A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

A History of Christian Doctrine
though in 1918 seventy to seventy-five percent of the
constituency was white, there seemed to be a determined
effort to promote brotherly love and to exalt
Christ as the Creator of all people.
Nevertheless it would not be long before this
chivalrous effort would fail. Racial considerations
would again surface in a few years. . . .
Perhaps if the P.A.W. had been conceived in the
1970s or 1980s, the forces of pride, tradition, and
upbringing would not have been the same, and the
history of the organization would have been drastically
different. Undoubtedly, great outside pressure
was put on the brethren, both whites and blacks, by
the prevailing thinking of the country at that time.
In 1925, the white ministers who withdrew from the
PAW formed three organizations primarily along regional
lines: (1) the Pentecostal Ministerial Alliance, later
renamed the Pentecostal Church Incorporated (PCI), in
Jackson, Tennessee; (2) the Apostolic Churches of Jesus
Christ, in St. Louis; and (3) Emmanuel’s Church in Christ
Jesus, in Houston. The latter two soon merged to become
the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. The PAW, meanwhile,
adopted a modified form of episcopal church government
and elected G. T. Haywood as its first presiding
bishop.
The desire for interracial unity was so strong, however,
that in 1931 the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
and the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ merged to form
an integrated organization again, known as the
Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ (PAJC). Although
the ministerial membership was eighty percent white, it
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