rwin’s theories of organic evolution and natural selection, because they viewed the theories as challenging the Biblical narrative and detracting from the idea of human perfection. Wesleyans among them placed experience over exegesis and did not assign as high a priority to fighting Darwinism as other conservative Protestants. They tended to adhere to the gap or ruin-and-restoration theory, which placed geologic ages between the beginning of creation and the Edenic restoration, or they backed the interpretation that Biblical “days” spanned great geologic ages. During the fierce debates of the 1920s, typified by the Scopes Trial, the most important Holiness spokesman was Henry Clay Morrison, a Southern Methodist who played a major role in fighting for creationism. There have been relatively few creationists in the science departments of Holiness colleges, however. Some Holiness church members support theistic evolution, but they have been virtually silent.
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.
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.
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 1890s 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.
- Brasher, J. Lawrence. The Sanctified South: John Lakin Brasher and the Holiness Movement. (1994). 260 pp.
- DuPree, Sherry Sherrod. African-American Holiness Pentecostal Movements: An Annotated Bibliography. (1996). 650 pp.
- Harrell, David Edwin. All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (1975), a major scholarly history excerpt and text search
- Jones, Charles Edwin. Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867-1936 (1974)
- Kimbrough, David L. Park Saylor and the Eastern Kentucky Snake-Handlers: A Religious History. (1992). 346 pp.
- Kostlevy, William C. Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement (2001)
- Mills, Gene. Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements (2003).
- Opp, James. The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 18