uthentic religious experience.
Late 19th Century
The movement reached a wide audience through Holiness Camp Meetings, beginning in 1867 at Vineland, New Jersey. The Holiness Movement influenced the transformation of the Methodist camp meeting in the latter 19th century. The frontier camp meeting that had focused on the conversion experience during the first part of the century ultimately evolved into a system of summer camps and conferences. Holiness camps were established on permanent campgrounds in natural surroundings. Here families could escape the evils of urban life and renew spiritual values. The focus was on nurturing the faith of those already converted. The camps also emphasized religious education.
Though still mainly Methodist, it spread to other Protestant denominations, while meeting stiff resistance from the established leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The hostility between such people as Hiram Mattison (representing the traditionalists in the Methodist Episcopal Church) and George Woodruff (representing the upstart Holiness Movement within that church), during 1867-87 may be attributed to their differing approach to worship. The issues at stake were the definition of holiness and what it means to be holy. For Holiness advocates, especially those of the ‘National Camp-Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness,’ the pattern of their gatherings was testimony, shared feeling, and spontaneous or Spirit-guided evangelism. The mainstream members of the church, however, preferred the pattern of joint specialized, rationally deliberated, and centrally coordinated benevolent activity. The ‘National Camp-Meeting Association’ sought to provide a firm ground for the empowerment of people who would go forth to conquer the world for Christ. The mainstream church sought the same goal but operated on bureaucratic and organizational principles alien to Holiness advocates.
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.
On the surface, speaking in tongues was the critical factor separating Pentecostals from adherents of the Holiness movement, but the underlying difference between the two was the manner in which the movements interpreted Scripture. Holiness people used metaphor to make Biblical events synonymous with personal experience. For them, the Exodus symbolized the progression of the soul to the life of holiness. Pentecostals sought to reenact elements of the Biblical text literally, and believed they participated in the fulfillment of Scripture.
Church of God (Anderson Indiana)
Holiness leader Daniel S. Warner was resolutely anti-sect and critical of all denominations; his followers coalesced in the 1880s around his publication, The Gospel Trumpet. It became known as the Church of God (Anderson Indiana), and in 2004 reported 252,000 full members in the U.S. in 2240 churches. It retains a focus on sanctification, remained Holiness, and was highly critical of those who came to believe that speaking in tongues was the defining gift of the Holy Spirit.
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 Woodworth-Etter, John Alexander Dowie, and Charles Parham 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. Pentecostals 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.
Holiness church members opposed Da