Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)

Heritage

Daniel Sidney Warner, an Indiana holiness preacher, came to believe in 1881 that sectarian division itself was sin — that "the church of God" is simply all the saved, and that no denomination may draw a smaller circle. He and a handful of others "came out" of the bodies they belonged to, expecting not to found another one; the Gospel Trumpet, the movement's paper, traveled with a publishing company that settled at Anderson, Indiana in 1906, which is why a movement that refuses denominational identity is known, reluctantly, by the parenthesis Church of God (Anderson, Indiana). It remains a movement rather than a formal denomination: no formal membership, congregations voluntarily cooperating through Church of God Ministries and Anderson University. RCMS 2020 counted 1,944 congregations.

Theological family

Wesleyan-holiness: salvation by grace, entire sanctification as the Spirit's work, and the unity of all believers as a truth to be lived now — with believers' baptism by immersion, the Lord's supper, and feetwashing practiced as ordinances. It is emphatically not Pentecostal; speaking in tongues is not among its teachings.

Who decides what

Congregational to the root: each congregation is self-governing, ministers credential through state and national assemblies, and the general assembly speaks to, never for, the churches. There is nothing to join except Christ — the movement keeps no membership rolls, holding that God adds to the church.

What a first-time visitor would find

A visitor finds warm evangelical worship, traditional or contemporary by congregation, with a strong gospel-song inheritance — this movement's songwriters include Bill and Gloria Gaither — and preaching that still sounds the old note: the church is one, and holiness is for now.

What it has always cared about

Christian unity as holiness applied to the church; the rejection of sectarian tests; camp meetings, with Anderson's annual convention long the family reunion; and a singing tradition that carried its theology — the movement's hymn heritage proclaims one church, blood-bought and whole.

Its gift to the wider church

The plea this whole map echoes: Warner's people insisted that the walls between Christians are humanly built and divinely unauthorized, and then spent a century singing it — through the Gaither catalog, sung today in every tradition's pews, the Church of God (Anderson) put the unity of believers into the mouths of Christians who have never heard of Anderson, Indiana.

Commonly confused with

This is the most collision-prone church title in America, and the distinctions matter: the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) is Pentecostal; the Church of God in Christ is Pentecostal; the Church of God (Holiness) is a separate Kansas City-centered body; the Churches of God, General Conference (Winebrenner) is the body Warner actually left; the Church of God (Seventh Day) is sabbatarian. Anderson is Holiness, non-Pentecostal, and older than most of its namesakes.

Range of views inside it

Congregations range from revivalist-traditional to fully contemporary, and from those who cherish the come-out heritage to those who simply operate as community evangelical churches; the movement's non-creedal openness makes for genuine local variety.

Where Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) churches are on the map

7 Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) congregations appear on The Church Map, across 7 states.

• Idaho — 1
• Illinois — 1
• Louisiana — 1
• Michigan — 1
• Oregon — 1
• Pennsylvania — 1
• West Virginia — 1

Moments this body was part of

• 1867–1894 — The holiness revival

  A renewed hunger for Wesley's "entire sanctification" — stirred for decades by Phoebe Palmer's Tuesday meetings in New York — organized itself at a camp meeting in Vineland, New Jersey in 1867. Over the next generation the holiness movement spread through and then beyond Methodism, birthing the Church of God (Anderson), the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan and Free Methodist streams, and the Salvation Army's American work.