CHURCH VANISHES

Northern Advocate, 15 August 1935, Page 7

CHURCH VANISHES

PASTOR'S ALLEGED THEFT DISAGREED WITH FLOCK. BUILDING DISAPPEARED IN ' NIGHT. iUnited Press Association —By Electric Telegraph. — Covyright.l NEW YORK, June 27. Charged with stealing his own church, the Reverend Clarence Davis, a negro pastor of Woodbury, New Jersey, was liberated on bail after spending the night in prison. Members of the congregation, who swore the warrant for the minister’s arrest, admitted to the magistrate that they were hampered in prosecuting him because they could not discover what the pastor had done with the stolen edifice. Flick Suspects. The chapel was a t modest frame structure, 20ft by 14ft, containing a pulpit, piano, 26 chairs, seven Bibles and eight song books. Pastor Davis had disagreed with his coloured flock on the question of doctrine, and they had reason to suspect that he would walk off with the church if they did not keep a close watch on him. From sunset on Saturday to dawn on Sunday ten members of the congregation maintained a vigil inside the tiny building, and the pastor sat with them.

By 4 a.m. he had fallen apparently into a profound sleep, and the watchers felt it was safe for them to tiptoe home.

Vanished in Night

When they gathered later for the sex’vice, however, they uttered cries of dismay. Church, chairs,- Bible, song books, all save the piano, had vanished. The parson had, in the negro phrase, “played possum.” The worshippers thereupon charged Pastor Davis with grand larceny, alleging that when they went home on Sunday morning he dismantled the church and hid its component parts. Fabricated structures of this type can be taken to pieces at will and erected elsewhere. Pastor’s Mistake.

Pastor Davis told the magistrate that, although he had given the land on which the church was built to the congregation, he had never deeded the building, and it remained his property. After the congregation had ousted him from the pulpit and changed the name of the denomination from Church of God to Church of Disciples, he felt he had the right to remove the church.

The magistrate said he believed the pastor had made an honest mistake in drawing up the deed, but ordered the prisoner to be remanded on bail for trial before a grand jury.