Mason Temple, located in Memphis, Tennessee, is a Christian international sanctuary and central headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, the largest African American Pentecostal group in the world. The building was named for Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, who is entombed in a marble crypt inside the Temple.
Mason Temple was the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech the night before his assassination.
Mason Temple was founded by Charles Harrison Mason (1864-1961). This church's denomination, Church of God in Christ, also known as C.O.G.I.C, grew fast in Memphis, Tennessee and eventually spread to other parts of the world such as Latin America and Asia. [1] Mason Temple was the largest church building owned by a predominantly black Christian denomination in the United States at its opening.
Born in 1864 to former slaves, Mason has founded the largest Pentecostal denomination in the U.S. which has more than 7.5 million members. [1] Mason obtained a preaching license from Mount Gayle Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was then cast out for preaching about holiness and sanctification. With the help of exiled members, Mason established the Church of God in Christ. It consisted of 110 churches spread across Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Around that time, Mason attended the Azusa Street Revival where he was taught that he would receive the act of speaking in tongues once baptized in the Holy Spirit. [1] On that night, he spoke in tongues.
After he returned, he found himself in a disagreement about the anointing of the Holy Spirit which led to another split in the church. He took 10 churches with him and kept the Church of God in Christ name.
Mason spent most of his years teaching in Arkansas. He came to Memphis in 1907 attend the first meeting of the Pentecostal General Assembly of the Church of God in Christ. [1]
By 1997, the denomination grew to 5.2 million members.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mason Temple became a critical destination for many civil rights events in Memphis. Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, and Ralph Abernathy were among the many black leaders who came to Memphis to assist the 1,300 protesting sanitation workers who usually met at the church. [2] Together, they fought for better working conditions for black sanitation workers as they earned low wages and were treated differently from the white workers. Martin Luther King Jr. later delivered his famous last speech: "I've Been to the Mountaintop" on April 3, 1968. The next day King was assassinated outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel. A plaque on an exterior wall near the entrance to the church details the event.
Charles H. Mason started building Mason Temple in 1940 to replace the original "Tabernacle" which burned down in 1936. [3] He assigned Riley F. Williams as the chairman of the building commission, Ulysses Ellis as the supervisor of construction, and Henry Taylor as the architect. When construction of the Temple began, the church didn't have much in its building-fund treasury, so members and local citizens helped the church raise enough money to fund the making of the new temple.
Mason Temple is a three-story building made from brick, stone, steel, and concrete. [4] The main auditorium seated five thousand people while the balcony and the assembly room could sit up to two thousand people each. The building included a salon, nursery, baggage-check registration room, photographic booth, first aid and emergency ward, and also a post office. [4]
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is an international Holiness–Pentecostal Christian denomination, and the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Although an international and multi-ethnic religious organization, it has a predominantly African American membership based within the United States. The international headquarters is in Memphis, Tennessee. The current Presiding Bishop is Bishop John Drew Sheard Sr., who is the Senior Pastor of the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ of Detroit, Michigan. He was elected as the denomination's leader on March 27, 2021.
Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ is a Pentecostal church located in Memphis, Tennessee. It was founded March 6, 1975, by the late Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson. The church's current pastor is Milton Hawkins. The Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ is one of the largest churches in the city of Memphis and the Church of God in Christ denomination.
Charles Edward Blake Sr. is an American minister and retired pastor who served as the Presiding Bishop and leader of the Church of God in Christ, a 6 million-member Holiness Pentecostal denomination, that has now grown to become one of the largest predominantly African American Pentecostal denominations in the United States, from 2007 to 2021. On March 21, 2007, he became the Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, Inc., as a result of Presiding Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson's death. In a November 2007 special election, he was elected to complete the unexpired term of his predecessor as Presiding Bishop. In November 2008, Bishop Blake was re-elected to serve a four-year term as Presiding Bishop. In November 2012, Bishop Blake was re-elected again to serve a four-year term as the Presiding Bishop. He was reelected to a third term as Presiding Bishop on November 15, 2016. On October 23, 2020, Bishop Blake announced that he would not seek a re-election as Presiding Bishop nor as a member of the General Board and that he would retire from the Office of Presiding Bishop and from the General Board in 2021. He officially retired on March 19, 2021, and was succeeded by Bishop J. Drew Sheard, Sr. as Presiding Bishop on March 20, 2021.
The World Assemblies of God (AG), officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is an international Pentecostal denomination.
Charles Price Jones Sr. was an American religious leader and hymnist. He was the founder of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.
Bishop Charles Harrison Mason Sr. was an 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.
Gilbert Earl Patterson was an American Holiness Pentecostal leader and Pastor who served as the National Presiding Bishop and Founder of the Temple of Deliverance COGIC Cathedral of Bountiful Blessings and Chief Apostle of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), Incorporated. Bishop Patterson was the second youngest person to ever be elected Presiding Bishop of COGIC at the age of 60 in 2000, second to his predeceased uncle Bishop J. O. Patterson, Sr who was 56 when he was elected Presiding Bishop in 1968.
The Assemblies of God USA (AG), officially The General Council of the Assemblies of God, is a Pentecostal Christian denomination in the United States founded in 1914 during a meeting of Pentecostal ministers at Hot Springs, Arkansas, who came from a variety of independent churches and networks of churches. The Assemblies of God is a Finished Work Pentecostal denomination and is the U.S. branch of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, the world's largest Pentecostal body. With a constituency of 2,928,143 in 2022, the Assemblies of God was the ninth largest Christian denomination and the second largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States.
Henry Loeb III was an American politician of the Democratic Party, who was mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, for two separate terms in the 1960s, from 1960 through 1963, and 1968 through 1971. He gained national notoriety in his second term for his role in opposing the demands of striking sanitation workers in early 1968. A segregationist, he opposed civil rights for African Americans and promoted white supremacy, continuing former Memphis mayor and political boss E. H. Crump's legacy.
The Memphis sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, in response to the deaths of sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker. The deaths served as a breaking point for more than 1,300 African American men from the Memphis Department of Public Works as they demanded higher wages, time and a half overtime, dues check-off, safety measures, and pay for the rainy days when they were told to go home.
"I've Been to the Mountaintop" is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights movement leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.
The Mountaintop is a play by American playwright Katori Hall. It is a fictional depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.'s last night on earth set entirely in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel on the eve of his assassination in 1968.
Ozro Thurston Jones Sr. was a Holiness Pentecostal denomination leader and minister, who was the second Senior Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, Inc. (1962–1968), succeeding Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, who was the founder. The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is the fourth largest denomination in the United States, being in the Holiness Pentecostal tradition.
Dickerson LeMoyne Shillicutt Wells is an American preacher from Memphis, Tennessee in the Church of God in Christ and was the youngest minister, at the time in 1978, to be ordained as a clergyman in the COGIC denomination in the state of Tennessee.
The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 is a 2008 documentary short film created to honor the 40th annual remembrance of the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. Directed by Adam Pertofsky, the film received a 2008 Oscar nomination in the "Best Documentary Short Subject" Category at the 81st Academy Awards.
James Oglethorpe Patterson Jr. was a Holiness Pentecostal minister in the Church of God in Christ and a former Mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, the first African-American to hold the office.
Chandler David Owens Sr. was an American minister and Holiness Pentecostal denomination leader of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), for which he served as the Presiding Bishop from 1995 to 2000, after the death of Bishop Louis Henry Ford.
Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968 is a 2018 children's picture book told in poetry and prose by writer Alice Faye Duncan and illustrator R. Gregory Christie, published by Calkins Creek.
John Drew Sheard is an American pastor and minister from Detroit, Michigan, who is the current Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, a 6 million-member predominantly African-American Holiness Pentecostal denomination that has now grown to become one of the largest African American Pentecostal denominations in the United States. He was elected as the leader of the denomination in the denomination's first ever all-virtual online election, that was held virtually online due to the COVID-19 Pandemic on March 20, 2021. He is the first Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ from the state of Michigan and is the pastor of the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ, one of the denomination's largest churches in Michigan. He also previously served as a member of the General Board, the twelve bishops who make up the national Board of Directors of the COGIC denomination, and as the president of the COGIC International Youth Department, the auxiliary ministry department of the COGIC denomination focused on youth and young adults, from 1997 to 2001, and the International President and Chairman of the COGIC Auxiliaries In Ministry (AIM) convention from 2004 to 2012.