How Bishop Charles Harrison Mason Got His Start

By Scott Bennett


This man is honored by many as a prominent religious figure in the Pentecostal Holiness denomination. His many achievements throughout his lifetime of working to preach the word of God have led to many great things that still have resonating effects today. The church Bishop Charles Harrison Mason founded in Lexington, Mississippi has grown to be the largest of its kind.

Sharecropping was a common occupation for the people of Shelby County, and that is what Mason's parents did for income. His parents, Eliza and Jerry, were both former slaves and lived in an unincorporated area. Charles did not get much of a formal education while he was growing up, and that was why he came to learn as much as he could from the Bible.

The first experience in a church for anyone can be a very special moment. At the age of 12, Mason was baptized at a Baptist church in a ceremony that held some extra significance for him. This was because the reverend doing the baptism was his older half-brother.

There were many diseases in the days when he was growing up that could not be easily cured. This problem was compounded with the fact that white doctors generally wouldn't even see African American patients, and the health centers for African Americans were too poor to be much help. When tuberculosis was going around, both Charles and his father Jerry fell sick, and Jerry died from it.

After the death of his father, this family had no choice but to move. They went to Arkansas to a small town called Preston, and it was a difficult transition since Mason's health had still not returned to him from his bout of tuberculosis. When he was at his very worst, his family desperately prayed for him to get better, and he was healed miraculously.

Being a clergyman was not the lifelong dream of this man, although he spend most of his life driven by the passion of it. However, when he was young, he told his parents that he did not want to be a clergyman and that he would rather just be a normal church member. The event that changed his mind was when his health had taken a plunge from tuberculosis, and he was saved by his family's prayers.

In order to become a minister of any type of church, it is necessary to get a license to do so. That is what Charles chose to do when he was 27 years old, thus starting off a career that would be his passion for his whole life. This led him to Arkansas, where he worked at a Baptist church.

It can be very hard to take a stand and openly disagree with what others are doing. That is exactly what Mason decided he had to do in order to honor his faith when the very first Baptist church he worked at. He felt that the emphasis wasn't on the Word of God, which he felt it should, and so after only a few months, he left.




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