Check.Church

Church of God in Christ

Pentecostal and Charismatic · 1897–1907 · United States; worldwide

C. H. Mason's holiness fellowship embraced the Pentecostal experience after Azusa Street and reorganized in 1907; today the largest African-American Pentecostal denomination. For decades after 1914 the Assemblies of God referred Black ordinands to COGIC — the racial history is stated factually on both nodes.

Church of God in Christ was formed between 1897 and 1907, as a process rather than a single event. Church of God in Christ continues today. Church of God in Christ's institutional line runs back through The Holiness movement, Methodism, Church of England, Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.

Between the post-apostolic church and Church of God in Christ stand 3 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.

At a glance

Formed
Between 1897 and 1907, as a process rather than a single event
Family
Pentecostal and Charismatic
Region
United States; worldwide
Key figures
Charles Harrison Mason
Cause tags
Doctrine
Also known as
COGIC

What it separated from

On the tree

Church of God in Christ and its institutional line back to the post-apostolic churchAD 33The church at Pentecost: On divine groundThe church at Pentecost: on divine groundtoday100424431451105415341729183518971901The post-apostolic church (The spine)The post-apostolicchurchDepartureChurch of the East (Church of the East)Church of the EastChurch of the EastThe conciliar church (The spine)The conciliar churchDepartureThe Chalcedonian church (The spine)The Chalcedonian churchDepartureOriental Orthodoxy (Oriental Orthodox)Oriental OrthodoxyOriental OrthodoxEastern Orthodoxy (Eastern Orthodox)Eastern OrthodoxyEastern OrthodoxRoman Catholicism (Catholic)Roman CatholicismNot gatheredChurch of England (Anglican)Church of EnglandAnglicanMethodism (Methodist)MethodismMethodistThe Holiness movement (Holiness)The Holiness movementHolinessChurch of God in Christ (Pentecostal and Charismatic)Church of God in ChristPentecostal and CharismaticPentecostalism (Pentecostal and Charismatic)PentecostalismPentecostal and Charismatic

Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2. Dashed gray boxes mark the institutional line after the apostles, shown as departure; no line of descent is drawn from Pentecost. A verdict appears on a box once its section is published.

Adherents

About 5,500,000 adherents (self-reported claim, as of 2016).

A figure the body itself has stated, often years old, with no census apparatus behind it.

Source: Wikipedia (2016, 60 countries) with mandatory caveat: COGIC 'has not shared official statistics with the public… multiple different figures'

Sources

Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-31.