Making Good the Claim: Holiness and Visible Unity in the Church of God Reformation Movement

by Rufus Burrow Jr., Barry L. Callen (Foreword by), Gary Agee (Afterword)

Overview

The Church of God Reformation Movement (founded in 1881) has the distinction of having been founded on the two core principles of holiness and visible unity. Standard histories of the group proudly argue that the founder and pioneers exhibited a zeal for interracial unity that began to wane only in the early years of the twentieth century. This book rejects that claim and argues instead that little to no extant hard evidence supports that view. Moreover, Making Good the Claim argues that while blacks eagerly joined the group, they did so not because whites expended much energy evangelizing among them but because they heard something deeper in the message of holiness and visible unity than God's expectation that members achieve spiritual and church unity. Unlike most whites, blacks interpreted the message to call for unity along racial lines as well. This book challenges members of the Church of God to begin forthwith to make good their historic claim about holiness and visible unity, particularly as it applies to interracial unity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498237666
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	02/16/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	646 KB

About the Author

Rufus Burrow Jr. is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Theological Social Ethics and Black Church Leadership at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He is the author or coauthor of fourteen books, including Martin Luther King Jr. and the Theology of Resistance (2015) and A Child Shall Lead Them (2014).
Rufus Burrow Jr. is a Martin Luther King Jr. scholar and Indiana Professor of Christian Thought, Emeritus, at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. In addition to his many publications on King, he has written much on ethical prophecy, including God and Human Responsibility: David Walker and Ethical Prophecy (2002), and coauthored, with Mary Alice Mulligan, Daring to Speak in God's Name: Ethical Prophecy in Ministry (2002) and Standing in the Margin (2004).
Barry L. Callen is retired Dean and Professor of Christian Studies at Anderson University. He has authored over fifty books, including Discerning the Divine (2004), Bible Stories for Strong Stomachs (2017), The Jagged Journey (2018), and God in the Shadows (2018).

Table of Contents

Foreword Barry L. Callen ix

Introduction xiii

1 The Church of God in Sociological Transformation 1

2 John Winebrenner and the Churches of God (General Eldership) 33

3 Daniel Sidney Warner: Charismatic Personality 62

4 The Next Generation: Seeking to Clarify Ideas and Practices 106

5 Continued Expansion and Diversification 153

6 Making Good the Claim: What Whites and Blacks Must Do 166

7 Conditions for Making Good the Claim about Holiness and Visible Unity 198

Afterword Gary B. Agee 241

Appendix A Letter from James Earl Massey 251

Appendix B Validity of Oral and Written History 255

Acknowledgments 263

Bibliography 269

Index 277