Centennial Notes

Year: 1898
First Pentecostal Holiness congregation organized in Goldsboro, NC

Key here was A.B. Crumpler of Clinton, Sampson County, North Carolina. He was a member of the Clinton Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who did not receive the doctrine and experience of sanctification from his home church in North Carolina, but in Bismark, Missouri under the ministry of Beverly Carradine, D.D., during 1890.⁽¹⁴⁾

He engineered an organizational meeting on May 15, 1897⁽¹⁵⁾ at the Magnolia, North Carolina Methodist Church. About a score of ministers and several dozen laypersons gathered in this small town to organize the North Carolina Holiness Association.

Crumpler bitterly attacked the Methodist church. It is reported that at one time he gave the following description: "the old theatre-going, whiskey-drinking, card-playing, tobacco-using, secret lodge-loving, oyster-frying, ice cream supper, dancing church."⁽¹⁶⁾ And apparently when he preached, his sermons were heard loud and clear. A later head of the PHC, A.H. Butler, described Crumpler as an outstanding orator who seemed to be endowed with an unusual unction and his voice could be heard on a clear night for a distance of 3 to 4 miles.⁽¹⁷⁾

Crumpler printed his criticism in his The Holiness Advocate, started April 15, 1901 in Lumberton, North Carolina. He was sensitive to charges against the holiness movement, especially in his area. Some of those reports were that these "sanctified preachers carried along women who were emotionally inclined, and when the preachers would slap their hands and jump into the air, these women would yell and scream at the top of their voice." "All of the leaders ... were accused of carrying some kind of magic powers ..." "They (also) said that nobody but poor white people and Negroes would have anything to do with such a religion." " ... and when a preacher started preaching against tobacco he had quit preaching and had gone to meddling ..."⁽¹⁸⁾

In response Crumpler wrote an article titled "The Church of the Holy Refrigerator." In it he quoted Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop Candler's remarks in which he ridiculed "perfect love" while "theatre-going, card-playing, godless church members showed their approval by laughing aloud, and to think Mr. Candler gets paid $3,500 per year to fight holiness."⁽¹⁹⁾

Accordingly, after a particularly successful campaign in Goldsboro, Crumpler, who had already officially separated himself from the Methodist church, decided to form a new independent congregation. In response to a call for organization, 13 people, four clergy, nine lay, banded themselves together on November 4, 1898 to form the new organization which they chose to call The Pentecostal Holiness Church.⁽²⁰⁾ They were not the only holiness group of the time to incorporate the word "pentecostal" into the name of their organization. But Crumpler rejoined the Methodist church, and the local church eventually disbanded.⁽²¹⁾