Old Time Religion — A Meeting of the "Holy Jumpers"

Wisconsin, 1906

Practiced by Holiness Band in This City

Primitive and Active

Members Give Lively Manifestations of Emotion. Mr. Farson Preached Sunday Evening

For people who like old-fashioned things, who look back to an earlier and simpler civilization with regret and who honestly believe that more primitive manners indicate more honest and genuine feeling, the meetings of the Holiness Band, or the "Holy Jumpers," as they are known, now being held is this city, are heartily recommended. The "Jumpers" have no use for the elegancies, the culture and the restraint incident to the times. They scorn material luxuries and they find in the quiet religion of the present day churches only dust and ashes.

They believe in revivals, continuous revivals, old-fashioned, praise-the-Lord, Hallelujah, revivals, where when a man feels inspiration, he shouts and sings and jumps up and down, and in any way that comes natural expresses his joy in salvation.

The meeting conducted by the Band at the Athenaeum, Sunday evening was like the old-time Methodist camp meetings one reads about.

It began before seven o'clock and continued more than two hours, every moment of which there was something doing. The Band sings with tremendous gusto, their songs of the rollicking, swinging, camp-meeting order, with about seventeen verses apiece. One of the remarkable things about the "Jumpers" is their length of wind. They can sing seventeen verses with the utmost enthusiasm, every once in a while bounding up and down like a rubber ball, without once stopping to take breath. Many of their prayers and testimony are of the same breathless, rapid-fire type.

Mr. Pettingill leads the chorus singing, singing, and also sings solos, accompanying himself upon the zither. He has a good voice and it is pleasant to hear him. For the choruses there is also a cornet, played by one of the men, and a cabinet organ, played by one of the women. Sometimes a singer stops singing to shout out a regular Indian war-whoop, or a woman's voice shrieks out in high G. Often the singers sway and swing, as in "balancing" for old-fashioned quadrilles, and now and then they jump up and down and crack their heels together. The lightness with which these middle-aged people perform their gymnastic feats, argues well for the effect of their regimen upon the physical condition.

Duke M. Farson of Chicago, one of the leaders of the Band, preached Sunday evening. At least he called it preaching, though most people would have called it exhorting. His theme was the need of sanctification, of the actual presence of the Holy Ghost. According to Mr. Farson, real religion means two distinct processes, conversion and sanctification, like a double-barrelled shot gun, as he said, and the former is of very little use without the latter. The man who is sanctified is washed clean of all meanness and wickedness, and is made holy; the Lord lives with him and walks with him. Mr. Farson strode up and down the platform to illustrate.

Mr. Farson hasn't any use for many of the Churches of the present day. Perhaps they used to have sanctification but they haven't got it now. He declared that the Lord believes in revivals, continuous revivals, and he is with the Church that holds continuous revivals, and with none other; he hasn't any use for the Church that has one week of prayer and devotes all the rest of the year to strawberry festivals and oyster suppers. The speaker waxed merry at the expense of the preacher, who writes his sermons, "for fear he should forget what he once thought," and who wears out the carpet just back of the pulpit and no place else. He, Farson, used to prepare his sermons with infinite pains and trouble. Now he has learned the futility of such performances; he has learned that the only way is to fill the heart with true religion and then to open the mouth and let the heart speak.

"It's a great thing to have no reputation to sustain," declared the speaker. "I'm so sorry for the poor man who is getting ten thousand a year and has the reputation of a big preacher to hold up. Think of always having to preach so as to please your board of managers, or they will retire you and get someone else. Now, we don't have to please anybody. If you don't like our meetings, you needn't come. We didn't ask you to come anyway. Of course you're welcome, but we don't owe you anything. You don't pay us $50 a year and we are not asking you for any collections.

Mr. Farson bounded up and down, with an expansive smile, and the members of the Band nodded and smiled approval.

"I saw something that I liked as I came into this hall," continued the speaker. "The letters W O W, — wow," and he gave vent to a war-hoop that split the air.

Mr. Farson looks like the typical city business man. He appears well-fed, and well-dressed and is clean-shaven. He says he was a traveling-man for thirty years, and thought he always frequented the churches, wherever he went, he found very little religion in them. Now he is apparently satisfied that he has found the only genuine simon-pure brand.

The Band is holding its meetings down-town, while the heating-pipes are being put in to the big dining-room at the Fountain House. As soon as that work is completed, the meetings will, it is said, be held there. The down-town meetings naturally attract large audiences, but they are perfectly orderly. The Athenaeum was crowded Sunday evening, and the people laughed occasionally, though hardly so much as those who were conducting the meeting. But there was not the slightest symptom of disrespect. Members of the Band who served as ushers would also, it may be presumed, serve as policemen if necessary. The "Jumpers" have not had Chicago training for nothing.

—The Waukesha Freeman, Waukesha, Wisconsin, March 15, 1906, p. 1.