Church of God in Christ: Princeton's Pentecostal Founding

In nineteen twenty-three, Elder Daniel Culp Thomas founded a local congregation in Princeton under what the marker describes as the leading of the Lord. He named it the Church of God in Christ, affiliating it with the Pentecostal denomination headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, which Bishop Charles Harrison Mason had established in eighteen ninety-seven. The Church of God in Christ became one of the largest Black Pentecostal denominations in the United States across the twentieth century.

This Princeton congregation was part of that national movement, bringing the expressive worship tradition rooted in the American South into a college town better known for its Presbyterian establishment. It is a quiet but telling marker of how diverse the spiritual life of twentieth-century New Jersey actually was.