Christian Catholic Apostolic Church
Encyclopedia
Christ Community Church in Zion, Illinois
, formerly the Christian Catholic Church or Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, is an evangelical
Protestant church founded in 1896 by John Alexander Dowie
. The city of Zion was founded by Dowie as a religious community to establish a society on the principles of the Kingdom of God
. Members are sometimes called Zionites (not to be confused with the German Zionites
).
Over the years there have been many changes to the church founded by John Alexander Dowie. He was a popular faith healer
and started the church and the Zion community with utopian ideals. Under Wilbur Glenn Voliva
, Dowie's successor, the church was noted for its adherence to a flat earth
cosmology. The succession of pastors after Voliva moved the church back to mainstream Protestant doctrine.
In the early 20th century, the Christian Catholic Church had worldwide appeal. The church's magazine, The Leaves of Healing, was distributed in the U.S., Australia, Europe, and southern Africa. At its height, Dowie's movement had some 20,000 adherents. The Zionist Churches
of southern Africa trace their spiritual heritage back to Dowie and the Christian Catholic Church. Because of Dowie's emphasis on faith healing and restorationism the church is considered a forerunner of Pentecostalism
.
The name Christian Catholic Church is still used for Christ Community Church's worldwide fellowship of churches and mission work. As of 2008, it has about 3,000 members in the United States
and Canada
. Missionary work is conducted in Japan, Philippines, Guyana, Palestine, Indonesia, and the Navajo Nation. Missionary work continues among the African Zionists under the banner of Zion Evangelical Ministries of Africa (ZEMA). ZEMA's goal is to convert the African Zionists from syncretism
to mainstream Christian theology.
.
Dowie immigrated to San Francisco in 1888 where he founded the Ministry of Divine Healing. After years of traveling across the country preaching and healing, he finally settled in Chicago and in 1893 set up a tabernacle at the World's Columbian Exposition. During the next seven years, Dowie founded the Christian Catholic Church that met in several city locations including the Chicago Auditorium (1896). In 1900 he purchased land along the shores of Lake Michigan, north of Chicago near the Illinois Wisconsin border and founded a religious utopian community which he called Zion
.
He also founded a commercial enterprise, which came to be called Zion Industries, to support the community. Initially its main product was Scottish lace and it enjoyed considerable success.
Dowie proselytized vigorously both in person and by means of several serial publications, chief among them being Leaves of Healing, and gained a lot of adherents. At its height in 1905, the church claimed some 30,000 members worldwide, of whom some 7500 settled in Zion. Two notable features of Dowie's preaching were faith healing
and what he called holy living - his followers were admonished to abstain from tobacco, alcohol, pork products, doctors and medicines, the "apostate churches", etc.
Dowie had progressive views on race relations for his day and welcomed blacks into his church, of whom some 200 settled in Zion. He later sent some of them as missionaries to South Africa, where they established churches which became very influential.
As the community of Zion grew in size and prosperity, Dowie adopted an increasingly lavish lifestyle, building himself a 25 room mansion and dressing himself in ornate ecclesiastical robes modeled after those worn by Aaron, the high priest, described in Leviticus. Due to this and other financial mismanagement, the church was threatened with bankruptcy. In 1905 Dowie suffered the first of a series of debilitating strokes. In 1906 his followers revolted, ousted him from leadership and elected Wilbur Glenn Voliva
as the new leader of the church. A splinter group rejected the new leadership, left Zion, and some of them went on to become influential leaders of the budding Pentecostal movement. Dowie died of another stroke on March 9, 1907.
A bizarre sidelight on Dowie's later years is that he became embroiled in an acrimonious public dispute with a controversial Indian Muslim religious figure, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
, founder of the Ahmadiyya
movement. In 1903 they engaged in a widely publicized prayer duel, each calling upon God to punish the other to expose him as a false prophet. Ahmad and his followers proclaimed Dowie's rapidly ensuing illness, disgrace, and death as a vindication of their religious beliefs. Ahmad died in 1908, a year later than Dowie.
He diversified Zion Industries to include a bakery which produced the popular Zion brand fig bar cookies and White Dove chocolates. Zion was a one company town and its workers were paid substandard wages.
A strict code of morality was imposed in the town on all persons who set foot inside city limits. It was unlawful for women to wear short dresses, high heels, bathing suits or lipstick. Ham, bacon, oysters, liquor and tobacco were banned, as were drugstores, medical buildings, movie theaters, and globes (as they challenged Voliva's flat-earth cosmology). A ten o'clock curfew was rigidly enforced. You could be arrested for whistling on Sunday. These laws were enforced by Voliva's police force, called the Praetorian Guard, whose helmets carried the word 'PATIENCE' and whose sleeves bore images of doves. Policemen wore Bibles and clubs on their belts.
Voliva gained a lot of nationwide notoriety by his vigorous advocacy of flat earth doctrine. He offered a widely publicized $5000 challenge for anyone to disprove flat earth theory, but on terms of his own choosing. The church schools in Zion taught the flat earth doctrine. His 100,000 watt radio station broadcast his diatribes against round earth astronomy, and the evils of evolution.
Like his predecessor Dowie, Voliva increasingly developed an overtly lavish lifestyle, which began to alienate his followers, especially after the hardships brought on by the Great Depression
, which forced the town's sole employer, Zion Industries, into bankruptcy. In 1935 Voliva tried to revive the flagging fortunes of the church by instituting the annual Zion Passion Play, along the lines of the famous one in Oberammergau
. However in 1937 a disgruntled employee set the church's huge Shiloh Tabernacle, where the play took place, ablaze. Shortly thereafter, Voliva was forced into personal bankruptcy
. In 1942 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Voliva made a tearful public confession to his followers that he had misappropriated church funds for his personal use and committed other misdeeds. Shortly thereafter on October 11, 1942 he died, and the church all but dissolved.
A small remnant was reorganized under the leadership of Michael Mintern but a second fire destroyed the Zion Auditorium in April, 1959. The church in Zion was later renamed to Christ Community Church.
Zion, Illinois
Zion is a city in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 22,866 at the 2000 census, and estimated at 24,303 as of 2005. The city was founded in July 1901 by John Alexander Dowie. He also started the Zion Tabernacle of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, which was the only...
, formerly the Christian Catholic Church or Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, is an evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
Protestant church founded in 1896 by John Alexander Dowie
John Alexander Dowie
John Alexander Dowie was a Scottish evangelist and faith healer who ministered in Australia and the United States. He founded the city of Zion, Illinois, and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church...
. The city of Zion was founded by Dowie as a religious community to establish a society on the principles of the Kingdom of God
Kingdom of God
The Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is a foundational concept in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.The term "Kingdom of God" is found in all four canonical gospels and in the Pauline epistles...
. Members are sometimes called Zionites (not to be confused with the German Zionites
Zionites (Germany)
The Zionites were a sect of visionary fanatics which flourished in the eighteenth century at Ronsdorf in the Duchy of Berg. The sect sprang from a Philadelphian society founded at Elberfeld in 1726 by Elias Eller and the pastor Daniel Schleiermacher. Eller was the foreman of a factory owned by a...
).
Over the years there have been many changes to the church founded by John Alexander Dowie. He was a popular faith healer
Faith Healer
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy.-Synopsis:...
and started the church and the Zion community with utopian ideals. Under Wilbur Glenn Voliva
Wilbur Glenn Voliva
Wilbur Glenn Voliva was an evangelist and a prominent proponent of Flat Earth theories.-Early life and education:...
, Dowie's successor, the church was noted for its adherence to a flat earth
Flat Earth
The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...
cosmology. The succession of pastors after Voliva moved the church back to mainstream Protestant doctrine.
In the early 20th century, the Christian Catholic Church had worldwide appeal. The church's magazine, The Leaves of Healing, was distributed in the U.S., Australia, Europe, and southern Africa. At its height, Dowie's movement had some 20,000 adherents. The Zionist Churches
Zionist Churches
Zionist Churches are a group of Christian denominations that sprang from the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, Illinois. Missionaries from the church came to South Africa in 1904 and among their first recruits were Pieter Louis le Roux of Wakkerstroom and Daniel Nkonyane of Charlestown,...
of southern Africa trace their spiritual heritage back to Dowie and the Christian Catholic Church. Because of Dowie's emphasis on faith healing and restorationism the church is considered a forerunner of Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...
.
The name Christian Catholic Church is still used for Christ Community Church's worldwide fellowship of churches and mission work. As of 2008, it has about 3,000 members in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Missionary work is conducted in Japan, Philippines, Guyana, Palestine, Indonesia, and the Navajo Nation. Missionary work continues among the African Zionists under the banner of Zion Evangelical Ministries of Africa (ZEMA). ZEMA's goal is to convert the African Zionists from syncretism
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
to mainstream Christian theology.
John Alexander Dowie
John Alexander Dowie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, May 25, 1847, to an evangelical family. The family immigrated to Australia in 1860, with Dowie returning to attend the University of Edinburgh from 1867 to 1872, at which time he once more sailed for Australia. In 1876 Dowie married and he began his evangelistic ministry three years later in MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
.
Dowie immigrated to San Francisco in 1888 where he founded the Ministry of Divine Healing. After years of traveling across the country preaching and healing, he finally settled in Chicago and in 1893 set up a tabernacle at the World's Columbian Exposition. During the next seven years, Dowie founded the Christian Catholic Church that met in several city locations including the Chicago Auditorium (1896). In 1900 he purchased land along the shores of Lake Michigan, north of Chicago near the Illinois Wisconsin border and founded a religious utopian community which he called Zion
Zion, Illinois
Zion is a city in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 22,866 at the 2000 census, and estimated at 24,303 as of 2005. The city was founded in July 1901 by John Alexander Dowie. He also started the Zion Tabernacle of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, which was the only...
.
He also founded a commercial enterprise, which came to be called Zion Industries, to support the community. Initially its main product was Scottish lace and it enjoyed considerable success.
Dowie proselytized vigorously both in person and by means of several serial publications, chief among them being Leaves of Healing, and gained a lot of adherents. At its height in 1905, the church claimed some 30,000 members worldwide, of whom some 7500 settled in Zion. Two notable features of Dowie's preaching were faith healing
Faith healing
Faith healing is healing through spiritual means. The healing of a person is brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate a divine presence and power toward correcting disease and disability. Belief in divine intervention in illness or...
and what he called holy living - his followers were admonished to abstain from tobacco, alcohol, pork products, doctors and medicines, the "apostate churches", etc.
Dowie had progressive views on race relations for his day and welcomed blacks into his church, of whom some 200 settled in Zion. He later sent some of them as missionaries to South Africa, where they established churches which became very influential.
As the community of Zion grew in size and prosperity, Dowie adopted an increasingly lavish lifestyle, building himself a 25 room mansion and dressing himself in ornate ecclesiastical robes modeled after those worn by Aaron, the high priest, described in Leviticus. Due to this and other financial mismanagement, the church was threatened with bankruptcy. In 1905 Dowie suffered the first of a series of debilitating strokes. In 1906 his followers revolted, ousted him from leadership and elected Wilbur Glenn Voliva
Wilbur Glenn Voliva
Wilbur Glenn Voliva was an evangelist and a prominent proponent of Flat Earth theories.-Early life and education:...
as the new leader of the church. A splinter group rejected the new leadership, left Zion, and some of them went on to become influential leaders of the budding Pentecostal movement. Dowie died of another stroke on March 9, 1907.
A bizarre sidelight on Dowie's later years is that he became embroiled in an acrimonious public dispute with a controversial Indian Muslim religious figure, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was a religious figure from India and the founder of the Ahmadiyya Community. He claimed to be the Mujaddid of the 14th Islamic century, the promised Messiah , and the Mahdi awaited by the Muslims in the end days...
, founder of the Ahmadiyya
Ahmadiyya
Ahmadiyya is an Islamic religious revivalist movement founded in India near the end of the 19th century, originating with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad , who claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies about the world reformer of the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as...
movement. In 1903 they engaged in a widely publicized prayer duel, each calling upon God to punish the other to expose him as a false prophet. Ahmad and his followers proclaimed Dowie's rapidly ensuing illness, disgrace, and death as a vindication of their religious beliefs. Ahmad died in 1908, a year later than Dowie.
Wilbur Glenn Voliva
Wilbur Glenn Voliva succeeded Dowie as General Overseer of Zion in 1906 and renamed the church to "Christian Catholic Apostolic Church". He kept tight control on his some 6000 followers, which made up the community, even up to the point of dictating their choice of marriage partners. All real estate in Zion, while sold at market rates, was conveyed under an 1100 year lease, subject to many restrictions and subject to termination at the whim of the General Overseer. Religions other than the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church were effectively banned - visiting preachers from rival sects were harassed and hounded out of town by the city police force.He diversified Zion Industries to include a bakery which produced the popular Zion brand fig bar cookies and White Dove chocolates. Zion was a one company town and its workers were paid substandard wages.
A strict code of morality was imposed in the town on all persons who set foot inside city limits. It was unlawful for women to wear short dresses, high heels, bathing suits or lipstick. Ham, bacon, oysters, liquor and tobacco were banned, as were drugstores, medical buildings, movie theaters, and globes (as they challenged Voliva's flat-earth cosmology). A ten o'clock curfew was rigidly enforced. You could be arrested for whistling on Sunday. These laws were enforced by Voliva's police force, called the Praetorian Guard, whose helmets carried the word 'PATIENCE' and whose sleeves bore images of doves. Policemen wore Bibles and clubs on their belts.
Voliva gained a lot of nationwide notoriety by his vigorous advocacy of flat earth doctrine. He offered a widely publicized $5000 challenge for anyone to disprove flat earth theory, but on terms of his own choosing. The church schools in Zion taught the flat earth doctrine. His 100,000 watt radio station broadcast his diatribes against round earth astronomy, and the evils of evolution.
Like his predecessor Dowie, Voliva increasingly developed an overtly lavish lifestyle, which began to alienate his followers, especially after the hardships brought on by the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, which forced the town's sole employer, Zion Industries, into bankruptcy. In 1935 Voliva tried to revive the flagging fortunes of the church by instituting the annual Zion Passion Play, along the lines of the famous one in Oberammergau
Oberammergau Passion Play
Oberammergau Passion Play is a passion play performed since 1634 oberammergau-passion.com. 2009. Retrieved November 19, 2011. as a tradition by the inhabitants of the village of Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany.-Origins:...
. However in 1937 a disgruntled employee set the church's huge Shiloh Tabernacle, where the play took place, ablaze. Shortly thereafter, Voliva was forced into personal bankruptcy
Personal bankruptcy
Personal bankruptcy is a procedure which, in certain jurisdictions, allows an individual to declare bankruptcy. In other jurisdictions, bankruptcies are reserved for corporations.-Canada:...
. In 1942 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Voliva made a tearful public confession to his followers that he had misappropriated church funds for his personal use and committed other misdeeds. Shortly thereafter on October 11, 1942 he died, and the church all but dissolved.
A small remnant was reorganized under the leadership of Michael Mintern but a second fire destroyed the Zion Auditorium in April, 1959. The church in Zion was later renamed to Christ Community Church.
Further reading
- Wacker, Grant. "Marching to Zion: Religion in a Modern Utopian Community". Church History, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Dec., 1985): pp. 496–511.
External links
- Christ Community Church, Zion - The current incarnation of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church: its history
- Dowie - Leaves of Healing - A website that explores the life, ministry, and message of John Alexander Dowie.
- John Alexander Dowie - A brief biography of Dowie at a genealogical web site devoted to families having that last name.
- $5,000 for Proving the Earth is a Globe, Oct. 1931 article from Modern Mechanics and Inventions about Voliva and his flat earth cosmology.
- The Flat Earth Professor Donald Simanek's web page on the history of flat earth movements.
- Islam in Zion - The web site of a small Ahmadiyya mosque in Zion with an article on the history of Zion and an account of the prayer duel with Mizra Ghulam Ahmed.
- The Life and Wanderings of Eugene (Gene) Earl Maynard - Online autobiography of someone who was brought up in Zion during Voliva's leadership. Of particular relevance are Section 1 and Section 43a.
- Time Magazine articles on Voliva (1923–1942)
- Zion City Records 1888–1974 at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.
- Zion Passion Play web site
- Bouw, Gerardus D., 2000. Flat Earth Mythology and Fact, The Biblical Astronomer, Vol. 94 (Fall, 2000), pp. 23–30 (available online). Critique of flat earth cosmology and Voliva from the perspective of a fundamentalist Christian who embraces geocentrism and includes an eyewitness account of life in Zion towards the end of Voliva's leadership.
- Zion City (IL) records at the Newberry Library