then heartily believed, simply because GOD said so. I had the evidence of his WORD, and therefore with confidence said, ‘I know that I have the evidences of adoption, I am a Child of God’." [62]
38. Harrison. 95.
39. "This water baptism is a declaratory or representative ordinance. Connecting Christ’s death and burial, as the procuring cause of salvation, and his resurrection as the pledge and assurance of a future felicity, with our personal experience, it represents or declares our death and burial to the world, and resurrection to ‘newness of life’." [63]
40. Harrison. 97.
41. Campbell. 250.
42. Meeting minutes of the Cape Fear Conference reported 1,829 members in 1895 [64] and 2,159 in 1896. [65]
43. Harrison. 396.
44. Harrison. 341.
45. The Eastern Conference included Pamlico and Craven counties, as well as Beaufort, Carteret, Hyde, Jones, and Lenoir south of the Neuse river. [66]
46. The Central Original Conference included "Lenoir, on the North side of Neuse river, Wayne, on the West side of the Wilmington & Weldon R. R., and Wilson the same as Wayne, Greene, Pitt, Martin, Washington, Hertford, Bertie, Northampton, Edgecombe, Halifax, Dare, Tyrrell and Southampton, Va." [67]
47. Seymour and Azusa Street were discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
48. Campbell. 240–241.
49. For instance, Crumper thought divine healing was available to "every believer who would call for the Elders of the Church." Illness was not considered a sign of God’s displeasure. [68]
50. Campbell. 245.
51. Robert M. Anderson. Vision of the Disinherited. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979. 143.
52. Charles Grandison Finney was discussed in the post for 12 August 2017.
53. James B. Bennett. Quoted by Ware. 14.
54. Harrison. 382.
55. Harrison. 383.
56. Harrison. 336.
57. Harrison. 330.
58. Harrison. 340.
59. Daniel Whedon. Quoted by Synan. 35. Synan’s source was John Leland Peters. Christian Perfection and American Methodism. New York: Abington Press, 1956. 139.
60. Wikipedia. "Sampson County, North Carolina."
61. Phoebe Palmer. Journal entry, August 1835. In The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer. Edited by Richard Wheatley. New York: W. C. Palmer, Jr., 1876. 29.
62. Palmer. 29–30.
63. Harrison. 39.
64. Harrison. 385.
65. Harrison. 386.
66. Harrison. 341.
67. Harrison. 341.
68. Campbell. 226.
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