ABSTRACT
In 1889, William Christian, a tall, handsome, thirty-three-year-old former slave, renounced his identity as a Baptist minister. Formerly an itinerant who had preached for years in the small towns and cotton farms strung across the Arkansas Delta, he now embarked on a new and different path revealed to him in a recent dream. He devoted himself completely to organizing a new type of black church modeled directly on the biblical life of Jesus and the apostles in the hope of recapturing the “true” spirit of Christianity. He called it the “Church of the Living God” and founded it in Wrightsville, Arkansas, a dusty village just east of Little Rock. Like most pastors of any denominational stripe, he strictly forbade members from using liquor, alcohol, tobacco, and profanity. But Christian’s other rules and regulations were foreign to most nearby residents. He referred to his church as a “temple,” his followers as “black Jews,” and his lieutenants as “chiefs.” He celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday. And he instituted a regular foot washing service because “Jesus had done it.”
