Frank Weston Sandford (October 2, 1862 – March 4, 1948)Shirley Nelson, Fair Clear and Terrible: The Story of Shiloh, Maine (Latham, New York: British American Publishing, 1989), 27. A second edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016) includes references and an index. was a charismatic Christian religious leader in the United States who attained notoriety as the founder and leader of an apocalyptic sect known as "The Kingdom".
After performing an exorcism and claiming to hear the voice of God warn him of "Armageddon", he established a commune called the "Shiloh" in Durham, Maine. Commune members were forced to fast, pray for hours-on-end and obey Sandford's orders absolutely. After commune members disagreed about his biblical interpretations, he instituted a chain-of-command in which his orders were limited by only by those of God and Jesus Christ. Eventually he declared himself the incarnation of the prophet Elijah and King David, and established "The Kingdom."
Considered by many to be an autocrat who insisted on unquestioning loyalty, Sandford regularly starved his followers, which resulted in deadly outbreaks of smallpox, diphtheria, and other infectious diseases. The death of 14-year-old Leander Bartlett lead to his conviction for manslaughter and cruelty to children in 1904, though the convictions were reversed the following year. Sandford then began leading missionary sea voyages. In 1911, he knowingly sailed from Africa to Greenland with insufficient food and supplies, causing six crew members to be stricken with scurvy and die on his return to Portland.
Sandford was detained by authorities and sentenced to seven years in prison. In 1918, Sandford was released on good behavior and returned to the "Shiloh", resuming his responsibilities as leader. Two years later, the death of another commune member led his sect to be forcibly dispersed in what he called "the Scattering". After the commune was evacuated by law, Sandford moved to New York's Catskill Mountains. On March 4, 1948, Sandford died and his body was secretly buried by his followers. His sect survives, in attenuated form, into the 21st century with the creation of the Kingdom Christian Ministries in 1998.
Early life Frank Sandford was born in Bowdoinham, Maine, the tenth child of a farming family. An early companion recalled young Sandford as a natural leader, stating that he was always the one who "drove the horse and steered the boat"; if they played ball, "he was always a captain."Nelson, 30. Sandford's father died when he was age 14, and by age 16 he was teaching school during an era in which physical prowess was often necessary to establish classroom discipline.Sandford "learned to get boiling mad with effect—to use his anger to control his circumstances. It worked in a total of seven schools....Work was more fun when he was in charge. His pupils adored him for that. If he was angry, his voice roaring, they did what he said in a hurry. The result was diligence—and immense pride and elation when they pleased him." Hiss, 42-43; Nelson, 31.
During his second year of teaching, Sandford reluctantly attended a revival meeting at his mother's Free Will Baptist church and was converted on February 29, 1880. He threw away his tobacco and announced his conversion publicly, not only at church but also at Nichols Latin School, where worldly cosmopolitanism was the preferred pose.Hiss, 44-45; Murray, 33-39. Sandford said he had been struck by the words of an old man who said, "Lord, you know we have no promise of the morrow." Sandford returned the next night and was converted. Nichols was a preparatory school for Bates College and shared its campus. Although the schools were Free Baptist, the student newspaper reported drinking bouts and vandalism, and Sandford was shunned as a "self-righteous humbug."
Entering Bates College on a general scholarship, Sandford was elected class president and served as both coach and catcher of the baseball team.The Lewiston Journal wrote of "old reliable Sandord," who suffered repeated dislocations of his fingers as a catcher because mitts were unpadded. Sandford's left hand was "gnarled and crooked for life." Hiss, 47. He graduated in 1886 with honors and was chosen to give a commencement address. For one summer Sandford captained a semi-pro baseball team and was approached by professional scouts. After a teammate ridiculed him for attending church during Maine's Fast Day, he returned to Bates to attend Cobb Divinity School.Nelson, 34-36; Hiss, 50-52. In 1911, the New York Times claimed that Sandford was "one of, if not the greatest college catchers Maine ever saw" and averred that had he "stuck to professional baseball he might have been the idol of thousands of big league fans." New York Times, October 29, 1911. Another report likely exaggerated his prowess when it claimed Sandford played his entire senior year without an error. Hiss, 47.
Frustrated by the seminary's mixture of formalism and religious modernism, Sandford later said that God had addressed him directly with words from the gospel of Matthew: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." For the rest of his life he distrusted academic religion.Nelson, 36-37; Hiss, 52; Matthew 5: 6. Sandford said that this occasion was the first on which God had spoken to him directly. Soon thereafter, at age 24, Sandford dropped out of seminary after he was called as pastor by the Free Will Baptist church in Topsham, Maine.Nelson, 37-38. He was frenetically energetic, and within three years his revivals resulted in three hundred conversions and more than a hundred baptisms. Besides serving as pastor, he became principal of the Topsham schools and organized sports programs for both local children and workers at a paper mill.Nelson, 38. Hiss, 53.
Early travels Beginning in 1887, Sandford's religious views changed dramatically. In July, he attended Dwight L. Moody’s "College of Colleges" at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts, the second annual meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement.Nelson, 45. The college men who attended represented a revival of interest in foreign missions among more privileged Americans.Nelson, 45-46. The motto of the Student Volunteer Movement was the "evangelization of the world in this generation." Moody himself provided Sandford with three key religious concepts: personal holiness, living by faith, and informal preaching.Hiss, 63. Moody also rested on Saturdays and held a year-end watch service, both practices that Sandford adopted. Shortly thereafter, Sandford read Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life (1875).Hiss, 63-64; Nelson, 41-44. Smith was an exponent of "higher life" Christianity; but what most attracted Sandford was her "emphasis on action, on a life that acts on faith, that obeys by doing."Hiss, 67; Everlasting Gospel, (June 1–30, 1901), 177.
Later that fall, Sandford was present for a religious conference that featured the Rev. A. B. Simpson, who had come to Maine specifically to organize the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Simpson's ministry emphasized not only missions and deeper life holiness but also faith healing. It was at this conference that Sandford met Helen Kinney, the daughter of a wealthy cotton broker, who had surrendered a career in art to become a foreign missionary.Nelson, 47-48. The following year, in the summer of 1888, Sandford attended the Niagara Bible Conference, which emphasized the imminent, premillennial return of Jesus Christ.Hiss, 69-70; Nelson, 49-50; David O. Beale, In Pursuit of Purity: American Fundamentalism since 1850 (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1986), 22-29
These diverse, yet related, strands of late 19th-century evangelicalism came together for Sandford after he accepted the pastorate of a more affluent Free Will Baptist church in Somersworth, New Hampshire. Following a period of emotional depression—perhaps a nervous breakdown—he was temporarily released by his church after the denomination invited him and another young minister to travel around the world.In an interview with Hiss, Frank Murray remembered Sandford saying that he had had "a nervous breakdown, but God wouldn't let me give way to it." Hiss, 80. Sandford's church underwrote part of Sandford's cost for the round-the-world trip. Sandford visited Japan, China, India, and the Ottoman Empire. In China he toured the China Inland Mission of Hudson Taylor, where he noted with admiration that "all depend upon God for support and divide their supplies equally"—a model for his own Shiloh.Hiss, 84. Sandford said that he left Taylor's mission "with a burning desire in my heart to see our own work multiply and spread under just such a system of simple reliance upon God." Visiting the Holy Land, he developed a lifelong passion for more knowledge about it, but he nearly died when his steamer sank off Jaffa.Hiss, 80-88; Nelson, 51-54. Sandford became a lasting friend of the Muslim chief boatman who had pulled him to safety despite "the religious gulf between them." Hiss, 88.
Pre-Shiloh activities After Sandford's return to the United States, the pastorate seemed tame, his congregation narrow-minded. In August 1891, Sandford had two strange experiences: he tentatively, but (at least according to his own testimony) successfully, cast demons out of a friend; and the following morning, he heard whispered in the trees the single word: "Armageddon." Shortly thereafter, Sandford convinced Kinney, whom he had met again as a missionary in Japan, to marry him. When he suggested leaving the pastorate and preaching the gospel without visible support, she replied, "I think it would be lovely."Nelson, 54-58. Nevertheless, Sandford's first approach to Kinney was unfortunate. His first written proposal included the line, "I believe our union will mean the marriage of the Lamb and His bride." She tore up the letter as blasphemy—but kept writing Sandford. Hiss, 91.
On New Year's Day, 1893, Sandford told his church that God had told him, "Go." He resigned his pulpit and gave away his savings in the teeth of an economic panic and depression.Nelson, 58; Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform and Expansion, 1890-1900 (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 141-42. Sandford and his wife then began holding meetings in rural Maine—at the beginning with virtually no congregations and no financial support.Nelson, 59-63. Eventually he achieved some success among people in Maine's coastal hill regions and contributions came in plentifully, although Sandford did not solicit money or even pass a collection plate.Nelson, 68.
By the fall of 1894, Sandford believed that he no longer bore responsibility for his actions, that he need only respond to the movings of the Holy Spirit.Tongues of Fire 1 (September 1895): 3, quoted in Hiss, 104. Thus abandoning the Free Will Baptists, he began to issue a monthly magazine, Tongues of Fire from the World's Evangelization Crusade on Apostolic Principles, in which he advertised for other workers to join him in his ministry.Nelson, 68; Hiss, 107-08. A year later, with a small but committed following of young people, Sandford announced the opening of a school, soon given the name "Holy Ghost and Us Bible School." The school charged no tuition, offered no courses, and had no teachers except Sandford himself and no textbooks except the Bible.Nelson, 72. One early member recalled that with Sandford's dynamic movements and knowledge of the Bible, "he could inspire a wooden Indian. There was never a boring meeting." Lester McKenzie, quoted in Hiss, 120.
Religious leadership Shiloh