John Wesley and the History of Methodism — Unit 7: The Holiness Movement: Phoebe Palmer, Camp Meetings, and the New Holiness Churches

Key Verse

"Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:23, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain why many Methodists in the nineteenth century felt that Wesley's teaching on holiness was fading, and what they did about it.

2. Describe the life and teaching of Phoebe Palmer, including her Tuesday Meeting and her book The Way of Holiness (1843).

3. Describe the role of the camp meeting and the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness.

4. Name the Wesleyan Methodists (1843), the Free Methodists (1860) and the Church of the Nazarene (1908), and explain why each was formed.

5. State the main objections to the Holiness movement and give the Wesleyan answer.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Wesleyan tradition, for students who belong to it. It is conservative and evangelical. When it says "we" or "our tradition," it means the Methodist and Wesleyan-Holiness churches that hold the Bible to be the Word of God and teach salvation for all and holiness of heart and life. Other Christians and many historians see these matters differently. We state their views fairly and then give our answer. Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Why This Unit Matters

Many pastors in Latin America and Africa belong to churches that came from the Holiness movement or were shaped by it. The Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church and the Free Methodist Church all have this origin. To know where they came from is to know why they teach what they teach. This unit also explains a hard question: why did a movement that began as a call to holiness end up forming new denominations? Our tradition does not hide the answer.

The Seed: Wesley's Teaching on Perfect Love

John Wesley taught that God not only forgives sin but also makes His people holy. He called this "Christian perfection" or "perfect love." He did not mean that a believer could never make a mistake or never be tempted. He meant that the heart can be so filled with love for God and neighbor that love governs every motive. Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (first published in 1766) is his own summary. Course 3 studies this teaching in detail. Here we need only to see that the first Methodists in America, including Francis Asbury, preached it, and that John Fletcher's writings defended it.

As Methodism became larger and more respectable in the early nineteenth century, many of its leaders felt that this teaching was moving to the edge of church life. Churches were building larger buildings, and some pastors spoke of holiness less often. This is a judgment shared by many historians, and by the leaders of the Holiness movement, who believed that the church must return to its first message. We hold that they were right to be concerned. A church that forgets why God raised it up loses its power. Wesley himself feared that the Methodists might become a people with the form of religion but without its power (see 2 Timothy 3:5, and Wesley's Thoughts upon Methodism, 1786).

Phoebe Palmer

The leading figure of the revival of holiness teaching in America was a layperson, Phoebe Palmer. She was born in New York in 1807 and married Walter Palmer, a physician. In 1835 her sister, Sarah Lankford, began a weekly gathering in her home in New York City for prayer and the pursuit of holiness. It became known as the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness. Phoebe Palmer began to lead it in 1837, the year she herself believed she had received the blessing of entire sanctification. For many years the meeting drew ministers, bishops and laypeople from different churches.

Palmer wrote and traveled widely. Her best known book, The Way of Holiness, appeared in 1843. She spoke at camp meetings and later traveled to Canada and the British Isles. She also wrote The Promise of the Father (1859), a defense of women speaking and preaching in the church. Thousands of people came to know the experience of full consecration through her work.

Her teaching

Palmer taught that a believer can receive entire sanctification now, by faith, and does not need to wait for a feeling. Her teaching rested on three steps. First, the believer fully consecrates himself to God, laying all on the altar. Second, he believes the promise of God that the altar sanctifies the gift (she pointed to Exodus 29:37 and Matthew 23:19). Third, he testifies to what God has done. She called this the "shorter way" because it stressed that the blessing is received by faith, at once, not after years of struggle. Many people found great freedom in this.

The objection

Some Methodists, then and now, said that Palmer's teaching differed from Wesley's. They argued that she made sanctification depend on an act of the believer's faith and testimony, rather than on the Spirit's own witness within, and that she gave too little place to gradual growth. Some historians therefore see Palmer as a creative new voice and not simply a student of Wesley.

Our answer

We grant that Palmer's emphasis and language were her own. But Wesley himself taught that sanctification, like justification, is received by faith, and that it may be received at once. In his sermon "The Scripture Way of Salvation" he taught that we should expect it now. Palmer took up this part of Wesley's message and pressed it on a church that had gone quiet. The caution of Wesley's critics is useful. A believer must not rest on his own words, and the Spirit bears witness with our spirit (Romans 8:16). Honest Holiness teachers have always said so. We hold that the doctrine is Wesley's, the emphasis is Palmer's, and the authority for both is Scripture.

We should add a word on the place of women. Palmer's ministry is part of a longer story of women in the Holiness churches. Some Christians read passages such as 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34 as limiting the teaching and ruling roles of women in the church, and they hold this view sincerely. The Wesleyan-Holiness tradition has answered from Joel 2:28-29, quoted in Acts 2:17-18, from Philip's four daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:9), from Paul's greetings to women co-workers in Romans 16, and from Galatians 3:28. Course 4 treats this question fully.

The Camp Meeting and the Holiness Associations

The camp meeting we met in Unit 6 became the home of the Holiness revival. In 1867, at Vineland, New Jersey, a group of Methodist ministers led by John Inskip held a camp meeting devoted to holiness. This led to the founding of the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness. Similar meetings followed in many parts of the United States, and Holiness associations, journals and local camp grounds appeared.

The movement had a wide reach. It was not limited to Methodists, and other Christians of other traditions took up similar teachings. Some, such as those gathered at Oberlin College in Ohio, spoke of "perfection" in their own way. Later, the Keswick movement in Britain taught a "higher life" with a different understanding of how sin is overcome. These movements overlapped with the Holiness movement but were not identical to it. Course 3 compares them.

Why New Churches Were Formed

The leaders of the Holiness movement at first wanted to renew the Methodist Episcopal Church, not leave it. But in several places, conflicts led to new denominations. The reasons differed, and we should state them fairly.

The Wesleyan Methodist Connection (1843)

The first break was over slavery. A group of Methodist ministers, among them Orange Scott and Luther Lee, believed that the church should refuse to tolerate slaveholding, as the Christmas Conference had once said. They also wanted more voice for lay people and wished to limit the power of bishops. When the Methodist Episcopal Church would not act as they wished, they organized the Wesleyan Methodist Connection at Utica, New York, in 1843. The name "Wesleyan" was chosen to claim the heritage of John Wesley. Holiness teaching was strong in this body. It later joined with the Pilgrim Holiness Church, in 1968, to form The Wesleyan Church.

The Free Methodist Church (1860)

B. T. Roberts was a Methodist minister in western New York. He was deeply concerned about what he saw as a loss of simple, spiritual Methodism. He criticized the renting of pews to wealthy families, the decline of holiness preaching, and the influence of secret societies, and he opposed slavery. His criticism offended church leaders, and he was removed from the Genesee Conference in 1858. In 1860 he and others organized the Free Methodist Church. The word "free" had several meanings. Seats in the church were to be free, and not rented to the rich. The church opposed slavery. It also spoke of freedom in the Spirit in worship. Roberts became its first general superintendent.

The Church of the Nazarene (1908)

Phineas F. Bresee was a Methodist pastor who had served in California. He believed that the church must reach the poor and must preach entire sanctification. In 1895 he and others organized the Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles. Other Holiness churches and associations grew in the eastern and southern states. In October 1908, at Pilot Point, Texas, three groups were united: the Church of the Nazarene in the West, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America in the East, and the Holiness Church of Christ in the South. The new body was called the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. The word "Pentecostal" was used here in its older sense of being Spirit-filled and holy. In 1919, as the word came to be linked with speaking in tongues, the church dropped it and became the Church of the Nazarene.

The Second Work of Grace

The Holiness churches came to teach that entire sanctification is a second work of grace, received by faith after new birth and distinct from it, yet through the same Christ. Many other Methodists, then and now, understood Wesley's perfection more gradually, as the goal of a growing life in grace. Wesley's own writings contain both a crisis and a process, and the Holiness churches stress the crisis. Our tradition presents both views with respect. We lean to the Holiness view, because we find in Wesley and in Scripture a promise that believers may be made whole in love and not only moving toward it forever.

Objections and Answers

Objection 1: The teaching leads to pride and the claim to be sinless. Critics warn that people who say they are "sanctified" may become proud and judgmental.

Our answer. The warning is fair, and the Holiness movement has sometimes failed here. But the biblical teaching is not sinless perfection. Wesley and the Holiness churches have always said that believers can still err, still need to grow, and still depend on the blood of Christ. The mark of holiness is love: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). A person who boasts of his holiness has misunderstood it. We also remember 1 John 1:8, and we do not claim that we have no sin in the sense of needing no mercy.

Objection 2: Sanctification is a lifelong process only. The Reformed tradition holds that believers grow in holiness throughout life and will not be fully holy until glory.

Our answer. We agree that growth never ends. But Scripture also promises more than a slow struggle. Paul prays that God would "sanctify you completely" (1 Thessalonians 5:23), and Hebrews 12:14 says, "Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." A command with a promise attached to it should be believed. We therefore teach that God can cleanse the heart and fill it with love, and that growth continues after.

Objection 3: The Holiness movement was a product of American culture. Some historians argue that its ideas about perfection came from the optimism and revivalism of the nineteenth century.

Our answer. A movement always has human surroundings, and historians do well to point them out. But the call to holiness is older than America. It is in Leviticus and in 1 Peter 1:15-16: "but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'" Wesley taught it before the American revivals. God used the setting of the nineteenth century to renew a message that was already in His Word.

Objection 4: The movement ended in division, which grieves the Lord. Paul told the church to keep "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3).

Our answer. We do not rejoice in division. The new churches were formed in sorrow, and some of the quarrels reflected the faults of both sides. Yet these bodies kept the doctrine of Wesley, and they carried his message to the poor, to enslaved people, and to the ends of the earth. Where unity and truth seem to conflict, we hold that truth must be kept, and we seek unity wherever it can be found. Unit 10 returns to this hope.

Pastoral Application

A young woman in a Holiness church was told that she had been "sanctified" at an altar service. A few weeks later she lost her temper with her mother and is now deeply troubled. She asks her pastor if the experience was false.

The pastor first listens, and does not rush to defend a doctrine. Second, he reminds her that Wesley's perfect love never meant that a believer cannot be tempted or make mistakes, and he reads 1 John 1:9 with her: God forgives and cleanses. Third, he helps her to confess the sin to her mother and to God, and to rest on Christ and not on her feelings. Fourth, he encourages her to keep close to the means of grace, the Word, prayer, the Lord's Supper and a small group, so that love grows. He neither tells her that the experience was empty, nor that she is now beyond temptation.

Summary

Wesley taught perfect love, and the early American Methodists preached it. As Methodism grew more comfortable, many felt this teaching was fading. Phoebe Palmer, a layperson in New York, led the Tuesday Meeting from 1837, published The Way of Holiness in 1843, and taught that entire sanctification is received now by faith. Camp meetings and the National Camp Meeting Association, begun at Vineland in 1867, spread the message. New churches came from this movement: the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in 1843, over slavery and the holiness cause; the Free Methodist Church in 1860, under B. T. Roberts; and the Church of the Nazarene, united at Pilot Point in 1908. The Holiness churches teach entire sanctification as a second work of grace. Critics warn of pride, of culture's influence, and of division. We answer from Scripture, from Wesley, and from the mark of humble love.

Further Reading

• Phoebe Palmer, The Way of Holiness (1843), a primary source.

• John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766).

• John Fletcher, Checks to Antinomianism.

• John Wesley, Sermons, especially "The Scripture Way of Salvation."

• Holiness Through the Ages, the CTS textbook for Course 3.

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