Christian Catholic Apostolic Church

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The Christian Catholic Church, later known as the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, was a religious group founded in 1896 by John Alexander Dowie. They are sometimes called the Zionites (not to be confused with the German Zionites). They were noted, among other things, for their adherence to a flat earth cosmology. The church is considered to be one of the forerunners of the modern Pentecostal movement.

Zionist churches in southern Africa trace their origins to Dowie's church.

It is now called the Christ Community Church.

[edit] 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 Melbourne.

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 30000 members worldwide, of whom some 7500 settled in Zion. Two notable features of Dowie's preaching were faith healing and flat earth cosmology based on the ideas of Samuel Birley Rowbotham.

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 Mar. 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.

[edit] Wilbur Glenn Voliva

Wilbur Glenn Voliva succeeded Dowie as General Overseer of Zion. Voliva was born on a farm in Indiana on Mar. 10, 1870. In 1889, he entered Union Christian College at Merom, Indiana, graduated five years later and became a minister. In 1898 he was drawn to Dowie's teachings and eventually joined his congregation.

After succeeding Dowie in 1906, Voliva 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 and movie theaters. 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. It was later renamed to Christ Community Church.

[edit] Sources and links

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