Peter Althouse: Wesleyan and Reformed Impulses in the Keswick and Pentecostal Movements

⁴¹Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1980), p. 23.

⁴²Smith, p. 104.

⁴³Smith, p. 111.

⁴⁴Dayton, p. 96. Mahan, Finney and other Oberlin theologians increasing saw the baptism of the Holy Spirit as an enduement of power for the purpose of Christian service.

⁴⁵Dayton, p. 89.

⁴⁶Smith, pp. 106-7.

⁴⁷Dieter, pp. 56-7.

⁴⁸Generally speaking, Keswick leaders would refer to Oxford and Brighton, as well as the Broadlands meetings hosted by W. Cowpter-Temple, as part of Keswick spirituality, and indeed many of the leaders attended both Keswick and the Oxford/Brighton conferences. See Charles F. Harford (ed.), The Keswick Convention: Its Message, Its Method and Its Men (London: Marshall Brothers Keswick House, 1907). Similarly, scholars such as Bebbington (p. 151) and Ian Randall treated the Oxford and Brighton conferences as part of the Keswick conferences. See Ian M. Randall, “Spiritual Renewal and Social Reform: Attempts to Develop Social Awareness in the Early Keswick Movement Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): pp. 67-86. For the sake of brevity, the Brighton and Oxford Conferences will be taken as part of the same religious movement as Keswick, in this paper, and thus the will all be considered a part of Keswick.

⁴⁹J.C. Pollock, The Keswick Story: The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), pp. 25-6.

⁵⁰David Bundy, Bibliographic Overview, pp. 16-7.

⁵¹C. G. Moore, “Some of the Results,” The Keswick Convention, p. 112.

⁵²Bundy, “Keswick and the Experience of Evangelical Piety,” in Modern Christian Revivals, p. 118.

⁵³Pollock, The Keswick Story, p. 55.

⁵⁴R.P. Smith, in W.J. Smith, Record of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th, 1875 (London: S.W. Partridge and Co., c1896), reprinted by Donald W. Dayton, ed. “The Higher Christian Life”: Sources for the Study of the Holiness, Pentecostal, and Keswick Movements, vol. 39 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985), p. 36.

⁵⁵Robinson, in Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness at Brighton, p. 444.

⁵⁶Robinson, in Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness at Brighton, p. 445.

⁵⁷Bebbington, p. 168. Bebbington’s point was well taken, but Keswick leaders were careful to point out that the possibility of holiness was not the result of personal action. Harford-Battersby, for example, commented that overcoming sin was not the result of human endeavour. See Pollock, p. 26. Another Keswick writer stated that the message of Keswick searched heart and conscious “not by turning attention inward to questions of subjective experience, but upward to the glory of Christ’s Person,” (Pollock, pp. 50-1) yet Pollock concluded that one of the obstacles to the spread of Keswick holiness was its dependence on emotional, spiritual experiences. Pollock, p. 153. It could be argued that the effort Keswick leaders took to disclaim “excessive” spiritual experience was precisely because they were concerned that the conventions could be too experiential at the expense of Scriptural teaching.

⁵⁸Douglas Frank, Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 141-2.

⁵⁹The emphasis in Wesleyan holiness was, for the most part, upon the moral action of the Christian. With the emphasis upon attitude in Keswick holiness, there seemed to be a greater degree upon human subjectivity. At the Brighton Conference, Pasteur Theodore Monod preached that our “purpose at this meeting [was], first of all, to know ourselves.” (p. 66). Self-understanding was a key to a holy life.

⁶⁰R.W. Dale, in Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness at Brighton, p. 451.

⁶¹Albert Head, “The Watchword of the Convention,” The Keswick Convention, p. 114-5.

Tags: althouse, impulses, Keswick, movements, pentecostal, peter, reformed, wesleyan

Category: Church History