Pillar of Fire or Pentecostal Union Church, founded by Alma White
The Pentecostal Union Church, referred to by the name of its signature publication, Pillar of Fire, was founded by Alma White, a radical Holiness advocate. On the cover below, “Violence” is among the sins that caused Christ to suffer in shame. Like many other Holiness groups, the Pillar of Fire railed against the evil effects of war and the specific horrors of World War I, but in many of its treatments of the War would immediately veer into spiritualizing and speak positively of spiritual war and rail against physical war, sometimes not making clear which was which. The government could not always tell either, and jailed some Pillar of Fire folks for passing out “anti-draft literature.” One writer, A. L. Wolfram, offered a decidedly Holiness perspective on the “Two-Swords” saying of Jesus in Luke 22.