A preacher building her own institutions
Born Mollie Alma Bridwell in Kentucky in 1862, White trained as a teacher and moved west to Montana. In 1887 she married Kent White, a Methodist preacher. Her conviction that she was called to preach developed into revival work and an independent mission in Denver. The movement became Pillar of Fire, with White as its leading figure and, later, bishop.
She established schools and a publishing operation at Zarephath, New Jersey, and supported women’s rights in religious and public life. That advocacy coexisted with a sustained commitment to white supremacy. She publicly promoted the Ku Klux Klan, publishing books in its defence and supporting its anti-Catholic and antisemitic programme. Alma White College hosted Klan meetings and received Klan assistance. These commitments were part of her institutional work, alongside preaching and education. She died in 1946.
A dispute over the meaning of Pentecost
Demons and Tongues was published by the Pentecostal Union at Bound Brook, New Jersey, in 1910. Despite that publisher’s name, the book is an attack on the newer movement associated with speaking in tongues. White interprets its manifestations as spiritual deception and disputes the claim that they signal a renewed Pentecostal baptism.
The chapters move from alleged demon possession and sign-seeking to the origins of the tongues movement and the gifts of the Spirit. Biblical interpretation supplies the main authority, joined by her accounts of meetings and people she encountered. She does not reject the possibility of divine gifts altogether; she argues that these particular claims are counterfeit. The book records a sharp boundary she drew between her Holiness teaching and a rival revival movement. Her descriptions of demons are theological accusations, rather than independently established explanations of the participants’ experiences.
