West End Church of Christ Silver Point
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West End Church of Christ Silver Point
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West End Church of Christ Silver Point
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| Location | 14360 Center Hill Dam Rd. |
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| Nearest city | Silver Point, Tennessee |
| Coordinates | 36°3′26″N 85°44′26″W / 36.05722°N 85.74056°WCoordinates: 36°3′26″N 85°44′26″W / 36.05722°N 85.74056°W |
| Area | Approximately one acre |
| Built | 1915 |
| Architect | P. H. Black |
| NRHP reference # | 07001270 |
| Added to NRHP | December 13, 2007 |
The West End Church of Christ Silver Point is a folk vernacular brick church in the unincorporated community of Silver Point, Tennessee, United States. A primarily African-American Church of Christ congregation has met at the church continuously since its construction in 1915. In 2007, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its role in the history of the Upper Cumberland region.
The church is rooted in the Silver Point Christian Institute, a mission school established largely through the efforts of Churches of Christ evangelists George Phillip Bowser (1874–1950) and Marshall Keeble. Along with providing badly needed education facilities to the Upper Cumberland's small African-American population, the school published the Christian Echo, a Church of Christ newsletter circulated nationwide. In spite of early financial struggles, the school, with the help of Nashville minister David Lipscomb and philanthropist A. M. Burton, managed to survive until 1959. The church, built for the mission school community in 1915, has remained in operation to the present, however.
The West End Church of Christ Silver Point is located along Center Hill Dam Road (State Highway 141) in the western half of Silver Point, a rural community scattered around the intersection of State Highway 141, State Highway 56, and Interstate 40, about halfway between Cookeville and Smithville. Along with the church, the property includes a modern cemetery and a small monument commemorating the church's establishment. Like most of the Highland Rim, the area is rugged and hilly.
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, education opportunities for the small African-American population of the Upper Cumberland were scarce. In his book The Souls of Black Folk, author W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of the primitive conditions of a black schoolhouse at nearby Alexandria, where he taught class while a student at Fisk University in the 1880s. In 1909, after delivering a sermon at the Laurel Hill Church of Christ in Nashville, Evangelist George Phillip Bowser was approached by fellow Church of Christ ministers Sam Womack and Alexander Campbell with a request to establish a church at Silver Point. Bowser agreed on the condition that he also be allowed to establish a mission school for the area's African-American children, which was granted.
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