Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America

The Select Few: The Megiddo Message and the Building of a Community

Decades before Internet chatrooms and listservs, a small religious sect created an international community of loyal adherents through the effective use of publications sent through the mail. The Megiddo Church, a semi-communitarian1 sect founded in Oregon in 1880 and located in Rochester, New York, since 1904, has never had more than about two hundred members in its home congregation.2 However, through a ministry that focused on the creative use of its publications, particularly its magazine, the Megiddo Message, it developed a large constituency, many of whom considered themselves to be members of the Church even though they had little or no personal contact with the Rochester community. The Megiddo Church’s founder, Wisconsin Civil War veteran L. T. Nichols (1844–1912), began his ministry in Dodge County, Wisconsin. In 1873 he moved to Yamhill County, Oregon, where he established a small congregation affiliated with the Christadelphians,3 a denomination associated with the Stone-Campbell movement.4 He established an annual camp meeting, which often lasted as long as three weeks. He also acquired a printing press and began to distribute tracts and pamphlets. 131 > The Select Few The Megiddo Message and the Building of a Community -  In June 1883 Nichols was assaulted and wounded by an unknown assailant ,5 and as a result, he and some of his followers relocated to Dodge County, Minnesota. In Minnesota, Nichols separated from the Christadelphians , adopted the name “Christian Brethren” for his church, and established three congregations. At the same time, Maud Hembree, an Oregon convert, founded a congregation at Barry, Illinois, at the invitation of people who had become interested in Nichols’s teachings through his tracts.6 With support from congregations he established, Nichols continued to publish pamphlets and tracts. Of particular interest to his followers was a Bible chronology in which Nichols predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would occur sometime between 1896 and 1901. As 1901 approached, Nichols felt compelled to carry the Brethren’s message to a wider audience. Ordering the construction of a large steamboat , which he named the “Megiddo,” he closed all his churches and gathered between eighty and ninety of his followers on the boat, which plied the Mississippi and Ohio River systems during the navigation seasons of 1901 through 1903, stopping at ports along the way where the Brethren held meetings. While on the rivers, Nichols continued to publish tracts, as well as flyers for distribution to announce meetings.7 Evangelization has always been critical to the growth of the Megiddo Mission (as the group came to be called in Rochester) because its sense of the imminence of the return of Christ has led it to discourage marriage and promote celibacy. Consequently, almost all new members have been converts and have included families with children. Having determined that all areas reachable via the river systems had been evangelized, in January 1904 the Brethren relocated to Rochester, New York. From there they sent out missionaries to sell Nichols’s publications . The missionaries traveled to major cities in the Northeast and adjacent areas of Ontario, Canada, visiting smaller communities along the way. The period from the middle of the nineteenth century through World War II, during which the Megiddo Mission developed, was one of great growth in religious publishing. For example, periodicals related to the Holiness Movement grew in number from fewer than ten at the time of the Civil War to over fifty by 1900.8 Several groups were organized around their periodicals, most notably the antidenominational Church of God movement, whose members were known by the name of their publication, The Gospel Trumpet.9 132 -  In this environment, one would expect an avid publisher of tracts such as L. T. Nichols to have been at the forefront in developing a periodical ; but for reasons that are not clear, he was not. The development of a periodical for the Christian Brethren was left to his successors. When Nichols died in February 1912, he was quickly succeeded by his able assistant, Maud Hembree, who continued to send missionaries out to sell Nichols’s publications, the most popular of which remained his Bible Chronology, now updated to predict Christ’s return sometime between 1941 and 1952, and a pamphlet titled What Must We Do to Be Saved? The publications were usually sold in sets, and people were encouraged to read them repeatedly since there were no new words forthcoming from the founder.10...