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The Holiness Movement

The Holiness Movement is one of the three great movements in American Christian history. Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness began in 1835 in New York City, organized by Phoebe Palmer and her sister. Initially the meetings were for women only. This occurred before the end of the first great American Christian movement – the “Great Awakening,” often called the “Second Great Awakening” after the Revolutionary War. The Holiness Movement, however, was inspired by the teaching of Methodism’s founder, the Rev. John Wesley.

The Great Awakening was, at its core, Calvinist (i.e., predestinarian) which led to the growth of the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches (although all denominations, most especially the Methodists, grew significantly due to the spiritual renewal it engendered.)

The Holiness Movement was outwardly similar in many ways to the Great Awakening, particularly in the use of camp meetings, periods when people could renew themselves spiritually and escape their everyday lives. But the focus of the movement was different. Holiness adherents believe all people can be saved and that a “second work of grace” is possible after “being saved,” in which the believer is cleansed of the tendency to commit sin. Also called “entire sanctification,” this enables the believer to live a holy life, ideally, without willful sin.

Reflecting this inward holiness, Holiness Christians emphasize outward holiness, which includes modesty, strict Sabbath observance and abstinence from alcohol. Not all, and perhaps not a majority, of 19th Century Methodists were adherents of the Holiness Movement. It led to numerous new denominations including the Wesleyan Church and the Church of the Nazarenes who felt that the Methodists were not sufficiently strong adherents of the movement.