Alma White

Alma Bridwell White (June 16, 1862 – June 26, 1946) was the founder and a bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. In 1918, she became the first woman bishop of Pillar of Fire in the United States. She was a proponent of feminism. She also associated herself with the Ku Klux Klan and was involved in anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-Pentecostalism, racism, and hostility to immigrants. By the time of her death at age 84, she had expanded the sect to "4,000 followers, 61 churches, seven schools, ten periodicals and two broadcasting stations."

Birth and early years

She was born Mollie Alma Bridwell on June 16, 1862, in Kinniconick, Kentucky, to William Moncure Bridwell of Virginia and Mary Ann Harrison of Kentucky. She was the seventh of eleven children.

William Baxter Godbey converted her at the age of 16 to Wesleyan Methodism in a Kentucky schoolhouse revival meeting in 1878. She wrote that "some were so convicted that they left the room and threw up their suppers, and staggered back into the house as pale as death." By 1880, the family was living in Millersburg, Kentucky.

She studied at the Millersburg Female College in Millersburg. An aunt invited one of the seven Bridwell sisters to visit Montana Territory. All of them were afraid to make the journey, except for Alma, the aunt's last choice. In 1882, nineteen-year-old Alma traveled to Bannack, Montana. She stayed to teach, first in public school, and later in Salt Lake City's Methodist seminary. On December 21, 1887, she married Kent White (1860–1940), who at the time was a Methodist seminarian. They had two sons, Ray Bridwell White and Arthur Kent White.

Church founder

Alma and Kent White started the Methodist Pentecostal Union Church in Denver, Colorado, in December 1901. She led hymns and prayers, and at times preached sermons. In 1907, Caroline Garretson (formerly Carolin Van Neste Field), widow of Peter Workman Garretson, donated a farm for a religious community at Zarephath, New Jersey, which distanced itself from the Pentecostal movement. In 1918, White was consecrated as a bishop by William Baxter Godbey, an ordained Methodist evangelist who was active in the Holiness Movement. She was now the first woman to serve as a bishop in the United States.

Feminism, intolerance, and the Klan

As a feminist, White was a forceful advocate of equality for white Protestant women. However, she was also uncompromising in her persistent and powerful attacks on religious and racial minorities, justifying both equality for white Protestant women and inequality for minorities as biblically mandated. While the vast majority of her most vicious political attacks targeted the Roman Catholic Church, she also promoted antisemitism, white supremacy, and intolerance of certain immigrants.

Under White's leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, the Pillar of Fire Church developed a close and public partnership with the Ku Klux Klan that was unique for a religious denomination. She assessed the Klan as a powerful force that could help liberate white Protestant women, while simultaneously keeping minorities in their place. Her support of the Klan was extensive. She allowed and sometimes participated in Klan meetings and cross burnings on some of the numerous Pillar of Fire properties. She published ''The Good Citizen'', a monthly periodical which strongly promoted the Klan and its agenda. Additionally, she published three books, ''The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy'', '' Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty'', and ''Heroes of the Fiery Cross'', which were compendiums of the essays, speeches and cartoons that had originally been published in ''The Good Citizen''.

White expressed her racism against African Americans most vocally when speaking at Klan gatherings. On "Patriotic Day" at the 1929 annual Camp Meeting at Zarephath, New Jersey