Charles Harrison Mason

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason Sr. (September 8, 1864 – November 17, 1961) was a Black American Holiness–Pentecostal pastor and minister. He was the founder and first Senior Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, based in Memphis, Tennessee. It developed into what is today the largest Holiness Pentecostal church denomination and one of the largest predominantly African-American Christian denominations in the United States.

Childhood and early ministry Mason was born the son of former slaves Jerry and Eliza Mason in Shelby County, Tennessee. He lived with his family in an unincorporated area near Bartlett. Mason worked with his family sharecropping and he did not receive an early formal education. As a child, Mason was greatly influenced by the religion of his parents. In 1879 at the age of fifteen Mason joined the Missionary Baptist Church in Shelby County; he was later baptized as a Christian by his older half-brother, Rev. I. S. Nelson. Mason had initially opposed pursuing ministry as a clergyman during his childhood and told his family he only wanted to remain a church lay member. When Mason was 14 years old, he contracted tuberculosis, when a tuberculosis and yellow fever epidemic spread through Shelby County in 1880. Because there were no medical centers or hospitals that would treat African Americans in Shelby County, and the small, poor medical centers that were owned and operated by African Americans proved to be of little help to the residents of Shelby County, Mason's father, Jerry died from the infectious disease, and the family was forced to relocate to Preston, Arkansas. Upon moving to Arkansas, as his own health briefly worsened, when Mason's mother and siblings prayed for him and asked the parishioners at a local Baptist church to pray for him, Mason was reportedly miraculously healed and quickly recovered. After fully recovering from the tuberculosis, it was then when he told his family and the local parishioners of the Baptist church his family had joined (which would later be known as the Mount Gale Missionary Baptist Church), "he believed God had healed him for the express purpose of alerting him to his spiritual duty"; He acknowledged throughout his teenage and young adult years subsequently that he believed "God called him into full-time ministry from then on."

Conversion to Holiness and Pentecostalism At this period Mason became enamored with the autobiography of Amanda Berry Smith, an African Methodist Episcopal church evangelist. Smith had converted to the new wave of Holiness that was spreading during the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1897, Mason and Jones formed a new fellowship of churches named simply "Church of God." Mason suggested the name "the Church of God in Christ," a name that he said came to him during a vision in Little Rock, Arkansas. The name could distinguish the new church from a number of "Church of God" groups that were forming at the time. In March 1907, Mason was sent by the church to Los Angeles to investigate the Azusa Street Revival being led by Reverend William J. Seymour. His stay lasted six weeks, and before it was over he experienced the baptism of the Holy Ghost and spoke in tongues. In the early 21st century, it is the largest Pentecostal Church in the United States, with an estimated membership of more than 7 million members and 12,000 churches. located in every state in the Union. It is also located in more than 83 countries around the world. Its international membership is estimated to be between 1 and 3 million members and more than 25,000 churches. Its worldwide membership is estimated to be between 6 and 8 million members. COGIC began in 1907 with ten congregations in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The current leader and presiding bishop is Bishop J. Drew Sheard of Detroit, Michigan. The C. H. Mason Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in 1970 and named in his honor. It is part of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC). The C.H. Mason System of Bible Colleges in numerous US locations awards certificates and associate-level degrees in theology and ministry.