No time to wallow in the mire

Last updated on: March 7, 2015 at 5:56 pm by Fred Clark

No time to wallow in the mire 2015-03-07T17:56:34-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I learn via Eric/DN that there’s another fun variation of the What Song Was No. 1 on Your Birthday? site. This one tries to calculate what song was playing on the radio when you were conceived.

Fun stuff, although I’m doubtful about my result. I’m sure that many children were conceived to “Light My Fire,” but the idea that my parents were ever bopping along to The Doors is, well, inconceivable.

My mom’s favorite radio station was WAWZ — Zarephath, “Your Voice of Faith and Inspiration.” They didn’t offer a lot that would pass for mood music. It’s apparently switched over to a “contemporary” Christian music format these days, but back in late 1967 it was instrumental hymns and “teaching” programs.

So, no, I don’t imagine that Jim Morrison and rock radio played any role in my conception. If the radio was playing at all, it would have been the gentle, dulcet tones of Robert A. Cook saying, “Until I meet you once again by way of radio, beloved, walk with the King today, and be a blessing.”

Mom tuned in to listen to Dr. Cook every day, usually turning the radio off after his show, when Harold Camping came on. But she always listened to WAWZ in the kitchen. My parents bedroom radio was usually tuned to 1010 WINS, the all-news station out of New York. (I suppose their famous slogan — “Give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world” — was probably the basis for an obvious joke that helped conceive as many children as “Light My Fire” ever did.)

I can’t say that WAWZ’s broadcasts did anything for my love life, but I did once exchange some fraught notes with a girl in the radio station’s parking lot. That lot was adjacent to the gymnasium of the Zarephath Bible Institute, which was where my Christian high school basketball team played our home games.

Zarephath, New Jersey, is an odd little place. It’s named after a Phoenician city in what is now Lebanon. In the biblical book of 1 Kings, the prophet Elijah finds refuge in the home of a widow in Zarephath. (She shares the last of her food with him and he miraculously multiplies her food. It’s a sweet story.)

Zarephath, N.J., was founded by Bishop Alma Bridwell White in 1901 as a home base for her Pillar of Fire Church. She started the Bible institute there in 1908 to train missionaries in her holiness tradition and her particular brand of anti-Penetcostal Pentecostalism.

Oh, and also to promote her gospel of biblical inerrancy, justification by faith alone, entire sanctification, and white supremacy. See, for all her talk about Pentecost, Bishop Alma White didn’t have the first goddam clue as to what Pentecost actually means, as her Wikipedia entry summarizes:

Alma Bridwell White (June 16, 1862 – June 26, 1946) was the founder and a bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. In 1918, she became the first female bishop in the United States. She was noted for her association with the Ku Klux Klan and her feminism, anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-Pentecostalism, racism, and hostility to immigrants.

White’s “association with” the Klan wasn’t a matter of passing acquaintance. It was a formal alliance committed to a shared agenda. The first female bishop in the United States — White was consecrated in the Methodist church in 1918 — provides a classic example of How To Not Be Intersectional. Her warped idea of intersectionality is perhaps best summarized by the title of an essay in one of her books, “The Ku Klux Klan and Women’s Causes.” That’s from her 1925 volume, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, which included a glowing introduction by the Grand Dragon of the New Jersey Klan.

Here’s more from White’s Wikipedia entry:

As a feminist, White was a forceful advocate of equality for white Protestant women.

Bishop Alma Bridwell White Supremacist.

However, she was also uncompromising in her persistent and powerful attacks of religious and racial minorities, justifying both equality for white Protestant women and inequality for minorities as biblically mandated. While the vast majority of her most vicious political attacks targeted the Roman Catholic Church, she also promoted antisemitism, white supremacy, and intolerance of certain immigrants.

Under White’s leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, the Pillar of Fire Church developed a close and public partnership with the Ku Klux Klan that was unique for a religious denomination. She assessed the Klan as a powerful force that could help liberate white Protestant women, while simultaneously keeping minorities in their place. Her support of the Klan was extensive. She allowed and sometimes participated in Klan meetings and cross burnings on some of the numerous Pillar of Fire properties. She published The Good Citizen, a monthly periodical which strongly promoted the Klan and its agenda. Additionally, she published three books, The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy, Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty, and Heroes of the Fiery Cross, which were compendiums of the essays, speeches and cartoons that had originally been published in The Good Citizen.

Alma Bridwell White died in 1946. Forty years later, when I was playing basketball in her religious community’s gymnasium there in Zarephath, I had no idea that I was visiting the site of Klan rallies, cross-burnings, and terrorist propaganda. White’s Pillar of Fire church seemed just like any other large evangelical church in central Jersey — just like any other large evangelical church in America.

By the 1980s, nobody in Zarephath was preaching, as White once did, that “This is white man’s country by every law of God and man, and was so determined from the beginning of Creation.” Their preaching was the same as every other evangelical community’s preaching: Salvation by faith, biblical inerrancy, the urgency of evangelism to save sinners from Hell.

And none of that has anything to do with Alma White’s ferocious racism or her alliance with terrorists or her deformed gospel of white supremacy, right?

P.S. My old high school built its own gymnasium in 1990 and started playing home games at home. The Pillar of Fire church finally repudiated its alliance with the Klan in 1996. And the Pillar of Fire’s Zarephath site along the Raritan Canal was destroyed by flooding and condemned after Hurricane Irene in 2011.

evangelicals

racism

religious right

Previous Post

March 6, 2015

Left Behind Classic Fridays, No. 23: 'Scream morality'

Next Post

March 8, 2015 Sunday WTF?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the Greek word "makarios", used in the Beatitudes, mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Blessed Peaceful Humble Holy