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Alma Bridwell White was born in 1862 in Lewis County, Ky. She received an A.B. from Millersburg (Ky) Female College and, later, A.M. and D.D. degrees from Alma White College, which she founded. After a teaching career, White became interested in preaching after marrying the Rev. Kent White, an Methodist minister. Since women preachers were frowned upon, she started preaching on street corners and organizing revival meetings. In 1902 she organized the Pillar of Fire Church, based in Zeraphath, New Jersey, which split from Methodism and adhered to the Holiness movement. She was consecrated a bishop in 1918. She travelled with her message across the United States and into Europe. She was a powerful force, founding colleges, operating radio stations and publishing books and pamphlets. She perceived a spiritual and cultural crisis in the United States in the 1920's and embraced and promoted the Ku Klux Klan as an agent of transformation against modernism, Catholicism, immigration, alcohol, and other cultural movements during that era.

Dianne Shapiro, from Obituary (New York Times, June 27, 1946 and "Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance" by Lynn S. Neal Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 350-378