Religion: Church of God in Christ

Church of God in Christ
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Church of God in Christ
* Founder
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) was founded in 1897 by Bishop Charles Harrison Mason. He was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, in 1864 (Britannica.com). As a child, he lacked the opportunity to attain formal education and worked with his family as a sharecropper (Clemons, 2016). As a result, his parents’ religion influenced him at an early age. As a teenager, Mason joined the African-American Missionary Baptist Church, where he received his preaching license (cogic.org). In 1893, Mason enrolled in the Minister’s Institute at the Arkansas Baptist College (ABC) and graduated with a Ministerial certificate. He then embraced the holiness movement (cogic.org).
In the same year, Mason met Reverend Charles Price Jones, a renowned Baptist Preacher from Mississippi. Like Mason, Jones had also come under the influence of the holiness movement (White, 2009). The two started spreading the Gospel of holiness and sanctification in the local Baptist Churches, forcing the Baptist Convection to expel them because they held views that differed from the Baptist Church (Clemons, 2016). After their rejection, they established a new fellowship of churches. Mason proposed the name Church of God in Christ to distinguish it from various Church of God groups (cogic.org).
Due to disagreements in the new Pentecostal teachings, Mason and Jones split their group in 1907 (cogic.org). However, Mason won the legal rights to the COGIC name and charter and established his work in Memphis. He later created more departments, auxiliaries, and dioceses throughout the country (Weaver III, 2017).
* Polity
The COGIC is governed by two structures: civil and ecclesiastical. The civil structure comprises the president, First Vice-President, Second Vice-President, General Secretary, General Treasurer, and Financial Secretary (cogic.org). The General Assembly (GA) elects all officers. The ecclesiastical structure comprises the General Board, jurisdictional or auxiliary bishops, jurisdictional supervisors, chaplains, pastors, ordained elders, four district missionaries, and six lay members from each jurisdiction (Center for Religion and Civic Culture, 2019). All these members make up the General Assembly.
The GA elects General Board (Presidium) from the college of Bishops, who serve as the Church’s Apostles (cogic.org). The Presidium entails a differently elected International Presiding Bishop. The present presiding Bishop and Chief Apostle is John Drew Sheard Sr. (Center for Religion and Civic Culture, 2019). The GA is the Church’s supreme authority in spiritual matters. The sizes of jurisdictions differ but range from 30 to 100 churches (Center for Religion and Civic Culture, 2019).
Each ...