Children of Light

“Children of Light is, among other things, the history of a small religious sect–the True Light Church of Christ–found in North and South Carolina. This is the story it’s founding in 1874 by a man claiming to be the third angel mentioned in Revelation 14; its practices and beliefs–remaining apart from the world (through home schooling and vocational programs for boys and girls in the church, pacifism, avoidance of political activities such as voting, and church-centered employment in a brick masonry firm owned by one church family); its involvement in a suit brought by the U.S. Department of Labor over alleged child-labor violations in the vocational training program; the church Elders who have figured prominently in the church’s history; the locations of the “societies” (originally seven in number) comprising the church; the split that occurred in 1969 that left the group divided internally, with each faction claiming to be the true church; and the episodes of “disfellowshipping” (excommunication) that occur periodically. “The book is also an ethnography in the sociology of religion, with extensive interviews and first- hand observations covering a number of topics. These the consequences of an oral tradition for a religious organization; the technique of publicly “testifying” in a church in which God continues to speak to man; charisma and its relationship to the concepts of “dead instrument” and “dispensation of the gospel;” the work of J.N. Darby and the doctrine of dispensationalism; Biblical references and current events used in calculating the return of Christ and beginning of the millennium; and preparations made for the return of Christ, and adaptation to failures of the prophecy. “The findings of the study are scattered throughout, small stones in a field. However, several observations of a more general nature may be mentioned here. One has to do with the relationship between God (or religion in general) and identity. I was struck by the extent to which the True Lights are “True Lights” to the core of their being. As I contemplated them and their religious beliefs, including whatever divine or semi-divining status Rommie Purser (Elder of one of the factions) had in their consciousness, it seemed clear to me that deprived of this body of belief, any and all of them would be reduced to an emptiness I had trouble grasping. I confess that at times it seemed to me that at least one of the functions of religion is to provide an identity; something we lack when the point of reference is nothing more than ourselves, our immediate surroundings and the time in which we inhabit this earth. “Another simple principle at work among the True Lights involved exclusion (disfellowshipping) of the holiest among them – such men as Gene Hill and perhaps Harvey Walters. There is something about the requirements of group leadership and the exercise of power–the practical exigencies of position–that acts to retard “holiness,” and something about exclusion from power that calls into being a greater devoutness, a greater “purity.” “Another has to do with the advance of rational-legal justice implemented by great bureaucracies, sphinx-like and cool and undeviating in the administration of their regulations. This may have reduced the extent of religious martyrdom and the pain of persecution compared with that found in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and other books of that kind. The decline of persecution makes it necessary for our would-be martyrs to set themselves aflame, light their own fires, if they are to achieve the same end. Martyrdom, in a surprising way, came to seem as ingrained as masochism. The True Lights, as surely as any of the early Pietists and Anabaptists, are, in their own mind, martyrs, and can conceive of no greater end than the flames. “