Difference between revisions of "Holiness Movement"

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The Holiness Movement among American Methodists in the 1830s-1880s was part of the Third Great Awakening. By the 1880s tensions between the Holiness advocates and more traditional Methodist bishops led to seceding groups forming new Holiness denominations, especially the Church of the Nazarene (1908) and the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) (1881).

Phoebe Palmer

The chief leader was Phoebe Palmer, a Methodist lay leader. In 1840, during a period of spiritual struggle and doubt, Palmer discovered through reading the Bible the calling to spread the doctrine of holiness. This discovery led her to leave the traditional woman's sphere and become a pivotal leader in the Holiness movement. Palmer led revivals in the United States, Canada, and Britain, wrote extensively, and became editor of the Guide to Holiness. She helped found the Hedding Church and established the Five Points Mission in New York City, which housed and educated needy families.^[1]

Late 19th century

The movement reached a wide audience through Holiness Camp Meetings, beginning in 1867 at Vineland, New Jersey. Though still mainly Methodist, it spread to other Protestant denominations.

The Holiness Movement transformed Wesleyan teaching by emphasizing revivalist techniques of invitation, decision, and testimony, and by insistence on visible evidence. By the 1890s physical healing was commonly expected, and the experience of sanctification was called "baptism with the Holy Spirit". Divided by the rise of Pentecostalism after 1900, the surviving Holiness groups became less exuberant.

Healing

Baer (2001) explores the significance of ideas of divine healing to the emergence of Pentecostalism from the radical holiness movement in the late 19th century. The careers and ministries of Maria B. Woodworth-Etter, John A. Dowie, and Charles F. Partham all demonstrate a commitment to notions of divine healing, where faith and belief in Christ and his atoning sacrifice on the cross could bring about a complete healing of the body and the soul. Pentecostalists participated in a broader evangelical culture in which divine healing was a key element in a program that could include ecstatic religiosity and a belief in Christ's imminent return. Newspapers reported the purported.^[2]

Canada

Mussio (1996) traces the development of holiness-inspired dissent in Canada by focusing on the Holiness Movement Church, a sect led by Methodist evangelist R. C. Horner and created in opposition to official Methodism in 1895. The Hornerite schism served to discredit the doctrine in the eyes of Methodist leaders. The holiness crisis sheds light on the broad cultural support for the experience, and demonstrates that the pressures placed on Methodism by dissent were integral to its transformation. The schism reinforced the Holiness movement's critique of professional elites and the middle class. As such, Hornerism and late-19th-century Christian perfectionism can be viewed as part of a broad populist movement intent on defending traditional social values against the forces of modernization.^[3]

Missions

Holiness thought shaped the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church during 1869-94. The decentralized organization of the society allowed holiness piety to flourish even as the official church position came to discourage holiness. Many of the missionaries linked their decision to become missionaries to their second conversion, or sanctification, and society members were recruited at camp meetings where holiness sentiments were prevalent.^[4]

Japan

Bays (1997) places the development of the Oriental Missionary Society (OMS) and its missionary work in Japan in the context of a convergence during the 1890's of three forces: the dynamic growth of the Holiness movement in the United States, the beginnings of the faith mission movement, and the institutionalization of the Holiness movement. The origins of OMS are rooted in the work of Japanese religious leaders Juji Nakada and Tetsusaburo Sasao, whose desire to develop a Holiness movement in Japan converged with the missionary interests of Americans Charles Cowman and E. A. Kilbourne. The bible school and evangelistic network developed under Japanese leadership in 1901 soon became a Japanese-foreign joint venture. By 1917 the trend toward internationalization and institutionalization had placed the missionary endeavor under foreign control. The attempt to maintain foreign control also delayed the creation of the independent Japan Holiness Church until 1917.^[5]

Further reading

• Jones, Charles Edwin. Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867-1936 (1974)
• Kostlevy, William C. Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement (2001)
• Stanley, Susie C. Holy Boldness: Women Preachers' Autobiographies and the Sanctified Self. U. of Tennessee Press, 2002. 336 pp.
• Synan, Vinson. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century. (Eerdmans, 1997). 340 pp.

notes

1. ↑ Kendra Weddle Irons, Phoebe Palmer: Chosen, Tried, Triumphant: An Examination of her Calling in Light of Current Research. Methodist History 1998 37(1): 28-36. 0026-1238
2. ↑ Jonathan R. Baer, Redeemed Bodies: The Functions of Divine Healing in Incipient Pentecostalism. Church History 2001 70(4): 735-771. in JSTOR
3. ↑ Louise A. Mussio, "The Origins and Nature of the Holiness Movement Church: A Study in Religious Populism." Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 1996 7: 81-104. 0847-4478
4. ↑ Dana L. Robert, "Holiness And The Missionary Vision of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869-1894." Methodist History 2000 39(1): 15-27. 0026-1238
5. ↑ Daniel H. Bays, "The Early Years Of The Oriental Missionary Society: Foreign Missionaries and Native Evangelists in Japan, 1901-1917." Fides Et Historia 1997 29(1): 15-27. 0884-5379