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Pilgrim Holiness History – 1962-1966
“Pre-marriage Challenges”
In the half-decade before the consummation of their marriage with the Wesleyan Methodists, Pilgrims would face three predicaments: one having to do with the hot political issues of the day, a second due to a dubious investment of church money and the third a confrontation with one of their own conservative districts.
Civil Rights
The hot political issue of
he 1960’s was the Civil Rights movement. In 1954 the Supreme Court handed down Brown
v. Board of Education rejecting the segregation of schools. A year later in
Some Pilgrims wanted to mind their own business and say nothing. Others argued that Civil Rights was a moral issue and racism was sin so it required a holiness denomination to make a strong anti-segregation statement. The national Association of Evangelicals did respond with an anti-segregation statement. The Pilgrims now had to decide if they would reject the NAE statement, ignore it, or adopt it. The Pilgrims adopted the statement. In 1964 the GBA adopted the anti-segregation Civil Rights statement beginning with the preamble stating the real cure to racism should be the conversion of men and women but we live in a not-yet-converted world and thus called all Pilgrims to support full equal rights for all citizens and they should work for the passage of desegregation laws. Beyond the anti-segregation and pro-Civil Rights actions the statement called for Pilgrims to open the doors of all churches and institutions to “every person, regardless of race or national origin.” The Pilgrims had chosen to side with the Supreme Court, and Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The GBA statement was published in the denominational magazine. However, it would be unfair to say Pilgrims were activists in the fight for equal rights. While the statement was strong the action was weak. Most Pilgrims stood on the sidelines during the Civil Rights movement. They had long been a religious minority themselves so they were sympathizers, but few became activists. They did not join the freedom rides or line up for marches. Pilgrims had always been a quiet people who mostly kept to themselves. Like the Amish, many did not even vote.[1] They had not yet entered the public arena. For many even the making of political statements seemed to be too worldly. Many Pilgrims acted like they were, well, Pilgrims— sojourners in a strange land they were just passing through on their way home to heaven where their actual citizenship was.
A dubious investment
R. C. Hawkins was an
organizer and dreamer. He had been a DS in
Wedding rings and the secession of the New York District.
The wearing of wedding rings had been a nagging issue for the Pilgrims. Conservatives argued that the Bible clearly forbade the wearing of all gold (1 Peter 3:3). Progressives believed that a person might wear a wedding ring but they should not rely on gold or silver for their adornment but rather on their inner spirit. Conservatives thought the passage “meant what it said—don’t wear gold.” So, repeatedly the conservatives brought memorials to the general Assembly/General Conference calling for the banning of wedding rings for all Pilgrims. As far back as 1938 a memorial had been brought to add the wedding rings prohibition to the church “Covenant.” The issue was so debated then that the conference limited debate to three minutes per person. However the 1938 proposal did not pass. It was eventually tabled. The issue would not die. Conservatives were not satisfied that they themselves were free to not wear a wedding ring, they wanted all Pilgrims everywhere to take off their rings as a “test of membership.” When the issue came up periodically it at times had had more support and at other times less, but it never could pass at general conference.
Then in 1950 the GBA surprisingly offered its own memorial. The GBA recommended a statute that would add a statement to the “Special Rules” of the Manual that the church was “opposed to the wearing of all rings.” The resolution swept through with a standing vote of 285 to 17. Both conservatives and progressives voted for the memorial! Conservatives thought they had won. They rejoiced that they had finally forced all Pilgrims to take off their wedding rings. However, when the chair of the conference was asked if this was a “test of membership” he ruled that it was not and the conservatives saw why the progressives had voted with them. Among Pilgrim lore it was widely believed that only those items in the “Church Covenant” were tests of membership—the “special rules” were only advisory… advice people should hear seriously but on which they were free to decide for themselves. To reinforce this position, following the conference the General Superintendents issued numerous letters taking the position that the wearing of rings was not a test of membership.[3]
Having lost their attempt to require all Pilgrims to line up with their own convictions against wedding rings, some conservatives took a fall-back position: they set up their own rules applying to their own district or local church. This is what the New York Pilgrims did and it brought them into conflict with the rest of the church. At stake was the issue of “states rights”—could a district have stricter rules than the denomination?[4] The denomination said no; the New York Pilgrims said yes.
But the wedding ring was
not the only difference the
However, in spite of the
“split” the Pilgrims continued to grow.
The denomination was not at a standstill. In 1961 at the
In 1962 the Pilgrims had
53,294 members. In 1966, just four years later, they had grown to 56,763
members—a 6% growth for the quadrennium, in spite of the loss of 30 churches.
Merger talks were underway. (Indeed some of the unrest in
To think about….
So what do you think?
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Keith Drury
www.TuesdayColumn.com
[1] My own father, L. W. Drury
who was keenly interested in politics and read the papers carefully often
remarked, “I wonder who they will elect as their president?” By they he
meant the citizens if the
[2] As in all conflicts there are two sides to the story. Hawkins may have believed he had the full approval of his committee. At least one committee member at the time said Hawkins had “run it by me” while they were both in a headquarters bathroom. This person had responded “that’s sounds interesting,” meaning the idea might be worth bringing up to the committee. Hawkins may have considered comments like this as yes votes. Maybe he even had “run it by” most (or a majority, or even all) members of his committee informally this way and felt it was thus approved while the committee members may have only been nodding interest expecting the action to be brought up at a later official meeting for formal action.
[3] My father, L. W. Drury asked for and received one of these letters from his General Superintendent which he used to protect members who chose to wear rings.
[4] The “states rights” issue was already at the forefront of the national debate in Civil Rights and this may have contributed to the idea that a district or local church had the right to make their own rules.
[5] The Pilgrims in
[6] I was present as a college
student for Emery’s inspiring I-have-a-dream speech. He so captured my
imagination that I returned home the following week and asked to speak at my
home church in Stroudsburg
[7] The Wesleyan Methodists
were considered “soft on remarriage” by some New York Pilgrims. The two
denominations (Wesleyan Methodists and Pilgrim Holiness) however, were fairly
similar across the board nationally though regionally they sometimes looked
very different. For example, in