Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith

Heritage

Bishop Robert Clarence Lawson, converted and formed under Garfield T. Haywood in Indianapolis, came east and founded Refuge Temple in Harlem in 1919, organizing the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith around it. He planted congregations up the Eastern Seaboard and into the Caribbean, founded schools and a publishing arm, and led the church until his death in 1961; successors including Bishop William L. Bonner carried it worldwide. Two significant bodies later grew out of it — the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith in the 1930s and Bible Way in 1957. RCMS 2020 counts 527 US congregations.

Theological family

Apostolic (Oneness) Pentecostal: one God manifest in Jesus Christ, baptism in Jesus' name, Spirit baptism with tongues, and strict holiness teaching. Lawson also held distinctive positions his church has largely kept — among them reserving the pastorate to men and opposing remarriage after divorce. Trinitarian bodies confess the Godhead differently; this record reports the church's own teaching.

Who decides what

Episcopal: a board of apostles and bishops with a presiding apostle at its head, congregations served by pastors under episcopal appointment and covering, and an annual international convocation that functions as the church's great family reunion.

What a first-time visitor would find

Worship in the grand Black apostolic mold: Hammond organ and choirs, congregational singing that needs no invitation, concerted prayer, tongues and dancing before the Lord, and long, celebratory preaching. The convocation seasons and consecration services mark the church's year.

What it has always cared about

Harlem as a sending city; music — its congregations have been a training ground for generations of gospel musicians; rigorous holiness; Caribbean and African missions; and institution-building, from schools to presses, done by a church that owned its own buildings early.

Its gift to the wider church

A model of Black apostolic institution-building: Lawson's church demonstrated that a storefront revival could become schools, publishing houses, and a communion spanning continents — and its musical culture has enriched the whole American gospel tradition.

Commonly confused with

With the Church of God in Christ — also historically Black and Pentecostal, but trinitarian and far larger; with its own offshoots, Bible Way and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith; and with the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the body from whose orbit Lawson himself came.

Range of views inside it

Range from cathedral-scale urban churches to small congregations, and in how the founder's strictest holiness positions are applied congregation to congregation; the doctrinal core is uniform.

Where Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith churches are on the map

1 Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

• New York — 1