The Story of the 1896 Shearer Schoolhouse Revival at Barney Creek
Schearer Schoolhouse revival
In 1896, a revival was begun in a little schoolhouse near Murphy, North Carolina. Strong opposition to it arose almost immediately. When opponents of the revival tried to stop it violently, the people who lived in the humble home shown below, gave it protection. They had no way of knowing that the revival they protected, would bear the fruit of 15,000 churches being started around the world in the 100 years that followed.
When unknown & unheralded preachers, connected to the Fire-Baptized Holiness Association, William Martin, a Methodist preacher, Joe M. Tipton and Milton McNabb, members of the Baptist church, walked from their homes in Monroe County, TN to begin a revival at the Schearer Schoolhouse in Murphy County, North Carolina, they had no way of knowing that what would happen there would still be blessing people a hundred years later. Possibly as you read this true story, you may labor in a place that seems isolated or far removed from the light of recognition and popularity, but what you do faithfully day by day, is planting seed now that will rise up as blessings throughout the years to come. As the song says, “Little is much when God is in it.” Martin, Tipton and McNabb (to our knowledge there are no photos of them) began the revival with one motive, to share Christ with anyone who would listen so their neighbors to spend eternity in hell.
Though they preached simple sermons about Christ and living a holy life, all during the spring of 1896 and on into the summer, amazing and phenomenal Holy Spirit motivated events took place at the Schoolhouse revival. If someone had asked them what a “Pentecostal” was or how to be one, probably nobody there could have answered the question. They were Baptists, Methodists and prossibly a few Presbyterians attending the schoolhouse revival meetings. Once again, the Holy Spirit demonstrated that He moves where He wants upon the hearts that He chooses, regardless the person’s denominational membership or background.
DENOMINATIONAL MEN OPPOSED THEM
This is not intended to be against denominations. Much can be accomplished when people unite their efforts for spreading the Gospel. We should remember that what happened at the Schearer Schoolhouse, put them in direct conflict with their denominations. It was denominational men who opposed them. The disciples also had that conflict when they were before their organization’s Council, they said, ‘”We would obey God rather than man.”
Charles W. Conn, Church Historian for the Church of God and author of “Like A Mighty Army,” says that over 100 people received what is now referred to as “The Baptism of the Holy Spirit” at the Schearer Schoolhouse revival. That’s a big crowd when one considers the population was very sparse (it’s not too crowded in that area even today). Conn’s historical account says, “They laughed (interesting), rejoiced, praised, spoke in tongues and danced for joy.”
It is believed the Schearer Schoolhouse revival was the first time a group of people had received such blessings anywhere on this side of the Atlantic ocean. There had been scattered reports of individuals, some in the NY meetings held by Phoebe Palmer, that had experienced what people now call “speaking in tongues.”
C.T. Davidson, author of “Upon This Rock,” wrote this description. “In buggies and wagons, by horseback and walking, people came from miles around. The lives of hardhearted men and women were changed and sinners were constrained to make restitution as they sought forgiveness.” Davidson continued, “While many were blessed, others rejected the revival because it conflicted with their rituals, creeds and ecclesiasticism. Many faithful members were persecuted and excommunicated. One church excommunicated 30 of them at one meeting.”
Persecution became so intense until the revival was moved a short distance to a more secure log building. Some accounts say the sheriff, local ministers who opposed the revival and a mob of supporters, tore the building down log by log, piled them up and burned them. Without a place to worship, the meetings were finally moved to the tiny home of W.F. Bryant, a respected Christian leader in the community. Opponents came to his house and demanded that the meetings stop. They showered the home with stones and bullets but W.F. Bryant wouldn’t back down. Those who had received the blessings at the revival, began to believe then, as most Pentecostals do today, that what was happening among them first occurred in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost and was a continuation of what happened there (The fifth book of the New Testament; Acts, Chapters 1 & 2).
Described by Charles W. Conn as pivotal to Church of God formation, a 1896 revival in Cherokee County, North Carolina provoked charismatic phenomena now familiar in pentecostal circles. (1) It is known that the primary evangelists–Martin, Tipton, and McNabb–were connected to the Fire-Baptized Holiness Association. In view of the imposing number of instances of tongues-speech spread throughout nineteenth century North America, (2) the well-traveled reports of such activities in certain circles and especially the presence of Daniel Awrey at Beniah, Tennessee, it seems reasonable to suggest the possibility that William Martin, Joe Tipton, and/or Milton McNabb were exposed to at least stories about tongues-speech before the 1896 revival. (3)
1. Charles W. Conn, Our First 100 Years: 1886-1986 (Cleveland: Pathway Press, 1986) 17, goes on to ascribe importance to the event because it “prepared the way for the universal outpouring that followed ten years later.” This is a welcome appraisal in light of an earlier judgment often bound up in the North American church’s self-perception, namely [Charles W. Conn, Like A Mighty Army (Cleveland: Pathway Press, 1977) 25]: “… this was the first general outpouring that would continue unabated until it encompassed the Christian world.” Cf. Charles W. Conn, Like A Mighty Army: A History of the Church of God: Definitive Edition, 1886-1995 (Cleveland: Pathway Press, 1996) 29-31. The re-evaluation process can be followed in Charles W. Conn, Cradle of Pentecost (Cleveland: Pathway, 1981) 17, “If it was not the beginning of the modern Pentecostal Awakening, it was certainly the greatest prelude to it.” Then “Church of God” by Charles W. Conn in Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, ed. by Samuel S. Hill (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984) 160, calls this an “extraordinary event” “without precedent in the region.” On the other hand, Conn’s entry in the same volume on “A.J. Tomlinson,” repeats the older view espoused in Army. Conn’s piece on the revival in DPCM, 161, says the group “formulated no doctrine about it. They simply thanked God for the ‘blessing’ …” He opens the article by calling this “one of the earliest known outpourings of the Holy Spirit in America” in contrast to the closing statement that the “universal outpouring would begin ten years later, 1906, in far away California.” cf. E.L. Simmons, History of the Church of God (Cleveland: Church of God Publishing House, 1938) 11f; Crews, The Church of God, 10.
The official Church of God position seems entrenched in the earlier Conn view. During the 1995 Pentecostal World Conference in Jerusalem, Church of God started a celebration of their 100 years of pentecostal revival. This was to have culminated in the 1996 General Assembly of the Church of God. Meanwhile, this viewpoint continued to play a factor in the view expressed in the 1990’s Church of God web page (http://www.mindspring.com/~cog/cog.html) which originally trumpeted “America’s Oldest Pentecostal Church” then replaced with the equally loud “America’s First Pentecostal Church.”
Contrast this to the 2001 celebration in Los Angles of the birth of Pentecostism hosted by the Pentecostal World Conference, noting the planning began while the PWC was led by Dr. Ray H. Hughes of the Church of God. The Pentecostal Charismatic Churches of North America (PCCNA) signed on as partners and the North American Renewal Service Committee (NARSC) endorsed the event as an effort to celebrate all the offspring of the pentecostal revival.
2. Assemblies of God Heritage has analyzed several such examples like that of W. Jethro Walthall. See Glenn Gohr, “William Jethro Walthall and the Holiness Baptist Churches of Southwestern Arkansas,” Assemblies of God Heritage 12:3 (Fall 1992) 19f. Also: Mary Woodworth Etter, Signs and Wonders God Wrought in the Ministry for Forty Years (Indianapolis, 1916) 117; Wayne E. Warner, The Woman Evangelist (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1986) 70n33; Brumback, Suddenly, 13; Kendrick, Promise, 35; Frodsham, Signs, 11-17; Cyril Williams, Tongues, 50; Bresson, Ecstasy, 109; Worsfold, Charismatic, 82; Lewi Pethrus, A Spiritual Memoir (Plainfield: Logos, 1973) 20; Aimee Semple McPherson, Lost and Restored as cited by Robert Cornwall, “Primitivism and the Redefinition of Dispensationalism in the Theology of Aimee Semple McPherson,” Pneuma 14:1 (Spring 1992) 37; A.M. Kiergan, Historical Sketches of the Revival of True Holiness and Local Church Polity from 1865-1916 (Fort Scott: Church Advocate and Good Way, 1971) 31; Davidson, Rock 1:298; C.E. Jones, “Tongues-Speaking and The Wesleyan-Holiness Question for Assurance of Sanctification,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 22:2 (Fall 1989) 120.
3. “History of Pentecost,” The Faithful Standard 1:6 (September 1922) 6, noted William Hamby as the fourth evangelist. Also Nettie Bryant, Interview p. 2, and W.F. Bryant, Interview p. 2. R.G. Spurling, Jr., married Barbara Hamby in 1876. So McCauley, “Appalachian Mountain Religion,” 360.
A BAND OF BELIEVERS on the BANKS of BARNEY CREEK
By Dallas Bogan (Reprinted with Permission. This article was published in the LaFollette Press)
While many churches in the South had already established their existence and their doctrines, an invitation went forward to those who wanted to fully establish the readings and beliefs of the Bible as it was written. With this request a small group of nine believers formed the Christian Union on the banks of Barney Creek in Monroe County, Tennessee, on August 19, 1886. Activities of this joining together on a hot scorching day in the Unicoi Mountains in eastern Tennessee are not known to any degree, but their mission was fully accomplished. R.G. Spurling was selected as pastor of the church while Richard Spurling, his father, moderated the proceedings.
The small congregation knew it was futile to “reform” their own existing churches and so decided to “form” their own church. The intent was to re-establish sound scriptual doctrines of the Bible, and to promote evangelism and Christian service.
Barney Creek still remains a small stream that flows quietly through the mountains. Livelihood in this part of the Appalachian Mountains has still much to be desired. However, early folks in this part of the mountains who sought God found the New Testament Christianity and gathered to later become the Church of God, as we know it today. At a later time the experiences of sanctification and Spirit baptism were added.
This vision of Christian unification was the spiritual desire of R.G. Spurling and his father Richard Spurling, the former being a licensed minister in the Missionary Baptist Church.
Richard Spurling was an ordained elder and began to seek God regarding the abuses he saw in the local churches around him. He was quite perterbed concerning the spiritual neglect and ill treatment he witnessed in these congregations. He was also troubled with challenging traditions and creeds that he deemed a hardship for God’s people.
Calvin, Luther and other famous reformers had brought about many changes to the church such as a “right belief” rather than a “true relationship” with Jesus Christ. These gallant reformers’ changes concentrated more-or-less on creed rather than the leading of the Holy Spirit and one’s own principles.
The focal point of R.G. Spurling was Christianity and the law of love rather than creed or doctrine, in which the latter could possibly divide Christians. He believed that the New Testament was the “only infallible rule of faith and practice” and contains everything “necessary for salvation and church government.”
Spurling was a part of the broad re-establishment that moved through the church world in the United States during the 19th century. At this time, the Christian Union, similar to other groups such as the Churches of Christ and Churches of God (Anderson, Indiana), likened to reinstate New Testament Christianity. The New Testament was given different emphasis by these groups, but all wanted to restore some part of the apostolic church. Some of these groups focused on government, some on everyday life, some on the message, but all longed to return to contemporary Christian life, an important item that had been lost in the superseding centuries. Spurling saw in some teachings that a coarseness and individuality subdued the Gospel and led to dividing the body of Christ more so than to Christian unity.
A.J. Tomlinson, a friend of R.G. Spurling’s, wrote that Spurling preached whenever and wherever he had an opportunity. Tomlinson wrote that Spurling “in this way the minds of the people were continually agitated, and gradually prepared for the work of the Spirit that was to follow. For ten years this servant of God prayed, wept and continued his ministry against much opposition and under peculiar difficulties, before seeing much fruits of his labor.”
Benjamin Hardin Irwin acquired a more intense tactic to the Christian life and taught a “third blessing” called “the fire.” He structured, in Iowa, in 1895, the Fire-Baptized Holiness Associations, which later extended around the United States. During the next year he preached in South Carolina and Georgia. He had, by 1898, organized an international Fire-Baptized Holiness Association in Anderson, South Carolina, and during this time he had published a periodical called “Live Coals of Fire.” His message was heard and accepted in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina where Spurling was ministering.
In 1896, persuaded by Irwin’s movement, four men began a revival in the Shearer Schoolhouse near Camp Creek in Cherokee County, North Carolina. William Martin, a Methodist, along with Baptists Joe. M. Tipton, Elias Milton McNabb, and William Hanby, preached a ten-day meeting that attracted much attention to the area. Tomlinson states that “they preached a clean gospel, and urged the people to seek and obtain sanctification subsequent to justification. They prayed, fasted and wept before the Lord until a great revival was the result.”
Twenty-one years after that infamous meeting at Barney Creek, and the formation of the Christian Union, the ever-growing movement would establish themselves as the Church of God. The beckoning call of the original Barney Creek meeting has now established a worldwide membership of over 5 million in more than 145 countries.
Reports of Church of God revivals find that hundreds are getting saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, more so now that at any other time. World evangelism is the call of the Church of God through descipleship and prayer, as well as committment.
