Calvary Baptists

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.--ACTS II: 4,

Uproar broke forth in John Roach Straton's Calvary Baptist Church, Manhattan, last week; loud cries were raised for the police. In one corner of the church stood members of the Monday night Bible class, praying, faced by five deacons and their aids.

The Bible class members had worked themselves into hysteria, declared the deacons. They had been practicing Pentecostalism assiduously, vehemently. In the description of Reporter Hugh O'Connor of the New York Herald Tribune, "prayer meetings continued late into the night, with men and women intoning Scripture, chanting hymns and imploring the Holy Spirit with ardent cries to come into their souls--at times even falling to the floor of the church and lying outstretched on their backs, rigid, while their lips streamed mystical sounds, supposed to duplicate the 'Gift of Tongues,' such as accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles and Disciples in the Biblical account of the first Pentecost."

Uldine Utley, pupil of Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and protegee of Calvary Bapist's Pastor John Roach Straton, had brought this abnormality into the congregation last January. Like prosperous Mrs. McPherson the stripling girl has the knack of exciting Pentecostal frenzies from her auditors, of throwing them into thaumaturgic fits. Warren Badenock Straton, 19, third son of the pastor (the sons are Rev. Hillyer Hawthorne, John Charles, Warren Badenock, George Douglas) had had his "soul saved" in this fashion. The Monday night Bible class had sought "saving" to such an extent that the deacons had ordered class sessions discontinued at 10 p. m. Mondays. (This was after they had discovered members of the class sprawled deliriously on the church building floor at 2 a. m. one Tuesday.) The Monday that Aviator Charles Augustus Lindbergh reached Manhattan a woman went into ecstasies in the church.

For all this Pastor John Roach Straton was responsible, cried five deacons at the church meeting last week. The antics must cease. Indignant, members of the Bible class, huddled together like college students yelling for their team, prayed that the Holy Spirit strike Deacon John Hurst, chairman of the Evangelistic committee, in salvation or else in punishment. Before police might come, sober members of the congregation hushed the malcontents. The deacons resigned.

Pastor John Roach Straton hastened to write out a 5,000-word apologia pro sua vita. There was no Pentecostalism rife in Calvary Bapist Church; the woman of Lindbergh Monday was a victim of the general Manhattan hysteria or was ill; the five deacons were fractious and had better have resigned; they were "making a grandstand play for publicity." He concluded: "In closing I wish to say that I was duly elected as the engineer of this Gospel train here at Calvary Baptist Church. And throughout the ten years of my leadership the overwhelming majority of the officers and the rank and file of our membership have stood lovingly, loyally and enthusiastically with me in helping me do for Jesus Christ the best job of which I am capable.... As the main engineer I will say that my hand is once more firmly on the throttle, and despite the latest explosion and other puny efforts to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery, or to put goose grease on the track, the old train, thank God, is still making the grade."

Later, and in a more quiet mood, Pastor Straton found the opportunity to say: "... While Warren [his son] was praying, the power of God came over him just as it did over Paul and struck him down in the dust, as it came in ancient times over whole companies of men. I am not ashamed of it, nor is my son ashamed of it.... I am not a publicity hound.... I have been fighting unrighteousness since I came down to New York, and I have been doing it in a corner. What I would rather do than anything else in the world is this: I would like to go to some small village with my good family and a dog, where I could have my friends about me, and have a chance for godly living, to preach to them on God's day, bury their dead, baptize their children and comfort their sorrows. But that may not be. I must forego my plans for a rest and enter God's battle immediately."