Church of God.

The Church of God is a Protestant Christian denomination founded in 1886 as the Christian Union in Tennessee by a former Baptist minister and a congregation of only eight others. The minister, Richard Green "R.G." Spurling (1857---–1935) and his followers believed their church was needed because many of the existing Christian denominations were too focused on creeds and church practices instead of on the Bible's New Testament. They originally called themselves the Christian Union and operated under the principle that they were all equally empowered to read and interpret scripture. Because they thought of themselves as God's church, they eventually adopted "Church of God" as their formal name in 1907, twenty-one years after they founded the Christian Union.