An offshoot movement of the mid-1860s (based in Marion, Iowa) that absorbed the remnants of an earlier defecting group in Michigan and finally became an organized denomination.
“Hope of Israel” Party (1858). About the beginning of 1858 in Michigan, Gilbert Cranmer was refused a license to preach until he would stop using tobacco and would solve certain home problems. Upon his refusal, Cranmer went out on his own to preach, and obtained a few followers among Seventh-day Adventists. In 1863 these defectors revived the defunct Messenger of Truth (see Messenger Party ) and changed its name to The Hope of Israel (not to be confused with the journal of that name in Portland, Maine). The emphasis of the new offshoot group was on liberty to use tobacco and to indulge in other practices disapproved of by SDA s. The Hope of Israel lasted about two years before it was discontinued for lack of financial support, and the Cranmer group united with a group led by two Iowa ministers that became known as the Marion Party.
Marion Party (1866) . A defection began in 1865 in Iowa with the first president and secretary of the newly organized Iowa Conference. These two were, respectively, B. F. Snook, a former Methodist minister, and W. H. Brinkerhoff, a former lawyer, both SDA s since about 1860. Opposed to a strong church organization, both these ministers carried on a campaign of criticism and stirred up disaffection in Iowa against the general leadership of the SDA Church, particularly against James and Ellen White.
The conference constituency in July 1865 replaced Snook by George I. Butler. Thereupon Snook, accompanied by Brinkerhoff, drew away some of the members and in 1866 established headquarters of a new offshoot group at Marion, Iowa, for which reason they were thereafter denominated the Marion party. They also drew to themselves some unaffiliated groups of Adventists and the adherents of Gilbert Cranmer’s earlier party in Michigan, whose defunct paper The Hope of Israel they revived and issued thereafter under various names, with several interruptions. The movement failed to enlist many SDA s. Snook abandoned this group and became a Universalist minister. Brinkerhoff returned to his earlier profession, the practice of law.
Church of God (Seventh Day) . The “Marion party” became known as the Church of God (Adventist), and later established headquarters at Stanberry, Missouri. This church retained observance of the seventh-day Sabbath but differed on several points, such as the millennium. It held the theory that Christ was crucified on Wednesday and rose on Saturday and taught that the Lord’s Supper should be observed annually at the time of the Passover. One offshoot from the Stanberry group was organized in 1933 as the Church of God (Seventh Day) in Salem, West Virginia; it reunited with its parent in 1949 and the merger, with headquarters in Denver, has since been called the Church of God (Seventh Day), Denver, Colorado. There remains an unmerged group, the Church of God (Seventh Day) at Salem, West Virginia. (See Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations, 1961 ed., p. 75.) Several smaller splinter groups exist also.
The Radio Church of God, at Pasadena, California, an independent group operating a broadcast, a paper, and a school, was founded by a former minister of the Church of God (Adventist) and later of the Church of God (Seventh Day), but it differs doctrinally from both and from Seventh-day Adventists.