Charles Price Jones

9 December 1865—19 January 1949

CHARLES PRICE JONES was born 9 December 1865 in Texas Valley, near Rome, Georgia, son of Edmond & Mary Jones. His father died when he was very young, and his mother remarried to Barry Latimer. He was raised primarily in Kingston, Georgia. After his mother’s death on 12 July 1882, C.P. Jones became aimless and bounced from Cedartown to Rome, Georgia, to Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, then to Cat Island, Arkansas, where on 16 October 1885 he was converted and then baptized by Elder J.D. Petty of Locust Grove Baptist Church. Jones started preaching and teaching locally soon after. He was licensed to preach in 1887 by Elder George W. Dickey of Locust Grove, then afterwards went to Forest City, Helena, and Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1888 he enrolled in the Arkansas Baptist College and was called as pastor at Pope Creek Baptist Church. He was formally ordained in October 1888 by Dr. C.L. Fisher of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, and in November became pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church on Broadway in Little Rock.

In 1891, Jones graduated from college, became editor of the school’s Vanguard paper, married Fannie Brown, and accepted a call to pastor Bethlehem Baptist Church in Searcy, Arkansas. The following year, he was hired as pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, a church associated with Selma University. He and his wife had a daughter, Ola Mae, in 1893; she died of severe burns in 1897. During his time in Selma, he experienced a spiritual awakening and personal sanctification, the roots of a change that would eventually cause him to part ways with the Baptist denomination. He later wrote:

As a Baptist I had doctrinal assurance; I wanted spiritual assurance, heart peace, rest of soul, the joy of salvation in the understanding of a new heart, a new mind, a new spirit, constantly renewed and comforted by the Holy Ghost.[1]

In the meantime, he was developing a reputation as a powerful preacher. He had been asked twice to take the pastorate at Mt. Helm Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, after preaching in revivals in 1893 and 1894. Finally, in February 1895 he accepted the call, and while in Jackson started to develop associations with like-minded ministers who were interested in the same kind of spiritual awakening he had experienced, which was part of a broader interdenominational Holiness movement. Jones hosted a two-week Holiness convention at Mt. Helm in June 1897. The following year, he persuaded his church to abandon the Baptist name and be known as a Church of Christ. The action was met with condemnation by Baptist associations in the area, then met with resistance in his own congregation. After a prolonged legal dispute, Jones was forced to leave the church in 1902, so with his supporters he founded Christ Temple, which was built on the opposite corner of the same city block as Mt. Helm, completed in 1903. The church was burned to the ground by a mob in 1905 and rebuilt in 1906. Jones also faced tension and legal strife over having to separate his version of Holiness from that of his contemporary Charles H. Mason (1864–1961), who would go on to form the Church of God in Christ.

Jones’s wife Fannie died in 1916. In 1917, Price moved his ministry to Los Angeles and started a Christ Temple church there. On 4 January 1918, he married Pearl Eleanor Reed (1893–1972), daughter of Samuel and Lucy (Nettles) Reed of Arkansas. They had three sons together, Charles Price Jr. (1918–1979), Vance Reed Jones (1923–1994), and Samuel Sherman Jones (1927–2017). Since 1906, Jones had been the leader of a fellowship of Holiness churches, but at a Holiness convention held at Christ Temple in Jackson in 1921, the fellowship decided to form their own denomination, the Church of Christ (Holiness), U.S.A. In 1926, the denomination published its first Manual of the History, Doctrine, Government, and Ritual of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A., establishing a form of episcopal leadership. In August 1927, the denomination appointed its first seven bishops, with Jones as Senior Bishop and President, a capacity he held until his death in Los Angeles on 19 January 1949. He had retired from pastoring Christ Temple in 1944.

A significant part of Jones’s legacy was as a hymn writer. Most of his hymns were written early in his career while at Jackson. He once explained how he got started, at a time when he was seeking guidance on how to convey his spiritual convictions to his congregants:

One day as I staggered under the weight of this obligation, under the necessity of this ministry, I felt that I must be alone and especially talk with God about it. I went to the home of Sister Rachel Williams, a God-fearing woman, the widow of Deacon Ben Williams, and asked if I might lock myself in her parlor and remain unmolested till I had reached the Lord with this matter. . . . Between 3 and 4 o’clock in the afternoon I became exhausted. I lay down on the sofa on which I knelt and said, “Lord, I’m exhausted. I can pray no more.” Then the Lord flooded me with blessing until laughing and crying and verily kicking like an infant for holy delight, I at last begged the Lord to desist. . . . The Spirit spoke within from the holy of holies of my redeemed spirit, and said, “You shall write the hymns for your people.” This He said six or seven times till it was fixed in my mind.

I got up and went to the organ in the corner of the room, wrote a song titled “Praise the Lord,” ruled off a tablet, set it to music, and sang it before I left the room. This song I lost, to my regret. I sent it to a publisher, a Mr. William Roseborough, author of Celestial Showers [1895], and he failed to bring it out. For it was his second book, Celestial Showers No. II [1900]. Before he brought the book out I was rejected by the Baptist people as a heretic.[2]

Jones bought a printing press and published much of his own material, but in recounting the arson of 1905, he said he had just received (and consequently lost) copies of Jesus Only No. 1 & 2 from the National Baptist press in Nashville. The rarity of Jones’s songbooks makes them difficult to trace and study. The most detailed examination has been by Jon Michael Spencer (1992). Through 1940, in songbooks produced by Jones and his denomination, Jones’s own compositions made up half or more of the contents. In the 1977 denominational hymnal, that number was 241 out of 512, a substantial number by any measure. Especially notable and valuable is Jones’s collection of song stories, “The History of My Songs,” recorded in 1935 and published in Cobbins (1966). Speaking of Jones’s hymns, Edith Blumhofer wrote, “They, more than any other facet of his ministry, continue to challenge and inspire those in many denominations who share Jones’s perception of the necessity of appropriating a living, present Christ.”[3]

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
5 February 2021

1. Ortho B. Cobbins, History of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. 1895–1965 (1966), pp. 23–24.

2. Ortho B. Cobbins, History of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. 1895–1965 (1966), pp. 24–25.

3. Edith Blumhofer, “Jesus Only: The Ministry of Charles Price Jones,” Assemblies of God Heritage, vol. 7 (Spring 1987), p. 15.

Featured Hymns:

Deeper, deeper in the love of Jesus
Jesus only is my motto
Where shall I be when the first trumpet sounds?

Collections of Hymns:

Jesus Only (1901): PDF [TP+Index]

Jesus Only Nos. 1 & 2 (ca. 1902–1905): PDF [TP+Index]

Select Songs (1906)

His Fullness (1913)

Sweet Selections (?)

His Fullness Enlarged [and combined with Sweet Selections] (1928): PDF [TP+Index]

Jesus Only Songs and Hymns (1940): PDF [TP+Index]

see also:

His Fullness Songs (1977)

Related Resources:

Patrick H. Thompson, The History of Negro Baptists in Mississippi (Jackson, MS: R.W. Bailey, 1898), pp. 35, 613–615: Archive.org

Charles F. Jones, “Sketch of the life of Pastor Chas. P. Jones,” Multum in Parvo, ed. I.W. Crawford & P.H. Thompson, 2nd ed. (Natchez, MS: Consumers, 1912).

Ortho B. Cobbins, History of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. 1895–1965 (Chicago: National Publishing Board, 1966).

Edith Blumhofer, “Jesus Only: The Ministry of Charles Price Jones,” Assemblies of God Heritage, vol. 7 (Spring 1987), pp. 14–15: PDF

Jon Michael Spencer, “The Church of Christ (Holiness) USA,” Black Hymnody: A Hymnological History of the African-American Church (Knoxville, 1992), pp. 101–118.

David Douglas Daniels, The Cultural Renewal of Slave Religion: Charles Price Jones and the Emergence of the Holiness Movement in Mississippi, dissertation (Union Theological Seminary, 1992).

Mark Sidwell, “Charles Price Jones,” Free Indeed: Heroes of Black Christian History (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones Univ., 2001).

Dale T. Irvin, “Charles Price Jones: Images of Holiness,” Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders, ed. James R. Goff Jr. & Grant Wacker (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 2002).

Willenham Castilla, Moving Forward on God’s Highway: A Textbook History of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ., 2007).

Anita Bingham Jefferson, Excellence Comes with Great Labor: Writings of Bishop Charles Price Jones, 1865–1949 (Pearl, 2009).

Anita Bingham Jefferson, Charles Price Jones: First Black Holiness Reformer with a One Hundred Year Chronology of His Life (Florence, MS: Stephens, 2011).

Lester Ruth, Longing for Jesus: Worship at a Black Holiness Church in Mississippi, 1895–1913 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013): Amazon

Related Links:

Lia C. Gerken, “Charles Price Jones,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: http://www.hymnology.co.uk/c/charles-price-jones

David Daniels, “Charles Price Jones,” Mississippi Encyclopedia (2017, rev. 2018): https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/charles-price-jones/

Charles Price Jones, Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/person/Jones_CharlesPrice

Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.: http://www.cochusa.org/