Abstract
The rise of numerous holiness and pentecostal denominations in the recent history of the United States has proven to be an interesting and important development in the past two decades. The growth of these groups has been phenomenal. For many years these churches were ignored; members were dismissed as fanatics and only referred to occasionally as "holy rollers." Many serious scholars designated these groups as "relics of the nation's primitive frontier past." I became aware of the lack of literature in Anthropology on Black Pentecostal Churches in my various studies of religion. Hopefully, this study may go some way in filling the serious gap in our knowledge of the "Mother" church of the Western division of the Churches of God in Christ. To do this, I reconstruct the ethnohistory of Saint's Home Church of God in Christ.