Preston L. Allen

God Awaits the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer
Who Walked Upon the Waters!

(From the novel, The Faithful)

Up until 1867, according to Brother Morrisohn's unfinished book, there was no Holy Rollers Tabernacle of Faith.

For that matter, there was no Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters, either. There was only the Antioch Faith Church founded by Cuthbert Rogers and Elwyn James the Younger in 1815, at Antioch, Virginia.

The anti-tobacconist movement was at its peak, and the Antioch Faith Church was only the most vocal of the several churches founded on the anti-tobacconist chant: "Tobacco kills the soil. Plant corn, plant wheat." Sometime just before the Civil War, the Antioch Faith Church became divided on a number of issues: Should women be ministers? Is the pocket watch jewelry? Do slaves have souls?

The sect, its members now calling themselves the "Faithful," had about ten churches nationwide at the time, but it was expanding rapidly, especially around Virginia and Maryland. The more conservative faction, led by Bishop Curtis Rogers, titular head of the sect and eldest son of co-founder Cuthbert, believed that women could prophesy, but not preach. At least he had never seen or heard of a woman preacher in the Bible, and "the Bible," he insisted, "was our guide." For indeed, 1 Timothy chapter 2 says that "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." Certainly, there was a place for women among the Faithful—Sunday school teachers (of children), ushers, musicians, a few gifted ones as missionaries or as nurses in the hospital he planned to build—but not in the pulpit. "What would they think of next? Women in pants?"

Concerning the pocket watch, Bishop Rogers argued that "as long as it remained without the gaudy, flamboyant appendage of the chain which announced its attachment to the vest or to the outer coat, there was nothing at all wrong with a watch that fit into a man's pocket." It was just another watch in a hand, and Christians need often be about their Father's business in a prompt fashion. Add the chain, however, and suddenly a humble Christian becomes a pompous fop attempting to draw attention to his worldly accouterments. "What about the Lord's work? How much attention does it get from the Christian with the pocket watch? Scarce little."

Concerning the souls of slaves, Bishop Rogers wrote, "While there are a few notable Freedmen who have learned how to read and have become versed in matters spiritual and have erected a tin roof and placed barrels and packing crates beneath it to sit upon and have assembled with their brethren together, we must understand that they are only playing at church. They are only parroting the piety of their masters, who have passed on to them this most basic inclination of a civilized people: the need to worship the one true God. Release the barefoot minister back into the jungles of Africa and see how much preaching he does. Remember that without the civilizing influence of his white master, the African worshipped spiders and twigs and invisible spirits. This lack of a soul is the true curse of Ham. Nevertheless, the slave is to be well treated, for he is numbered among the meek who shall inherit the earth, as there is no place for him in heaven. His reward is his great strength and health with which the Lord has blessed him. His God-given nature is to be loyal and industrious in the service of his master."

"Obviously, on the matter of slaves," Buford Morrisohn editorialized, "the devil had cast a veil over Bishop Rogers's eyes."

The opposing faction was led by Sister Dorothea Lovell Dunbar, the prophet, and Brother Sanders Q. Dunbar, her husband, from their branch, the Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke, Virginia. First of all, the Dunbars believed that there was no biblical support for the ban on women preachers. They cited as examples the contributions of Ruth, Esther, Mary, and Martha in the Bible, and especially Deborah, who was a judge of tribal Israel. Much to the chagrin of the church elders, reports kept coming to them that Sister Dorothea was prophesying about a war with fire-breathing flying machines that would end all wars and she was regularly preaching from her husband’s Roanoke pulpit at Sunday meetings.

Furthermore, the Dunbars believed that too much was being made of the evils of the pocket watch. A watch was a watch. A heart was a heart. God watched the heart. If your heart was clean, you could wear what you wanted. If your heart was impure, modest dress wouldn't get you into the Kingdom.

At the Convention of 1859 in Antioch, Bishop Rogers asked the Dunbars, "Are you asserting then that a woman can wear anything, even trousers, and still enter the Kingdom?"

Brother Dunbar was reported to have responded, "If the woman wears trousers in order to lure a man into her den of iniquity, if a woman wears trousers as a sign that she is willing to lie with her own kind after the fashion of Sodom, or if a woman wears trousers to be as a man, then no, she shall not enter the Kingdom. If the woman's heart is impure to begin with, the trousers are a mere manifestation of her low nature. But I have seen many a Godly country wife wearing trousers at work in the fields beside her husband because they, the trousers, are the proper garments for that kind of work."

Bishop Rogers responded: "I suppose, Brother Dunbar, that you have not heard of Deuteronomy 22:5."
It was not reported how the Dunbars responded. Here the debate on the pocket watch and trousers ended. Give God's word the victory!

Sister Dorothea's saving grace was that she was very active in the abolitionist movement, and she fervently believed that slaves did indeed have souls. She believed that all slaves should be freed immediately. Her home and the Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke chapel were believed to be stations of the underground railroad, though this was never proven. Before the war, she routinely traveled into the deep South, purchased slaves at auction ("a revolting but necessary practice," she wrote), and took them to the North where she freed them. Many set up homes on the Dunbars' large estate and worked for Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke as carpenters, masons, black smiths, or general laborers. One among them, Gunther, she took on as a favorite. During the war, it was said, she smuggled guns and explosives to incite slave insurgency. After the war, she opened the doors of Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke to the freed men and women who came to her city seeking work, spiritual fulfillment, and relief from privation. This was around late 1866 or early 1867, and Brother Sanders Dunbar, who was much older than the thirtyish Sister Dorothea, had been bed-ridden and ailing for about a year. He would die soon. Now he was pastor in name only of Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke, where the question of the woman as preacher was moot, as Sister Dorothea was de facto leader and preacher of the congregation of some three-hundred souls, many of them freed slaves.

Bishop Rogers wrote a letter urging that Sister Dorothea build a separate house of worship for the Freedmen. He feared a torch-wielding mob would attack and burn the Roanoke outpost killing Freedman and white man alike as had happened recently in South Carolina and West Virginia.

Sister Dorothea stated in her response that the freed men and women already had a house of worship, the same Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke, Virginia, where all children of God, or Ham, were free to attend. None of the locals would attack the church, for the locals were all members. There were some problems, but all were learning to get along together. It was a glory to behold black face and white face singing praises to the Most High God in unity and peace. Give God the Glory!

There were reports already of tambourines and drums and rolling about on the floor, pocket watches, and women in pants. Her freed man Gunther, it was said, was sometimes allowed to preach from the pulpit to the mixed congregation. Sister Dorothea prophesied that "the Lord will return on January 1, 1870, and take his children home." The great war to end all wars with the fire-breathing flying machines would begin at dawn the next day and last for 666 days.

But the veil over Bishop Rogers's eyes had long been removed, and he was doing all he could to make up for his past errors in judgment concerning the former slaves. He thus responded to the implicit cynicism in Sister Dorothea's letter: "There are Freedmen here at Antioch Faith Church at Antioch, too. All of God's children are free to attend any church of Antioch Faith Church that they choose. We turn no one away. It remains our position, however, that the Freedmen are more comfortable worshipping under a roof where there abideth but only their race. We have built two such churches here in Antioch. It is a spectacular sight to see the Freedman singing the praises of God from the depth of his soul in that peculiar tonality that the Most High God has given to him alone to give praise. Give God the Glory! Let it nevermore be said that the Negro has no soul, for I have listened with delight and interest unflagging to the testimony and confession and sermonizing of a good many of them. In the next few weeks, it shall be my privilege to ordain the Negro Reverends Josh Johnson, Mosiah Johnson, Kinew Johnson, and Sixto Smith, who are as genuine and devout as any white Christian. The church is moving forward, but we must still obey the Lord and follow His design. I remind you of the lesson of the Tower of Babel. Had the Lord intended for the races to mingle, he would not have confounded their tongues on that day and separated them so that each would need follow after his own kind. Again I command that you desist from the wearing of forbidden garments. Again I command that you cease to practice revelry with unusual musical instruments in the house of the Lord. Leave the rolling to the Shakers and the other heretics, or call yourself no more the Antioch Faith Church at Roanoke, Virginia."

Sister Dorothea responded: "We are now the Holy Rollers Tabernacle of Faith, ye representatives of Antioch Faith Church, ye so-called Faithful. Please find enclosed a banque draft for funds more than sufficient to purchase the property and grounds of our building. If you elect not to sell the property to us, we shall move elsewhere. Our time is not long here on the earth. Prepare ye for the Lord's return, daughters of Babylon!"
Brother Dunbar had died in his sleep, and Sister Dorothea had appointed herself pastor. Sometimes she preached from the pulpit in trousers and wearing a pocket watch, for she was always checking the time. The Lord is coming in twenty-four months, eighteen months, fourteen months, a year! It was rumored she chewed and spat tobacco. There was much discussion of her "curious" relationship with the freed man, Gunther, who seemed always to be in her company.

The proposed secession was a great loss to Bishop Rogers, for Antioch at Roanoke was the largest single congregation in the movement, and indeed the late Brother Sanders Dunbar had been like a son to him in the old days before his marriage to Dorothea Lovell, the firebrand from Boston. Bishop Rogers assembled the elders of Antioch Faith Church at Antioch and asked them what he should do. It was clear to all that the only choice was to accept the money for the property, for indeed it was a generous sum.

Then, Bishop Rogers had a vision. He saw Christ walking on the water while all about him others sank. Sister Dorothea, the Holy Roller, was one of the faithless others that sank beneath the waves while stubbornly refusing the Master’s outstretched, nail-scarred hand.

On October 24, 1867, the Antioch Faith Church also ceased to exist, as Bishop Rogers and the elders renamed it the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters, still calling themselves "the Faithful." Later, the headquarters moved to Lakeland, Florida, where Bishop Rogers founded Bible College and Bible Hospital.

The Lord did not return on January 1, 1870, as the fiery prophetess had predicted. The war to end all wars did not begin on January 2, 1870. But racists did set fire to and burn to the ground the Roanoke Holy Rollers Tabernacle of Faith on January 10, 1870. The next day, Gunther, Sister Dorothea's freedman companion, was discovered shot to death, his body desecrated.

The dissension among the Faithful was Sister Dorothea's fault. Her bad judgment had led to much misery and change among the flock. Nevertheless, the Holy Rollers continued to support and follow her.
The Faithful Elder Buford Morrisohn, Esquire, closed the section with some mention of how "the devil had caused most of this history to be left out of the pages of even the best encyclopedias." It was for this reason that he had been writing his own book, God Awaits the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters, in the preface of which he wrote, "We must know from where the Lord has brought us before we can know to where He is leading us."

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair