A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

The Jesus Name Controversy
attendance, about fifteen or twenty of whom had been
rebaptized in Jesus’ name. 79 With the exception of a few
leaders, most of these men were quite young. Many of the
preachers had not yet made up their minds on the issue,
and the position of the leaders was the deciding factor for
some. Most of them did not consider the Jesus Name message
to be heresy.
In O’Guin’s opinion, Kerr was “stern, strict, and intolerant,”
and Leonard was the most effective debater.
Leonard (1861-1946) had been the man to suggest the
name Assemblies of God in the beginning, and he was the
primary author of the first constitution, which he considered
to have been inspired of God. O’Guin said he was “a
witty Irishman, a law unto himself,” and no one could control
him. He staked out a harsh position, not wanting to
compromise on anything but issuing an ultimatum to the
Jesus Name people to accept trinitarianism completely or
leave. As O’Guin recalled, most of the ministers did not
really agree with such a hard-line stance, but they did not
have the courage to oppose Leonard. O’Guin concluded
that the decision was too hasty. He said, “If we would have
taken a humble attitude and waited on the Lord, I believe
God would have solved the problem without division.”
O’Guin remembered that Leonard especially did not
like Haywood and was glad for the chance to “belittle”
him. It is well documented that during the debate Leonard
spoke of the Oneness people as “hay, wood, and stubble,”
obviously alluding to G. T. Haywood as well as I Corinthians
3:12. He also said they were in the wilderness and
had “a voice in the wilderness,” referring to Haywood’s
paper, Voice in the Wilderness. 80
In the end, the conference adopted the trinitarian
79