# Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) **Summary.** The Church of God (headquartered in Cleveland, Tennessee) is an early Pentecostal denomination shaped under its first general overseer, Ambrose Jessup (A. J.) Tomlinson. In this wiki it is documented as an origin node for "centralized sacred authority" — a structure later movements, including the [[New Apostolic Reformation]], are argued to have inherited. (Source: [[2026-06-20-leaving-the-message-church-of-god-political-roots-revivalism|Leaving the Message — Hidden Political Roots of Modern Revivalism (Church of God Deep Dive)]].) > [!note] Source caution > Documented from a single critic source (John Collins / *Leaving the Message*) using an explicitly "architectural" (structure-over-theology) method. The Cleveland associations are disputed within the tradition itself. Treat the historical chain as provisional and the structural reading as the durable contribution. --- ## Profile - **A. J. Tomlinson.** First general overseer; expanded a small holiness fellowship into a structured denomination with coordinated assemblies, publications, and missions — organized around a "restored New Testament order," i.e. theocratic order as the membership test. - **Roy Davis.** A revivalist who, per a newspaper ad Collins cites, spoke in the Cleveland branch and helped establish a Church of God institution while described as "a lecturer for the Ku Klux Klan." Used as the connective figure tying the denomination to a wider political-religious network. - **Network links (via Davis).** Rev. John Roach Straton and the "Supreme Kingdom" (a Klan spin-off whose education/government/media ambitions Collins reads as a proto–[[Seven Mountain Mandate]]); and Gerald Burton Winrod's "Fundamentalist Association," which pushed fascist-type ideology into early fundamentalism and was connected to Aimee Semple McPherson's Foursquare Gospel Church. --- ## Assessment for this wiki The page's value is the "architecture over theology" thesis: when a church declares its preferred government "divinely ordered," dissent becomes spiritual rebellion and a cult boundary forms between co-religionists who vote differently. That mechanism — not political engagement as such — is the through-line Collins traces from the 1920s to the modern [[Christian Nationalism]] and [[Dominionism]] of the NAR. The Foursquare/McPherson connection also surfaces in the Potter's House source ([[2026-06-20-leaving-the-message-potters-house-escape-ep636|Leaving the Message — Inside Potter's House: One Man's Escape (Ep. 636)]]), tightening the shared Pentecostal-origins map.