Charles H. Mason

Charles Harrison Mason was born on September 8, 1864, near Memphis, Tennessee, on a farm called the Prior Farm. His parents had been slaves, and he was born in the last year of the Civil War. His family were devout Baptists, and Charles grew up in poverty in the years after emancipation. When yellow fever swept through the region, his family fled to Arkansas, where his father died. As a boy he was baptized and was convicted of his need of a deeper life with God. He suffered from a long illness, and in 1880 he said he was healed.

He was licensed to preach in 1890 and studied for a short time at Arkansas Baptist College. He left because he found the teaching too far from the faith he knew. He turned to the holiness movement, with its call to a sanctified life. In 1897 he and Charles Price Jones, a fellow preacher, were led by God to organize a body of believers in Lexington, Mississippi, which they called the Church of God in Christ. The name came to Mason in a vision, he said, as he walked the streets of Little Rock.

In 1907 he traveled to Los Angeles to see the revival that was taking place on Azusa Street, led by William Seymour. He stayed for five weeks. He was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. He returned to Memphis convinced that the Pentecostal experience was true and began to preach it. This led to a break with Jones, who did not accept the doctrine of tongues. The church divided, and Mason was left with the name and a smaller group. He called a convocation that year and was chosen as the head of the Pentecostal body. He was named General Overseer, and later Chief Apostle.

In those years, Mason had a gift for organization. He built the church into a national body with local churches, bishops and a system of conventions. Many white Pentecostal ministers were ordained by him in the early days, since there was no other Pentecostal body to give them credentials. In 1914, at a meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a group of white ministers formed the Assemblies of God, and the fellowship divided along racial lines. Mason grieved over the split. He believed that the Spirit had been poured out on all people alike.

He was a man of conviction who held that Christians should not take up arms. During the First World War, his stand for peace brought him into trouble with the authorities, and federal agents investigated him on suspicion of disloyalty. He was arrested and spent some time under suspicion, though he was not convicted. He lived simply and gave his life to the work. He taught that holiness is a gift of God and that the church should be a place of worship, joy and discipline.

He was not without critics. Some people objected to his strong control over the church, and the church had its internal disputes over questions of authority and doctrine. He was also a man of his time, and his leadership was shaped by the harsh realities of life under segregation. He did what he could within them.

He died on November 17, 1961, in Detroit, at the age of ninety-seven. By then the Church of God in Christ had grown into one of the largest Pentecostal bodies in the world, with millions of members. His life shows how a son of freed slaves, with little schooling, can be used of God to build a church that endures.