The 1917 FBI Files of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason

The 1917 FBI Files of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason
Author: Elijah Hill
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2015-05-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9781512090543

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason was the first denominational leader investigated by the FBI in 1917. Charles Mason a 20th Century icon and an African American religious organization's change leader in the beginning 20th Century Pentecostal Movement as it relates to his First Amendment rights of the Freedom of Religion in the Constitution of the United States. He approached the United States government during World War I's 1917 Selective Service (Draft) law to negotiate his organization's civil liberties as Christians to uphold their religious freedom as conscientious objectors to World War I's military draft laws. The purpose of this historical narrative is to describe how during the Jim Crow system in America, this small newly-formulated African American denomination and their national leader Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, faced seemingly insurmountable governmental harassment, persecution, and criminal prosecution from 1917-1920 for requesting religious liberties exemption and succeeded in court during World War I's Selective Service military draft laws.

The Missing Link of the American Civil Rights Movement

The Missing Link of the American Civil Rights Movement
Author: Elijah L. Hill
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2016-05-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9781533352651

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, in 1895, co-founded the Church of God in Christ organization. Mason utilized a socially transformational leadership style by ordaining whites and blacks from 1917-1940 during this Pre-Civil Rights period in America, 40 years before the modern Civil Rights Movement. Mason had essentially accomplished in America what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had done in India, by developing a non-violent and pacifistic philosophy (Damm, 2011; Hill, 2013; Mehta, 2010). Bishop C.H. Mason was the first African American religious leader to have an FBI investigation. This investigation was to directly suppress this historical body of scholarly knowledge through governmental harassment suppressing these earlier historical themes from 1917-1930s. Because of Mason's threats, imprisonment, and persecution he chose to implement an accommodationalist approach to Civil Rights and non-violent protest activism. Therefore, many historians and sociologists believe that historically the Church of God in Christ was not involved in Civil Rights in America. This research project will argue that there existed similar themes prior to this covert and suppressive FBI investigation like; presidential interaction, passive resistance, white, and black interracial collaboration, and challenging American jurisprudence that were similar themes within the later Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (Chism, 2013, Hill, 2013; Schlabach, & Hughes, 1987; U.S. War Department & FBI Files, 1918). It is not known how Bishop Charles Harrison Mason institutionalized a framework for early Civil Rights success 40 years before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s (Chism, 2013, Hill, 2013). Daniels (2003) stated, "While black Pentecostals are not renowned for being at the forefront of protest demonstrations, saints did indeed participate in political protest campaigns during the Civil Rights era" (p. 164). Mason's pacifist, non-violent philosophy prior to his FBI investigation impacted protest activism towards three legislative laws in United States history including Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 , the Selective Service Act of 1917, and the Sedition Act of 1918 (Chism, 2013, Hill, 2013). Williams stated in his study surrounding the purpose of the Black Church, that, "Since its beginnings, the Black Church participated in one form or another in social, judicial, economic or religious life of the Black community" (Williams, 2011, p. 4).In 1917, Bishop Charles Mason wrote the first integration by-law within his African American religious organization called "Equal in Power and Authority" stating that white and blacks had the right to assemble in public. When Congress implemented the first draft law called the Selective Service Act of 1917, President Woodrow Wilson invited Mason to Washington, D.C. to meet with the War Department creating the first conscientious objection as a pacifist relating to religious exemption in America (Hill, 2013; Muñoz, 2008; Schlabach & Hughes, 1987).

With Signs Following

With Signs Following
Author: Raynard D. Smith
Publisher: Chalice Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2015-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0827243219

Born to ex-slaves in Reconstruction-era Tennessee, Bishop Charles Harrison Mason had a vision for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) that thrives today in an international Pentecostal church with more than five million members. With Signs Following: The Life and Ministry of Charles Harrison Mason examines the social, cultural, and religious aspects of Bishop Mason's leadership and creative genius in establishing COGIC as a distinct Black Church tradition. With Signs Following shares four decades of research from leading scholars that addresses the sociological, theological, psychological, social-ethical, and historical perspectives of COGIC and Mason's ministry. Contributors: Christopher Brennan Ithiel Clemmons David D. Daniels III Glenda Williams Goodson Robert R. Owens Craig Scandrett-Leatherman Raynard D. Smith Frederick L. Ware

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason and Those Sanctified Women!

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason and Those Sanctified Women!
Author: Glenda Goodson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2018-08-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781725733220

Bishop Mason and Those Sanctified Women! The Church of God in Christ Offers Paradigm for The Transformation of the Church Woman's Ministries Through The Positive Influence of C.O.G.I.C.'s Chief Apostle provides a view of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason's leadership style. In the early 20th Century, he legitimized the import of their work in giving women opportunity, bypassed conventional patriarchal wisdom in his assignment to women, succeeded in bridging dichotomous societal beliefs and values, and allowed him to use those women who availed themselves to leadership. He also transformed the male leadership vision to include the talents of these women. Bishop C.H. Mason seemed to have built a kind of ecosystem where the ideas, goals, and desires of the organization's female constituent could grow and flourish. Without Mason's genius of developing strategic alliances through a strong Women's Department, the Church of God in Christ may not have been the paradigmatic organization it is today. In Sanctified Women, the stories of Black women working in the areas of education, building medical clinics, schools and churches on foreign field and establishing homeland churches display powerful collaboration between the Church of God in Christ founder and others who would promote and defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Fire Spreads

The Fire Spreads
Author: Randall J. Stephens
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674026728

Today pentecostalism claims nearly 500 million followers worldwide. An early stronghold was the American South, where believers spoke in unknown tongues, worshipped in free-form churches, and broke down social barriers that had long divided traditional Protestants. Thriving denominations made their headquarters in the region and gathered white and black converts from the Texas plains to the Carolina low country. Pentecostalism was, in fact, a religious import. It came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. Adherents formed new churches in the Jim Crow South and held unconventional beliefs about authority, power, race, and gender. Such views set them at odds with other Christians in the region. By 1900 nearly all southern holiness folk abandoned mainline churches and adopted a pessimistic, apocalyptic theology. Signs of the last days, they thought, were all around them. The faith first took root among anonymous religious zealots. It later claimed southern celebrities and innovators like televangelists Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, T. D. Jakes, and John Hagee; rock-and-roll icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard; and, more recently, conservative political leaders such as John Ashcroft. With the growth of southern pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement moved cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different. Many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end. Yet a growing number did so as active political conservatives.

Frank Avant Vs. C. H. Mason

Frank Avant Vs. C. H. Mason
Author: Deacon Calvin S. Mcbride
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2009-05-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781440143113

Without a doubt, Frank Avant vs. C. H. Mason is the most critical juncture in the entire history of the Church of God in Christ (COGIe. The Pentecostal-Holiness Movement of the early twentieth century began with an aggressive legal confrontation between two of the movement's leading African-American pastors and their adherents. Charles P. Jones and Charles H. Mason's up-close and personal relationship was torn apart over their fundamental differences of the baptism in the Holy Ghost and speaking in tongues. Up until the Azusa Street Revival, Jones and Mason shared an extraordinary profundity for each other; and their relationship was maximized when Jones united Mason and Lelia Washington in marriage in 1905. In 1907, Jones filed a lawsuit in Memphis against Mason after leading the way in having Mason excommunicated from the General Ministerial Council of Holiness Churches and Meetings for proliferating speaking in tongues. Jones and Mason founded the organization in 1897 after both of them were expelled from the Baptist denomination for teaching holiness. When Mason lost the case in Memphis Chancery Court, it was merely an opportunity to lead the Jones faction to theRed Sea. Mason and his attorney, Elder Robert E. Hart, appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court in Jackson, where the judges decided in their favor, devastating the Jones faction and their attorney, Benjamin F. Booth.