Pillar of Fire International

[3] The Pillar of Fire Church affirms the Methodist Articles of Religion and as of 1988, had 76 congregations around the world, including the United States, as well as "Great Britain, India, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, the Philippines, Spain, and former Yugoslavia".

[8][10][11][12][13][14] White was noted for her association with the Ku Klux Klan, her feminism, anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-pentecostalism, racism, and nativism.

In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the Pillar of Fire Church was vocal in its support of the Ku Klux Klan, to an extent which was unique for a religious denomination.

[22]She also said to the New Brunswick Daily Home News, "My people are not members of the Klan, but we agree with some of the things that they stand for to assert our American right of free speech.

It is within the rights of civilization for the white race to hold the supremacy; and no injustice to the colored man to stay in the environment where he was placed by the Creator.

Is there not evidence that the Knights of the Klu [sic] Klux Klan are the prophets of a new and better age?The Pillar of Fire Church strongly argued against social and political equality for Blacks and it also advocated racial segregation and the repeal of the fifteenth amendment.

Ideologically, in these publications, the Pillar of Fire Church promoted anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, nativism, and white supremacy, all primarily under the guise of patriotism.

The radical belief in human equality which is at the heart of the Christian message eventually caused the organization to repudiate its historical relationship with the KKK on its website in 2009: Much talk has also arisen over her brief but significant association with the KKK, which has also been publicly condemned and repented of by the POF leadership with a request for full forgiveness.

Volumes II and III of Guardians contained introductions by Arthur White, affirming his support of his mother's intolerant ideologies, primarily but not exclusively in regard to anti-Catholicism.

Robert Saydee, the presiding elder of a Pillar of Fire congregation and an immigrant from the African nation of Liberia, stated in 2017 with respect to the denomination's former association with the Ku Klux Klan that "We are not proud of it at all.

[5] Following the death of the founder, under the leadership of her son, Arthur Kent White, the religious fervor declined and the emphasis on outreach evangelization and church planting ended; the organization branches in America fell from a high of around 52 to the current six.

The Pillar of Fire, as of 1988, had churches in the United States, as well as "Great Britain, India, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, the Philippines, Spain, and former Yugoslavia".

[5] In the present-day, worshippers at the Pillar of Fire mother church in Zarephath are "young, old, white, black, Asian, Hispanic".

[29] The central beliefs of the Pillar of Fire are as follows: biblical inerrancy, Trinitarianism, the physical resurrection of Jesus, the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit, the "universal depravity of the human race", the necessity of "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ", belief in "justification by faith and in Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, as a second definite work of grace", the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and premillennialism.

Alma White, the Pillar of Fire, and their association with the Klan are dramatized in Libba Bray's New York Times best-selling 2012 murder mystery The Diviners, in a chapter titled "The Good Citizen".

Bishop Alma Bridwell White (1862–1946), founder of the Pillar of Fire Church
Zarephath Christian Church in Zarephath, New Jersey
Pillar of Fire missionaries, November 25, 1914
Assembly Hall service c. 1965 in Zarephath, New Jersey
Missionary homes of the Pillar of Fire Church in 1966
Klanswomen gather on August 31, 1929 in front of Assembly Hall, Zarephath, New Jersey, for "Patriotic Day" during annual Camp Meeting. [ 16 ]