Holiness Movement, American 
Originating in the United
States in the 1840s and 50s, this was an endeavor to preserve and propagate John Wesley, Charles Finney, and many other Holiness preacher's
teaching on entire sanctification and Christian perfection. Wesley and Finney
held that the road from sin to salvation is one from willful rebellion against
divine and human law to perfect love for God and man. Following Wesley, most Holiness
preachers emphasized that the process of salvation involves two crises. In the
first, conversion or justification, one is freed from the sins he has
committed. In the second, entire sanctification, one is liberated from the flaw
in his moral nature that causes him to sin, by being born of the Spirit of God. Man is capable of this perfection even
though he dwells in a corruptible body marked by a thousand defects arising
from ignorance, infirmities, and other creaturely limitations. It is a process
of loving the Lord God with all one's heart, soul, and mind, and it results in
the ability to live without conscious or deliberate sin. However, to achieve
and then remain in this blessed state requires "abiding in Christ,"
and one's life must be marked by constant self-renunciation, and humility, the
intention to look for God's glory in all things, and an increasing exercise of
the love which itself fulfills the whole law and is the end of the
commandments.
In the mid-nineteenth
century several factors converged that contributed to the renewal of the
Holiness emphasis, among them the camp meeting revivals that were a common
feature in rural America, the Christian perfectionism of Charles Finney and Asa
Mahan, the urban revival of 1857-58, and protests within the Methodist churches
about the decline of discipline which resulted in the Wesleyan
Methodist secession in 1843 and Free Methodist withdrawal in 1860. Unfortunately,
these two only became two new denominations, even through they were formally
committed to Holiness. After the Civil War a full-fledged Holiness revival broke
out within the ranks of Methodism, and in 1867 the National Camp Meeting
Association for the Promotion of Holiness was formed. From 1893 it was known as
the National Holiness Association (NHA) and in 1971 was renamed the Christian
Holiness Association. Until the 1890s Methodists dominated the movement and
channeled its enthusiasm into their churches.
Unconverted men creeping
into leadership positions into Methodism slowly destroyed the usefulness of
Methodism in the movement. By the 1880s the first independent Holiness
denominations had begun to appear, and tensions between Methodism and the
Holiness associations escalated. The gap between the two widened as Methodist
practice drifted steadily toward a worldly, sedate, middleclass American
Protestantism, something that would have greatly upset John Wesley. While the
Holiness groups insisted they were practicing primitive Wesleyanism, and were
the true successors of Wesley in America. The small schismatic bodies gradually
coalesced into formal denominations, the largest of which were the Church of
God, Anderson, Indiana (1880), Church of the Nazarene (1908), and Pilgrim
Holiness Church (1897, merged with the Wesleyan Methodists in 1968 to form the
Wesleyan Church).
The polity of these bodies
was a modified Methodism in that there was generally somewhat more
congregational autonomy, and the "Second blessing" of entire
sanctification was an integral part of their theology. Most operated with a
strict perfectionist code of personal morality and demanded from their adherents
plain dress and abstinence from "worldly" pleasures and amusements.
Methodism quickly
degenerated below the Holiness movement. A Mennonite group, the United
Missionary Church (formerly Mennonite Brethren in Christ, after a merger in
1969, afterward called the Missionary Church), adopted the doctrine of entire
sanctification and Holiness standards of personal conduct. The Brethren in
Christ (founded 1863) was of mixed Pennsylvania German pietist and Mennonite
origins, but it also took on Wesleyan perfectionism. Four Quaker yearly
meetings that had been influenced by Holiness doctrines came together in 1947
to form the Evangelical Friends Alliance. The Salvation Army also has had a
firm commitment to Holiness. The Christian and Missionary Alliance with its emphasis
on Christ as Savior, sanctifier, healer, and coming King has an affinity with
the Wesleyan movement, and its two most prominent thinkers, A. B. Simpson and
A. W. Tozer, are widely read in Holiness circles.
The growth of the
independent churches was related to the decline of the Holiness emphasis within
Methodism, but this was only an excuse, the decline of the Holiness emphasis
within Methodism, was due to unconverted people creeping into methodism and
being allowed to take leadership roles. After World War II denominationalism
turned the originally evangelistic NHA into a council of Holiness churches. But
numerical growth and material prosperity led to compromise with contemporary
culture, and the relaxation of personal discipline was reflected in the wearing
of fashionable dress and jewelry and secular entertainments such as
participation in athletics and things like this. As a result, several
conservative splinter groups seceded from the Holiness denominations and joined
together in an interchurch organization in 1947 known as the
Interdenominational Holiness Convention. This now appears to be the defender of
pristine Wesleyanism.
Pentecostalism is an
offshoot of the Holiness movement. It teaches that speaking in tongues is the
evidence that one has received the second blessing, in reality, speaking in
tongues is an evidence, but not "THE" evidence. At a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, founded
by a Holiness evangelist the "gift of the Spirit" came to a student
in 1901, and the practice of glossolalia quickly spread. It is interesting to
that, speaking in tongues had appeared in the early nineteenth century in both
England and America, it had never assumed the importance attributed to it by
the later Pentecostals. For instance, glossolalia occurred in the 1830s under
the ministry of Presbyterian Edward Irving in London, in the services of Ann
Lee's Shaker movement, and among Joseph Smith's Mormon followers in New York,
Missouri, and Utah. The Pentecostals, however, were the first to give doctrinal
primacy to the practice. The Pentecostal revival made its greatest inroads in
areas where Holiness movements were already prospering, and it attracted far
more non-Methodists than had the earlier forms of perfectionism. Besides the
emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostalism recognized divine
healing and demanded highly puritanical standards of personal conduct. Like the
Holiness groups the Pentecostals were theological conservatives, and they
comprised an important addition to the Arminian wing
of Protestant conservatism in the period when the fundamentalist movement was
gathering steam.
Some Holiness denominations,
most notably the Church of the Nazarene, flatly reject the use of tongues,
while others, the largest being the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, and
the Pentecostal Holiness Church, teach both glossolalia and entire
sanctification. Denominationalism soon took hold in Pentecostalism, and before
long it had more adherents than its parent in such bodies as the Assemblies of
God, the black Church of God in Christ, and the International Church of the Four
square Gospel.
More difficult to
characterize is the Keswick movement which originated in Britain in 1875 at a
"Convention for the Promotion of Practical Holiness" in the Lake
District town of that name. Speakers at the annual Keswick conferences
emphasized the "deeper life" instead of holiness, believing that the
tendency to sin is not extinguished but is counteracted by victorious living
through the Holy Spirit. The predominance of Reformed Anglicans along with
like-minded Free Church evangelicals in the movement prevented the
Wesley-Arminian view of sanctification from establishing a foothold.
In Germany the Holiness
concept was institutionalized in the Gemeinschaftsbewegung (Fellowship
Movement) which came into existence under the influence of Keswick and
Methodist evangelists from Britain and the United States. Several societies
were founded, the most important being the German Evangelization Association
(1884), Gnadau Association (1888), and Blankenburg Alliance Conference (1905),
which cultivated a deeper holiness among members of the territorial churches.
The Holiness movement
contributed to a deepening of the spiritual life in a materialistic age, and it
was a welcome contrast to the sterile intellectualism and dead orthodoxy that
characterized so many churches at the time. However, it has been criticized for
teaching that a "second blessing" can provide Christians with a
higher kind of sanctification than that which flows from one's justifying
faith. This sort of criticism always
comes from persons that have never "Hungered and thirsted after righteousness.
See also WESLEYAN TRADITION;
METHODISM;
PENTECOSTALISM; OBERLIN THEOLOGY;