The Origins of the Pentecostal Movement
John Wesley
Another predecessor to Pentecostalism was the Keswick “Higher Life” movement which flourished in England after 1875. Led at first by American holiness teachers such as Hannah Whitall Smith and William E. Boardman, the Keswick teachers soon changed the goal and content of the “second blessing” from the Wesleyan emphasis on “heart purity” to that of an “enduement of spiritual power for service.” Thus, by the time of the Pentecostal outbreak in America in 1901, there had been at least a century of movements emphasizing a second blessing called the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” with various interpretations concerning the content and results of the experience. In America, such Keswick teachers as A.B. Simpson and A.J. Gordon also added to the movement at large an emphasis on divine healing “as in the atonement” and the premillenial rapture of the church.
The Nineteenth Century Holiness Movement
Since Pentecostalism began primarily among American holiness people, it would be difficult to understand the movement without some basic knowledge of the milieu in which it was born. Indeed, for the first decade practically all Pentecostals, both in America and around the world, had been active in holiness churches or camp meetings. Most of them were either Methodists, former Methodists, or people from kindred movements that had adopted the Methodist view of the second blessing. They were overwhelmingly Arminian in their basic theology and were strongly perfectionistic in their spirituality and lifestyle.
In the years immediately preceding 1900, American Methodism experienced a major holiness revival in a crusade that originated in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania following the Civil War. Begun in Vineland, N.J in 1867 as the “National Holiness Camp Meeting Association,” the holiness movement drew large crowds to its camp meetings, with some services attracting over 20,000 persons. Thousands claimed to receive the second blessing of sanctification in these meetings. Leaders in this movement were Methodists such as Phoebe Palmer, (also a leading advocate of women’s right to minister); John Inskip, a pastor from New York City, and Alfred Cookman a pastor from New Jersey.
A.B. Simpson
From 1867 to 1880, the holiness movement gained increasing force within the Methodist churches as well as in other denominations. During this period, many holiness advocates felt that this movement might revive the churches and bring new life to Christianity worldwide. After 1875, the American holiness movement, influenced by the Keswick emphasis began to stress the pentecostal aspects of the second blessings, some calling the experience “pentecostal sanctification.” An entire hymnody was produced which focused on the upper room and a revolutionary “old-time pentecostal power” for those who tarried at the altars. Practically all the hymns of the early Pentecostal movement were produced by holiness writers celebrating the second blessing as both a cleansing and an enduement of power.
Category: Church History, Fall 2000
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