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Pilgrim Holiness History – 1946-1962

“Middle Age spread”

 

 

By the mid twentieth century the Pilgrims had reached middle-age. They had lived through two world wars and the Great Depression and had continued to grow but had paid little attention to the long term. Middle age can be boring, and this period offers its fair share of boredom. Yet even in middle age the Pilgrims continued to grow in membership and attendance, though they faced a growing mid-life crisis regarding what to do with more-then-they-could-support Bible schools.

 

After the war many local churches entered a building boom. Once the soldiers came home from, the war, families started moving to new “tract homes” now spouting up at the edge of town. The Pilgrims followed. Hundreds of churches bought land and started raising funds to build more respectable houses of worship. Gradually Pilgrims abandoned the storefronts and castaway buildings they had taken over from other denominations. Hope was high. The Great Depression and a world war were past. Interstates were being constructed. By the end of this period America was attempting to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. Optimistic expansion was in the air. While, Pilgrims had always been an attractive option for people in mainline churches seeking more warmth in their religion, the Pilgrim’s new churches now attracted them even more. Pilgrims had moved from ramshackle buildings “across the railroad tracks” into fresh buildings.  They appeared less “cultic” to others and more respectable. The Pilgrims were entering a period of middle age expansion and solidification.

 

The headquarters experienced “middle-age spread” too. During middle age thoughts of retirement are first entertained. The middle aged denomination launched a new Pension Program (1946) that was planted on a solid fiscal footing. The General Assembly finally outgrew the Frankfort site and moved in 1954 to the larger conference center at Winona Lake, Indiana. A new “Ministerial Study Course Agency was established in 1958 enrolling 323 students during the first year. The first two Pilgrim military chaplains were introduced to the 1958 general assembly. The Pilgrim Publishing House entered printing on their own instead of jobbing out the books and literature and swing these presses into daily action cranking out the weekly denominational magazine and quarterly Sunday school literature[1].  The denomination even incorporated in the state of Indiana instead of using the old Seth Rees charter from the state of Michigan. There were three General Superintends during this sixteen year period though five[2] different people filled the spots.

 

Districts divided to multiply. One strategy Pilgrims seemed to be good at was starting new things thus providing new opportunities for new young leaders to emerge. While Pilgrims were big on mergers with other denominations they did the opposite on the district level—they divided them.  For instance, during this time Indiana divided into three districts and both Ohio and Michigan divided into two districts. By 1958 there were nine “Church Extension Districts” where new young leaders like O. D. Emery and others were able to hone their leadership skills. 

 

But the middle aged Pilgrims faced increasing health challenges in its Bible schools.  More and more Pilgrim parents wanted their children to go to college. Before World War II the Pilgrims seemed content to bequeath their factory jobs to their children only sending off a few to Bible school to become ministers or missionaries. After the war they hoped all, or at least most, of their children might go to college. These parents wanted a college for their children to train as school teachers, lawyers, or nurses along with training for pastors and missionaries. But the Pilgrims had no schools for these careers. Parents could send their children headed for the ministry to one of the many Pilgrim Bible schools. The rest of their college-bound children had to attend secular universities or colleges of other denominations. Pressure thus came for the denomination to launch a liberal arts college. In 1954 the Pilgrims established a new office of General Secretary of Education and elected a quiet man, H. T. Mills from the school in Owosso, Michigan to bring some order out of the disarray and fiscal troubles in the quasi-independent Pilgrim educational system. After repeated insistence of the General Assembly, the church’s leaders finally decided to turn one Bible school into a denomination-wide liberal arts college. Owosso College offered to become that school and the transition began. Denominational leaders also encouraged all the other Bible schools to establish a two-year junior college program that presumably could feed Owosso’s liberal arts program.

 

However, the Pilgrims still had too many schools to support.  In the 1950’s the Colorado Spring Bible College was relocated to Bartlesville, Oklahoma where it became Central Pilgrim College and it absorbed Western Pilgrim College of El Monte, California. While Owosso was to become the one liberal arts college, Eastern Pilgrim College in Allentown, Pennsylvania threw a curve ball to everyone in 1960 by sending committee to the General Board proposing a four-way mega-merger with Owosso. This proposal would have merged Allentown, Frankfort, and Kernersville with Owosso leaving only two schools, the merged school for the east and Bartlesville in the west. Their proposal included these and other conditions[3] but the proposal did not pass, leaving all of the Pilgrim Bible colleges to fend for themselves in the coming decades, though the Gunsalus proposal was to become prophetic. 

 

Yet even in middle age the Pilgrims continued to grow. On their 50th birthday (1947) the Pilgrims had 811 churches in 24 districts plus 23 foreign missionary fields, and six bible schools. Denominational leaders may have been focused on addressing the health of the educational system but local churches continued to grow. During the sixteen year period 1946-1962 the Pilgrims saw a 46% increase in members (36,436 to 53,294). While this figure includes two tiny groups that merged with the Pilgrims,[4] most of this growth was still through evangelism and outreach. As the period closed the Pilgrims had a solid pension plan and numerous headquarters’ offices pumping out periodicals, programs and packets for local church programming. Local Pilgrims were building new churches and youth camps and youth conventions along with the Sunday school work was expanding fast. Pilgrims entered the tumultuous decade of 1960’s as a 53 year old church. They seemed more unified and solid than at any time in their history. They were expanding rapidly and were they a business instead of a church they surely would have been an attractive take-over target. Indeed in the 1960’s the “ecumenical spirit” was rising everywhere by 1962 when ten major denominations started exploring merger in the COCU. The Pilgrims had a history of mergers anyway so they were open to merger again, especially with their “sister church” the Wesleyan Methodist Church. But before they would merge the Pilgrims would face a fiscal crisis due to an investment by one of their general leaders, they would be faced with a massive civil rights movement that required some sort of response, and they would face secession, this time not in the west, but in New York.

 

To think about….

  1. The other two major holiness denominations (The Nazarenes and the Wesleyan Methodists) had earlier chosen to develop liberal Arts colleges.  Why do you think the Pilgrims were later in taking this step? What was the advantage of the move? Disadvantages?
  2. What do you think of the “move to the suburbs” buying land and erecting “more respectable” church buildings as Pilgrims followed their members out of town? How does this square to some of today’s young ministers who say they want to move back to the inner city—even “across the tracks” into the poorer sections of town? Was it a mistake to follow their people abandoning the poorer sections of town and catering to a more respectable clientele matching their own members?
  3. During this period virtually all of the Pilgrims “rescue homes” for pregnant mothers that had been formerly established by the Pilgrims disappeared—mostly due to regulations insisting on hospital-quality care. But, what other factors may be operating in these closures?
  4. How do you think the national economy played into shift like this? In the 1950’s a father could get a factory job (even a non-union job) that would support an entire family and in the process they could buy a new “tract home” at the edge of town. Were Pilgrims getting “too respectable?” how does this relate to John Wesley’s observation on the Methodists years before who had drifted up the socio-economic ladder and (Wesley believed) had lost something along the way. What changes happen when a denomination’s people gradually move up the social-economic ladder? Is this inevitable or can it be resisted?
  5. If you had been a member of the General Board at this time what would you have done when parents insisted on more liberal arts opportunities for their children? What would have been your solution to the too-many-Bible-schools problem? How would you have voted when Allentown made its bold proposal in 1960?

 

 

So what do you think?

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

 

Keith Drury   November 3, 2009

 www.TuesdayColumn.com

 

 

 

 

 

 


[1] Until 1952 the saintly workers at the Publishing House would often donate their time for free to work overtime to print the Sunday school literature on time. This eventually brought a legal suit from U. S. Department of labor since the literature was shipped across state lines. The argument against the Pilgrims was that employees could not donate their time but must be paid—and if they wanted to give that money they should do so after being paid. The suit was settled when the Publishing House discontinued the practice of permitting (expecting?) donated overtime. The rest of the headquarters was exempt from this settlement, but mostly ever since the entire headquarters has not allowed (or expected) hourly employees to donate overtime work to the church.

[2] General Superintends during this period included L. W. Sturck (1946-1955) William Neff (1946-1955) Melvin Snyder (1958-1968) R. G Flexon (1958-62), and Paul Wesphal Thomas (1962-1968)

[3] The conditions EPC’s President, R. D. Gunsalus proposed included also bringing Frankfort Pilgrim College and Southern Pilgrim College into the proposed four-way merger with Owosso, and if these schools refused, they would be demoted to become district schools. Further, if the denomination did not see fit to pass the proposal Eastern Pilgrim College then asked to be approved for a massive development plan to become a major school in the East, perhaps to rival Owosso. The GBA did not approve the mega-merger proposal, thus they approved EPC’s “Decade of progress.”  However, R. D. Gunsalus soon left EPC’s Presidency due to health and even under the able leadership of Melvin Dieter it never realized the full forward-thinking dreams of Gunsalus. Eastern Pilgrim College eventually became Penn-Wesleyan College then United Wesleyan College. United Wesleyan would never merge with Owosso. Owosso would merge with Marion College (now Indiana Wesleyan University). Eventually the two other schools Gunsalus had proposed join the four way merger (Frankfort and Southern Wesleyan) did indeed merge, but they were eventually folded into United Wesleyan which survived into the 1980’s and was eventually was closed (1989) by the General Board of Administration with its records going to Houghton College in New York.  The R. D. Gunsalus (Russel) in this story is the father of Wesleyan DS Harold Gunsalus and grandfather of his namesake “Russ” Gunsalus, the recent co-founder of the new seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University.

[4] The two small groups that merged with the Pilgrims during this time included the Holiness church of California (1947) which had started (like the Pilgrims) as an association in the 1880’s then later grew into a mini-denomination which included a camp meeting and a Bible school at El Monte, California. In 1947 this mini-denomination had 17 churches and about 300 members. Coming into the Pilgrim church from this merger were the Washburn family (later active in Wesleyan publishing) and Ray Chamberlain (later to become a Bishop of the United Methodist Church).  The other mini-denomination the Pilgrims absorbed in 1950 was A L Lutrull’s holiness independent “Gospel Tabernacle” in Evansville, Indiana along with several other associated churches which gave the Pilgrims several generations of the Lutrull family who still serve the Wesleyan church today.