WINEBRENNER, JOHN (Mar. 25, 1797-Sept. 12, 1860), clergyman, founder of the General Eldership of the Churches of God in North America, was born on a farm near Walkersville, Frederick County, Md., the third son of Philip and Eve (Barrick) Winebrenner, and a grandson of Johann Christian Weinbrenner, who emigrated from the Rhenish Palatinate to Pennsylvania in 1753 and settled ultimately at Hagerstown, Md. From his mother he inherited a strain of Scottish blood, and in temper and appearance he was more Scotch than German. Although he dated his conversion from Easter Sunday, Apr. 6, 1817, his ambition, even in early boyhood, was set on the ministry. He attended an academy at Frederick; entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, Pa., shortly before it closed its doors in 1816 for a few years; studied theology for three years in Philadelphia under Samuel Helffenstein, son of J. C. A. Helffenstein [q.v.]; and, having been elected pastor of the German Reformed congregation at Harrisburg, was ordained at Hagerstown on Sept. 28, 1820, by the General Synod of the German Reformed Church. His charge included four rural filials: Middletown, Schupps, and Wenrichs in Dauphin County, and Schneblys (Salem) in Cumberland.

      His work began auspiciously, for he was a man of real ability, but within two years the extravagance of his revivalistic methods had split his congregations into irreconcilable factions. His conservative, better educated parishioners would not tolerate a minister who demanded total abstinence from them, fraternized with Methodists, held prayer meetings on four evenings of the week, and conducted a "protracted meeting" until four o'clock in the morning, but he won followers, and many of them, among the lowly. Excluded from his Harrisburg church, he preached in the market place or wherever he could gather a crowd. For several years he lived as an itinerant evangelist, conducting camp-meetings at various places in central and western Pennsylvania and in western Maryland. preached with terrific effect; when he leaned out over the pulpit and shook his long forefinger at his hearers, the more impressionable among them would have fainting fits. In 1828 the German Reformed Synod dropped his name from its roster. On July 4, 1830, Winebrenner had himself rebaptized; the rite was performed in the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg by a young disciple, Jacob Erb. That summer he and his helpers organized themselves as the General Eldership of the Church of God. The sect grew and extended its activities into Ohio, Indiana, and the Middle West. In 1845 the general organization changed its name to that of the General Eldership of the Churches of God in North America. In 1926 it claimed 428 churches and 31,596 members.

      Its founder was for thirty years its leader and theologian, but his leadership was often disputed, and even as a theologian he did not always have his own way. He disliked the idea of foot-washing as an "ordinance," but many of his followers came from the foot-washing sects and arguing from his own principles of Biblical exegesis, compelled him to accept it. His other teachings were a medley of primitive Methodist and Baptist doctrines. He continued to live in Harrisburg until his death and devoted most of his time to the general work of the sect. He edited and published two church papers, the Gospel Publisher, 1835-40, and the Church Advocate, 1846-57; compiled English and German hymn books; and issued several volumes of sermons and doctrinal disquisitions. For a time, in his efforts to support his family, he was proprietor of a drug store. He also sold thousands of Chinese mulberry trees to his followers on the theory that they would then grow rich by raising silkworms, but the scheme failed, and the resulting scandal died hard. Throughout his sphere of influence Morus multicaulis became a fighting word. He was married twice: on Oct. 10, 1822, to Charlotte M. Reutter of Harrisburg, who bore him several children and died in 1834; and on Nov. 2, 1837, to Mary Hamilton Mitchell of Harrisburg, who, with their four children, survived him for many years. He died at Harrisburg after an illness of two years. In 1868 the Churches of God raised a monument to his memory in the Harrisburg Cemetery.

      [George Ross, Biog. of Elder John Winebrenner (1880); C. H. Forney, Hist. of the Churches of God in the U. S. A. (1914); article by Winebrenner in I. D Rupp, He Pasa Ekklesia: An Original Hist. of the Religious Denominations at Present Existing in the U. S. (1844); T. J. C. Williams and Folger McKinsey, Hist. of Frederick County, Md. (1910), II, 708-09, 1341-42; Reg. of the Members of the Union Philosophical Soc. of Dickinson Coll. (1850); Verhandlungen der General-Synode] [384] der Hockdeutschen Reformirten Kirche in den Vereinigten Staaten, 1820-28.]

G[eorge] H[arvey] G[enzmer]
[DAB 385]

      George Harvey Genzmer's "John Winebrenner" was first published in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), Vol. 20, p. 385.

      Pagination of the printed text has been represented by enclosing the page numbers within square brackets.

      Addenda and corrigenda are earnestly solicited.

Ernie Stefanik
Derry, PA

Created 29 March 1997.
Updated 9 July 2003.