STEPS TO THE SUN

In 1955, Margaret Muse Oden, daughter of the Pentecostal Holiness Bishop, Daniel Thomas Muse, 1886-1950, wrote personal rembrances of her father in a book titled, Steps to the Sun (PHC Publishing House).

The introduction was by G.H. Montgomery, editor of the P.H.C. Advocate.  His comments open by saying, "History", someone said, "is made up of the individual stories of many people."

The contents reveal a flow of a life story touching many others and in the process preserving some rare history.

Contents:

• Rise and Shine
• Oh Brother!
• California Street and Printer's Ink.  
• Clay Hills,A T-Model and the Gospel
• Shepherd of a New Flock
• Seeing the Country- Eating fried chicken
• The Bishop -
• Tributes following his death
• Short Scriptural comments by Bishop Muse

California Street was the location of the First Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oklahoma City.  The first location was in the old Blue Front Saloon and there the pastor Harry P. Lott handed a broom to a young man just moved up from Boyd, Texas.

He soon put to work his skills as a typesetter as well and would do so for many years. He published in the next few years a newspaper/letter called, "Faith".  He wrote articles for the denominational papers (i.e., Advocate, Youth Leader, Pentecostal Pulpit, etc.)

The church grew and moved a little ways down the street to the area of the Central Fire Station, a tin shop, and a house serving as the parsonage at 526 W. California.  A vacant lot now, it once held a 2-story oldfashioned house with a large wrap around porch which allowed access to the parlor on the west side.  In another twenty years the church would leave its second building, the red brick building on California with its neon "Jesus Saves" sign, and would be several miles further west in a modern, blonde brick ediface at the corner of NW 9th and Blackwelder.

As janitor the young Dan T. Muse worked hard and in the 1920's he began preaching and was re-assigned to his old church as pastor.  Then as Superintendent of the Oklahoma Conference and then as Bishop of the denomination.

As Oden recounts these - mostly first person memories - of the sights, sounds, and emotions of early day Oklahoma in the Pentecostal Holiness Church there is a great insight in to the values, motivations, experiences, hardships, and challenges of early day citizens and pastoral families in the 1920-1950 time frame.

More than just a book about a church leader, this volume also includes rare glimpses of live in a time and place now vastly changed.  As such, it retains a valuable place in the works useful to church historians but also social historians as well.