The Highland Church, Louisville
One of my best friends has called to my attention an article in the March issue of Word and Work, written by E. L. Jorgenson, titled "History of Highland Church" (Louisville, Ky.). My friend knowing, as does everyone who is familiar with the Louisville church situation, that the said article is full of untruths, chicanery, half-truths and misrepresentations, and knowing, too, that I have been in a preferred position to know the true history of that church, prior to the last few years, insists that I write to correct at least some of the false statements made by E. L. Jorgenson; hence, this statement.
To appreciate fully the motives prompting his wicked course in this matter, the reader should know that Jorgenson has been fighting for twenty-four years for recognition by the brotherhood. Ever since he and Don Carlos Janes, in May, 1918, induced the Highland Church to withdraw fellowship from the late Brother R. O. Rubel, Sr., and the writer because we, opposed their determination to use the Highland Church to promote premillennialism. Following this action, 90 percent of the brotherhood soon dropped both Jorgenson and Janes and faithful preachers have refused to co-operate with the Highland Church. Since that time these men and that church have striven desperately to regain their standing in the brotherhood. It should also be remembered that the Highland Church, in recent months, has been exposed for having S. S. Lappin (a Christian Church preacher) conduct their protracted meeting. This explains Jorgenson's real purposes in publishing his false and misleading "history" of the Highland Church at this particular time.
Jorgenson says the Highland Church is fixed in the "great Biblical principle of speaking where, and only where, the oracles of God speak." I wonder where the Bible speaks to tell the Highland Church to extend invitation for those present to become members of the progressive Edenside Christian Church, should they prefer that church to the church of Christ? This was done in the recent Lappin meeting.
The Highland Church lot, of which Jorgenson boasts, was given to the church by the family of good Brother R. O. Rubel, Sr., whom he drove from that church, and the building of which he proudly publishes a picture, was paid for (R. O. Rubel gave the first $1,000.00) almost wholly by the forty-one members driven from that church by Jorgenson and Janes, by the withdrawal action of 1918. Very little, if anything, was paid on the building, and of course nothing on the lot, by the present membership; yet Jorgenson would have the brotherhood believe that the Highland congregation provided that lot and building because of their great generosity.
Jorgenson says that my good friend, Sister W. C. Priest, "this great good woman," endorsed and promoted premillenialism, which he was teaching and featuring, during the beginning of this movement in the Highland congregation. That statement stands out as the boldest falsehood in his so-called history of the Highland Church, and is an insult to the memory of one of my closest and most loyal friends. No one in that church (and I challenge even Jorgenson to deny this) enjoyed so fully, so close, so long and so intimate, a church association with Sister Priest as did I. She not only did not endorse his premillennialism and his course in pressing that doctrine, but when he first came to that church she questioned the wisdom of employing him, giving to me as her reason his connection with R. H. Boll, and warned me later that my opposition to Jorgenson would prompt him to attack me personally. From what followed it appears that she was almost a prophetess. I resent with all my strength his cowardly falsehoods about that noble, Christian woman.
Under a subhead—Cell Division—Jorgenson writes: "Highland Church has swarmed three or four times;" then he lists Beuchel, South Louisville, Ormsby and Bardstown Road as churches resulting from that "swarming." Bees swarm because they become too numerous for their house. This is what he wants the brotherhood to believe about the Highland Church, but everyone in Louisville church circles knows this is not the reason why a single one of those congregations was started.
Buechel is a village about five miles from Louisville and a few members wanted to worship closer to their homes. South Louisville was started by the Portland Avenue Church and not by the Highland Church. When D. H. Friend left the Highland Church some members of the church followed him to South Louisville, but there was no "swarm." Ormsby was started because Don Carlos Janes wanted to buy an empty church-house at a bargain and not because of a "swarm." The Bardstown Road Church was started when Jorgenson and Janes split the Highland Church over premillennialism.
Sometimes to suppress a truth is just as wicked as it would be to tell an out-and-out falsehood. Jorgenson's list regular preachers who have served the Highland Church are characterized by two things. First, he listed complete those who served the congregation regularly before he and Janes introduced premillennialism. Secondly, he carefully omitted from his list of regular preachers the following, who also served that congregation as their regular minister. I will let the reader draw his own conclusions as to why the following were omitted. Earl Smith, who soon after leaving the Highland Church, went to the Baptists, and is now teaching in a Baptist School. Virgil Smith, who is now in Brazil, belongs to the Pentecostal Baptist Church and fellowships all denominations and uses instrumental music on the street to attract people to his street services.
O. E. Phillips has gone to the Christian Church. Wallace Cauble, one of "R. H. Boll's boys," is now holding forth in Louisville as "pastor" of the Open Door Church. A former member of the Highland Church tells me that Cauble informed some members of the Highland Church (before he was employed) that he believed men are saved before they are baptized: This former member says Cauble was asked to leave, not because of his beliefs but to prevent some of the older members leaving, who were dissatisfied with Cauble's teaching.
Jorgenson says the Highland Church "enjoys the full confidence and fellowship of no less than twenty-five or thirty sister churches in this immediate area—Louisville and adjacent territory." Well, I do not know just how far "adjacent" extends but the Louisville directory lists only fifteen churches of Christ, and I know that the preacher for the Highland Church (E. L. Jorgenson) is never recognized in five of these churches. I also know that everyone of the other ten have as their preacher, R. H. Boll, E. L. Jorgenson, Claude Neal (brother of Chas. M. Neal), D. H. Friend, all of whom are premillennialists, or one of "Boll's boys," who are also premillennialists.
There is only one church in New Albany and only one in Jeffersonville; both cities are immediately across the river from Louisville and I know that neither Jorgenson or Janes are recognized in either of them. That makes seven churches out of the seventeen located in what business men in Louisville call; the "Greater Louisville," who have no fellowship with either the Highland Church or its preacher. That "adjacent" area will have to extend a long way to find "twenty-five or thirty" churches who fellowship Jorgenson and the Highland Church, for the further you get from Louisville the fewer "premillennial" churches you will find.
Regarding the members of the Bardstown Road Church (where I worship) Jorgenson says: "We have made every possible advance and overture toward better understanding," but the truth is that the Highland Church has done nothing of the kind. The only thing they have ever done regarding our relations is to attempt to induce the members of the Bardstown Road Church to ignore or to forget their evil deeds, and they have tried repeatedly to trick Brother Rubel and the writer into an admission of "factious conduct" so that they could thereby justify, in the eyes of the brotherhood, their wicked withdrawal action of 1918. In both of these efforts they have signally failed.
Only the lack of space prevents mentioning many other false and misleading statements found in Jorgenson's history, but enough has been recorded here to convince any fair minded person that E. L. Jorgenson is far more interested in seeking to escape the condemnation under which he rests, because of his wicked course in 1914-1918 and by reason of his premillennialism, than he is in telling a true history of the Highland Church, whose destiny he has directed since 1918. And it should now be quite evident to any reasonable person that under the dictatorship of Jorgenson and Janes the Highland Church has been for twenty-four years, and is now, just a radical, premillennial group of people who are willing to fraternize with the sects and permit any kind of preaching in their pulpit, provided everything done there will advance their pet hobby-premillennialism.