The Night in 1961 When We Went 'Holy Rolling'

One night, after church, when I was 17, five guys-- all of us members of the Sunset church of Christ in Oak Cliff, in Dallas, were 'out' after church one night. We had often driven by a converted movie theater on the west side of Oak Cliff, and we decided to go into what was now called 'Soul's Harbor'. We knew this to be a church of what people back then called 'Holy Rollers', and we were curious about them. We parked the car we were in and went inside. The group consisted of Lloyd (the son of Loyd Smith, our preacher), my brother George and I, James Morgan and John Bixby.

Once inside, we found our way to the auditorium. We just followed the sounds of the loud music. We sat near the back of the old theater -- all of us in a row -- and were amazed at what we saw! The semi-darkened auditorium was comfortable and clean, and we could see a woman down front on the stage. She was dressed in a long, flowing gown of some kind, with what looked like red roses all over it. She had the microphone, and she was 'talking, gesturing, exhorting and at times, almost shouting' -- working the crowd. She had a number of people on the stage with her, and a number of them had musical instruments. We could not tell that they were playing any kind of music, in particular. It seemed like the guitars and the drums were more for emphasis to her spoken words than anything else....much like what one sees now when watching Jay Leno at night.  While this woman was walking around and stirring up the crowd, many people in the audience were doing things as well. Some people had their hands up in the air, and were waving back and forth, like people one sometimes sees at a sporting event.  Others were writhing around, while still more or less in a standing position. Some seemed to be under some kind of spell, and a few were down on the floor in the aisles, being attended to by people, in an unhurried, nonchalant manner.  We assumed that those prostrate on the floor had been 'slain in the spirit.'

I assumed that this was a pretty regular occurrence-- we had never seen anything like this all our lives!  We had all grown up in a very conservative church of Christ, our services being predictably: announcements, a song and a prayer, two more songs and a sermon with an invitatiion, followed by another song and a closing prayer, and all of it timed to net out to an hour, or, a little less.  Any longer than that and people would be looking at their watches...and at each other, with those telltale looks that spoke volumes.  The 'weak brothers and sisters'...those who sat on the 'cafeteria early-bird pews' at the back, would get up, family-by-family, with somber, 'we don't want to leave early, but we have urgent business somewhere to take care of' looks on their faces, and they would load up in their cars and head for Wyatt's cafeteria.  These were never the elders and deacons, nor those who were 'involved' in anything.  These people were the 'fringies'...people on the fringe of things at church....not the 'movers and shakers' who sat further up toward the pulpit. (Halfway kidding here). Things at Sunset were sedate, and predictable.  Nothing like this!

As time went on that evening, it got louder and louder. At one point, a bunch of big, burly guys took up a collection. People were getting up and moving about, and it was not at all like what went on at the Sunset church of Christ. We were astounded at the racket, the loud music, the drums and cymbals, and the activities on stage and in the audience. While there were likely over a hundred people in the old converted theater, it was not a packed crowd, and a lot of people were constantly getting up and down, moving around. It was a restless bunch of people. At one point, we were having a little trouble being respectful and considerate. We were getting tickled at what we saw, and it was about time for us to leave. My brother, George, reached into his pocket when they were taking up another collection, and he threw a penny from the back of the auditorium toward the stage.

What happened next brought our visit to Souls Harbor to a screeching halt! The penny appeared to strike the woman on the stage right in the forehead and she reeled back. Her shouting stopped and she shielded her eyes against the bright stage lights and looked out over the audience. She spotted us, as we were making our departure, and she shouted something --in a surprisingly husky voice-- that sounded very much like: 'GET 'EM!!'

At once, those same big burly men --- now identified to us by their demeanor and appearance as bouncers -- came running toward us from different places in the auditorium! We headed for the exit doors at a dead run. We all arrived at the bank of exit doors pretty much at the same time, but as we approached the doors and had our arms out in front of us, to 'hit the doors running', we heard a deep, angry voice shout, 'COME HERE, RED!' RED?! Not me! -- I had blond hair! The guy was going for John Bixby, who had flaming red hair. John was also over 200 pounds back then. The rest of us were in the neighborhood of 140-150 pounds. As the bouncer shouted at John and reached out toward him (all of us were running) -- John didn't open the door -- he more or less crashed through the doorway in panic-- sending the door flying open. The rest of us, having heard the booming voice of the bouncer, also were through our doors with...shall we say...a bit of a sense of haste, mixed with thoughts of impending doom.

We were now flying down the sidewalk, heading, not for our car, but for the adjacent neighborhood, where we split up and ran through the alleys. The bouncers-- four or five of them, as I remember -- were in hot pursuit. That proved to be a good thing-- the bouncers were big men, and they couldn't run like the five of us. As the expression we often used in those days went: We were 'hookin' 'em!'...running like the wind! We ran into the alleyways, hiding behind trash cans, garages, bushes, etc. John Bixby, scared witless, outran most of us! John's athletic skills, born of sheer terror, were only matched by James Morgan, who leaped over a fence that I had trouble climbing over! I had never seen Morgan move at greater than a snail's pace. He walked slowly and talked slowly. I had no idea he could move like that! We were so scared we were laughing some...nervous, scared-to-death laughter.

Eventually, the bouncers, who had searched for us for some time in a car, gave up the search. We had seen them cruising up and down the streets and alleyways in their big car -- windows down, big, burly arms hanging out the windows, making their 1950's Ford look like a giant, menacing, many-legged bug as they 'trolled the area around the church', looking for us. We clearly felt that they were not searching for us, like Good Shepherds, looking to find the lost sheep...rather, we felt like they were more like Avenging Angels, eagerly seeking to introduce us to the wrath of God, swift Judgment and Eternal Doom!

Much later on, we sneaked back into the parking lot, next to the 'Temple of Doom' and retrieved Lloyd's car and went home. Much, much later, we were all ashamed over our behavior. I didn't know that George was going to throw a penny. George didn't have any idea that his penny would do anything more than clatter around on the stage. It didn't matter that we had not gone there to cause trouble. What mattered is that we DID cause trouble, and had shown disrespect to people who, no doubt, were worshipping God and seeking miraculous healing for their afflictions. Most of the people in the audience were probably sincere -- everyone except the leaders of that Souls Harbor outfit. (For more information on that organization, and its leaders, and what they allegedly did in the name of God, do a Google search and read all about it). What we did was still wrong. No doubt about it. We all laughed about it back then. As we got older, we realized that what we had done was clearly wrong. One can disagree with religious error, and recognize when some people are apparently taking advantage of other people's pain and fear and ignorance. Ridicule, and disrespect, however, are always wrong, and we all eventually learned lessons from the evening we went 'holy rolling.'