TONGUES-SPEAKING AND THE WESLEYAN-HOLINESS QUEST FOR ASSURANCE OF SANCTIFICATION

Charles Edwin Jones

Do you hear them coming, brother,

Thronging up the steeps of light,

Clad in glorious shining garments,

Bloodwashed garments pure and white.

'Tis a glorious church without spot or wrinkle,

Washed in the blood of the Lamb;

'Tis a glorious church without spot or wrinkle,

Washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Ralph E. Hudson, 1843-1901 (1892)

From its inception in the eighteenth century, the Wesleyan quest for Christian perfection was both individual and corporate. Although John Wesley described perfect love as victory over inward sins such as pride, envy, greed and jealousy, Methodist doctrinal and behavioral standards were recorded in a published Discipline, and Wesleyan societal norms were enforced by official class leaders in obligatory class meetings. Claims by the founder and other Methodists to hearts "strangely warmed" and to affections characterized by love alone, contravene in no way the pervasive puritanism and pietism of the movement. Both the early Methodists and their late-nineteenth century holiness followers held to a puritanical standard for all believers. Like the original Puritans before them, both held that although decorous conduct in itself was no sure indicator of grace, its absence surely indicated a lack thereof. When being admitted to full conference membership, Methodist preachers vowed that they were "going on to perfection," were "earnestly striving after it," and were expecting "to be made perfect in this life." They were enjoined to do all within their "power" to build up those committed to their care "in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord."1 Joy over being "plucked as brands from the burning" pervaded Methodist class meetings and "watch-night" services designed for spiritual introspection and diversion from the temptation to drink.

A similar, slightly modified pattern emerged in independent groups established by holiness revivalists in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. An attempt by the extremely-ascetic Free Methodist founders (dubbed "Nazarites" by their enemies) to reinstate the class meeting and to abolish instrumental music in the church, failed of imitation by other groups. Their propensity toward ascetic standards of conduct and joyful demonstration in worship (Free Methodist women had a reputation for shouting their hair down) gained wide acceptance, however, in other groups as well. Most independent holiness churches established in the heyday of the National Holiness camp meetings in the 1880s and 1890s, were scarcely larger than a good-sized Methodist class meeting, and put much more store in being "clean and straight" than in being large. They generally replaced the class meeting with a prayer (and testimony) meeting on Wednesday or Thursday evening. Itinerant evangelism attracted more ministers than the pastorate and even churches in important centers such as College Mound, Missouri, 2 were included on circuits. Under this system the pastor might preach in each church only one Sunday a month. Years later A. Milton Smith remembered that in his boyhood his home congregation near Prescott, Arkansas paid the pastor $100 per year, but gave an evangelist $100 for a ten-day revival meeting. 3 With a pastor's time divided among several congregations, local leadership was by necessity, if not by design, in the hands of one layman who in many respects resembled the Methodist class leader. Typically he had led the holiness band in the local Methodist Church, which had furnished the charter members of the independent group. Often he (or occasionally she) was a leading citizen, a merchant, physician, teacher or prosperous farmer. Representative of such were: J. F. Spruce, a farmer near Floresville, Texas; A. J. Peck, a cotton broker of Duncan; Arthur Beaver, a merchant of Oklahoma City and Bethany; and George Beck, a merchant of Miami, Oklahoma; Will Roney of Carl Junction, and Elias Sanner, farmer near Clarence and merchant of College Mound, Missouri; Joseph Hughs, Sr. of Wellsville Kansas; F. W. Swain, a physician of Kewanee, Illinois; John Y. Johnston farmer of Rosebud, Michigan; Isaac W. Hanson, a harness maker of Haverhill Massachusetts; J. A. Culbreth, merchant and banker of Falcon, North Carolina; and T. J. Shingler, wealthy landowner, farmer and turpentine manufacturer of Donalsonville, Georgia.

With the pastor only occasionally present, the personal charisma of the local leader was crucial. Typically, he constructed or purchased a church building, provided the bulk of the support for pastor and evangelist, administered discipline, and served as Sunday school superintendent, adult teacher, and treasurer. Most importantly, he demonstrated the authority of zeal characteristic of Methodist revivalist leadership and welcomed freedom and heartfelt demonstration in worship. As often as not he or she was a shouter and encouraged emotional display in the Spirit by others. Ideally, both the leader and the saints were prayed-up and came to church expecting to walk in the light, enjoy a time of blessing and see sinners converted. Unresolved conflicts were regarded as hindrances to the spiritual freedom of the saints and the winning of the lost. The holiness congregation was to be a model of sanctified piety in personal and collective ethics as well as in dress and behavior. Separation from the world, holiness believers maintained, was a necessary prerequisite to the quest for sanctification and to the bliss of a place among the sanctified. The experience of entire sanctification lived out in a sometimes hostile world was "a heaven to go to heaven in," and the holiness church, a model community of ethical conduct and fervent piety, afforded "such hallowed fellowship as cannot otherwise be known." 4

As in justification the Holy Spirit through prevenient grace brought the repentant sinner to faith and knowledge of salvation, so the same Spirit gave witness to the fully consecrated believer that he was wholly sanctified, in fact "married" to the will of God. This was the consciously articulated teaching concerning the experience of the individual. Parallel to this was another, never explicitly articulated teaching about the witness of the Spirit to sanctification in the church. " If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 5 The sanctified Christian had burned all bridges and was determined to go "through" at all cost, even if that meant going alone. A place among the beloved in the church, nevertheless, was very precious. To be out of step with the saints was an exceedingly serious matter for it was by the witness of the Spirit to the purifying work in his heart and by hearty conformity to and fellowship with the saints in the church that the individual gained assurance of sanctification. Emotional demonstration, though welcome in worship, was never held up as normative or as an infallible proof of sanctifying grace. Spiritual shouting by those in the congregation so gifted resulted in the edification of the whole body. Shouting by other good people not so gifted threw a pall on the meeting. Even children (perhaps especially children) were conscious of the difference.

Assurance of acceptance with God, holiness people taught, was instead to be had through "the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony."6 Opportunity for individuals to relate their experiences was given in nearly every service. In addition holiness worship utilized gospel songs inspired by or written for National Holiness camp meetings. Combining reiteration of doctrinal teachings, Biblical images, and an evangelistic appeal, these songs required the singer ritually to testify and at times to shout. Representative of this genre is "Glory to Jesus," by A. F. Myers.

If you want pardon, if you want peace,

If you want sorrow and sighing to cease,

Look to the Savior who died on the tree,

Jesus can save you, for He saved me.

If you want boldness, take part in the fight,

If you want purity, walk in the light,

If you want liberty, shout and be free,

Jesus can cleanse you, for He cleansed me.

Glory to Jesus, He satisfies me,

Glory to Jesus, I'm free, I am free,

Glory to Jesus, I'll shout it I will,

Glory to Jesus, I cannot keep still.

Songs and sermons alike drew on a very wide range of scriptural images and metaphors: the Exodus, the Promised Land, the Tabernacle, Beulah, the Cross, and the Blood of Christ, and used a large variety of textual material: patriarchs and prophets (especially Jonah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel) in the Old Testament, and Johannine and Pauline sources as often as Luke-Acts in the New Testament. Holiness life and worship at the time of the Parham-and Seymour-led revivals in Topeka, Houston, and Los Angeles displayed a unity of teaching, fellowship, and fervor. Holiness people generally regarded like-minded believers, whether of their particular group or not, as being part of the "work," fellow champions of the "cause" of holiness. If at times puritanical holiness evangelists attempted to "clean fish" before they caught them, 8 individual and corporate discipline and worship gave assurance to those who claimed to be sanctified as well as to those who sought Christian perfection: "Faithful is he who calleth you, who also will do it." 9

There is little reason to discount reports by Pentecostal historians of occasions of tongues-speaking among Wesleyan-holiness believers before Topeka, Houston and Los Angeles. With spiritual shouting, ecstatic speech was regarded by one holiness evangelist at least as being a manifestation of the Spirit. A. B. Crumpler could not countenance the teaching that tongues-speaking was the "initial evidence" of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, however, and resigned from the movement he had founded when the majority of ministers and members came to that position.10 Exercise of the gift of ecstasy in the church could be regarded as a contribution to the unity of the body. The claim, however, that the use of such a gift constituted the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit flew in the face of the experience of sanctified believers not so gifted, and resulted in disunity and division. Wesleyan-holiness teaching held that perfect love, entire sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit were one and the same. The initial physical evidence doctrine separated the baptism of the Holy Spirit from entire sanctification. It set tongues-speech off from their ecstatic demonstration and in doing so created division. In Wesleyan-holiness thinking there was a close connection between liberty in the Spirit and unity. Making ecstatic speech a sign undermined the freedom in worship so essential to the effective witness of the church to unbelievers. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 11 The "initial evidence" formula created a serious separation in the holiness ranks, putting its opponents on the defensive in relation to tongues and dampening the enthusiasm of their worship.

At the time of the 1901 revival in Topeka, there were in the United States more than a dozen independent church bodies (excluding the Wesleyan Methodist and Free Methodist churches formed earlier) owing the inspiration for their existence to Methodism and to the National Holiness camp meetings. Their combined membership was not more than 20,000. These included the Church of God (Unity Holiness People) and the Church of God (Independent Holiness People), two factions of a group in Missouri and Kansas destined to reunite in 1922, the Holiness Church of California, the Church of the Nazarene based in Los Angeles, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America centered in Brooklyn, the Holiness Church of North Carolina, the Pentecostal Rescue Mission of Binghamton, New York, the Holiness Christian Church in Pennsylvania and Indiana, the Pentecostal Mission with head-quarters in Nashville, the Independent Holiness Church of Texas, the New Testament Church of Christ, the International Apostolic Holiness Union and Prayer League, the Holiness Union based in Louisville, the Vanguard Mission of St. Louis, the Independent Holiness Church of Donalsville, Georgia, the Pentecostal Union centered in Denver, the Metropolitan Church Association, and remnants of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Association of America. Probably two-thirds of these groups endorsed the General Holiness Assembly, which met in Chicago that year and toyed unsuccessfully with the possibility of forming a national holiness church. By 1919 eight of them were to merge into the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene and the International Holiness Church.

The Fire-Baptized Holiness Association, which in 1901 was nearly moribund and not yet committed to tongues-speaking, embodies in its doctrinal history emblems of all that was to trouble Wesleyan-holiness people in the movement then being born. The Fire-Baptized movement, launched but six years earlier by the highly persuasive B. H. Irwin, proclaimed belief in a third crisis experience, the baptism of fire, subsequent to entire sanctification. Introduction of the possibility of still further "effusions" characterized by explosives such as "dynamite," "Iyddite," and "oxidite," together with Irwin's confession of "open and gross sin," caused most of his followers to desert "the fire" doctrine. Always regarded by the main body of Wesleyan-holiness people as a fanatical aberration, the Fire-Baptized movement opened up the possibility of a baptism of the Holy Spirit distinct from entire sanctification. Tongues-speech, which though not incorporated in "the fire" teaching had been permitted in Irwin's meetings, came to be associated with the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the minds of his followers, an association which was to reappear and solidify at Azusa Street and to be carried far beyond. 12

The claim that there is a baptism of the Holy Spirit beyond entire sanctification and that its reception is accompanied by physical signs, put holiness leaders on the defensive. A principal reason for union among holiness churches in the decade following Azusa Street was the creation of bulwark against "fanaticism." Although the term undoubtedly encompassed other threats, fanaticism in this context practically became a euphemism for speaking in tongues and accounts for the elimination of "Pentecost" and "Pentecostal" from Wesleyan-holiness church nomenclature by 1925. Other safeguards against fanaticism in the new denominations included were expanded creedal statements, a superintendency, a greatly enlarged ministerium including ordination of women as elders, and amendment of General Rules inherited from Methodism. In 1907, for instance, the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene revised the traditional Methodist rule against "taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus" and "singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God," 13 to read: "Such songs, literature and entertainments as are not to the glory of God; the avoidance of the theater, the ball room, the circus and like places; also lotteries and games of chance; looseness and impropriety of conduct." 14

In one sense nothing had changed. The same doctrinal formulas, metaphors and images pervaded holiness songs and sermons. The same exuberance characterized holiness worship. Early Nazarenes, for instance, were dubbed "Noisyrenes," while holiness people together with their glossolalic brethren shared the honor of being called "holy rollers." Certainly the standards of conduct enjoined by official rules were as stringent as the socially-enforced unwritten ones which had preceded them. Although female disciples of Charles Fox Parham had flouted the holiness dress code, the over-whelming majority of first-generation Apostolics, particularly those with Fire-Baptized roots, were every whit as puritanical as the non-tongues speakers. The rise of theatrical preachers who, like Aimee Semple McPherson, could claim the "initial physical evidence" of the baptism of the Holy Spirit while ignoring the pietistic behavioral strictures of the Wesleyan-holiness tradition, lay several decades in the future. Replacement of doctrine and ethics as the informant of religious experience, with experience as the foundation of doctrine and conduct was, nevertheless, a present reality. Thus the parent movement confronted its reformist offspring.

Although on the surface the Wesleyan-holiness defenders appeared to have stemmed the tide of experience-based innovation, they had unwittingly undermined the elements of assurance of personal and corporate sanctification, which characterized their own tradition. To be sure the Pentecostalist promise of "something more" eventually lured many including the evangelist Charlie Robinson, the evangelist and song writer Herbert Buffum and his wife and co-worker, Lillie, and the family of the future Assemblies of God general superintendent, Ernest Swing Williams, into the new movement. The Holiness Church of California, which made profession of the experience of entire sanctification a requirement for membership, suffered significant losses, the Williams family among them. ("Swing," Ernest Williams' middle name was for James Swing, the Holiness Church founder.) Practically all the members and ministers of the Holiness Church of North Carolina, a notable exception being A. B. Crumpler, the founder, adopted the "initial evidence" theory. Further doctrinal novelties, such as the "finished work of Calvary" and the "oneness of the Godhead" teachings, quickly slowed defections from the Wesleyan-holiness ranks, and widened the theological chasm between the bewildered holiness parent and her doctrinally creative glossolalic children. Fear of "hatching chickens for the hawk," 15 led to attempts to shield converts from proselytizing Pentecostalists, inspiring similar responses from them. Attendance by members of either group at services of the other was likely to elicit a warning such as: "You leave them alone. They're dangerous." 16

Anxiety that demonstration might get out of hand caused some holiness pastors to discourage shouting and other heartfelt expression. As early as 1928 the Nazarene General Assembly meeting in Columbus, Ohio, passed a resolution (honored in the breach) introduced by N. B. Herrell, a district superintendent who was also a songwriter, outlawing handclapping and stamping of feet in public worship. 17 Surrender of important terms, such as "Pentecostal," impoverished religious discourse, and increased reliance on Phoebe Palmer's "altar terminology" in teaching about sanctification reduced the emotional struggle of seekers while distorting the doctrine of prevenient grace. Imagery drawn from farm life, the camp meeting, and from John Bunyan ("Beulah Land," for instance), which pervaded songs and sermons, lost its emotional power and meaning, and convictions which the founding generation had enshrined in General Rules as symbols of the passage from death to life, became for their children and grandchildren mere parental taboos to be trespassed with guilty impunity in the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood.

In short, the "tongues" threat combined with other factors in causing Wesleyan-holiness people to shy away from their prior reliance on the authority of zeal and personal convictions. Conformity to rules of conduct replaced convictions about right conduct. And passivity leader-centeredness and authoritarianism gradually supplanted spontaneity, heartfelt emotion and Spirit-dependence in worship. Increasingly, the quest for holiness was an individual one, largely unsupported and uninspired by the holiness churches corporately.

Notes

1Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1936. (New York, 1936), 165, 185.

2Site of McGee Holiness College and editorial offices first of the Good Way, later of the Church Herald.

3A. Milton Smith, pastor of the First Church of the Nazarene, Kansas City, Missouri, 1946-59.

4Ritual for "Reception of Members" in Manual of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, (Los Angeles, 1908), 66.

5I John 1:7 (AV).

6Revelation 12:11 (AV).

7Number 284 in Haldor Lillenas, ed. Glorious Gospel Hymns. (Kansas City, Mo., 1931).

8Figure used by Free Methodist Bishop W. C, Kendall in a sermon at the Evansville, Wisconsin camp meeting in 1965.

9I Thessalonians 5:24 (AV).

10Vinson Synan. The Holiness-Pentecostal Monument in the United States, (Grand Rapids, Mi., 1971), 128-129. In 1917, A. M. Kiergan (1848-1933) recalled a divided response to tongues-speaking among those attending a holiness camp meeting in 1881 in Linn County, Missouri. "But every preacher on the ground without exception declared it to be of the devil." Prostration, however, was another matter. "To tumble over now and then was to be expected." See A. M. Kiergan, Historical Sketches of the Revival of True Holiness and Local Church Polity from 1865-1916 (Fort Scott, Ks., 1972),31. In 1902 Maude Frederick, future wife of Nazarene General Superintendent J. B. Chapman, commented favorably on one woman's prostration during a meeting at Sharp Top Texas: "One soul was laid out under the power of God. God used her in convicting sinners." See Diary of Maude Frederick Chapman (1880-1940), March 20, 1902. Transcription in Nazarene Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.

11II Corinthians 3:17 (AV).

12Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States, 61-68. In 1906 A. H. Kauffman, a minister of the International Apostolic Holiness Union, connected the glossolalic movement with the Fire-Baptized one. See his Fanaticism Explained: Symptoms, Cause and Cure. 3d ed. Grand Rapids, Mi., 1904, i.e. 1906. This is perhaps the earliest Wesleyan-holiness polemic against the new movement.

l3Doctrines and Discipline of the MethodistEpiscopal Church, 1936, 34.

14Manual of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene (Los Angeles,1907), 29.

15"Hatching Chickens for the Hawks" was an editorial by J. G. Morrison in the Holiness Layman, organ of the Laymen's Holiness Assocation, explaining that he had joined the Church of the Nazarene in order to have a way of protecting his converts from the likes of Aimee Semple McPherson. See Timothy L. Smith. Called Unto Holiness; the Story of the Nazarenes: the Formative Years (Kansas City. Mo.. 1962). 312.

16 In 1937 a Pentecostalist friend of my mother attended a revival meeting at our holiness church, went to the altar, and claimed entire sanctification. When she joyfully told her pastor, A. A. Wilson, of her experience he warned her to leave us alone. Had the situation been reversed, our pastor would have done likewise.

17Journal of the Seventh General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City, Mo., 1928), 69. The resolution read as follows: "We as a people are a happy, joyous crowd. We believe in preserving a spirit of liberty and emotional demonstration. But our very joyousness may at times open the way for unwarranted and even unwholesome demonstration. Lest we should dissipate a spirit of reverence and be judged to be light and frivolous in our worship, we wish to offer the following: Be it resolved, That the General Assembly expresses itself as looking with disfavor upon certain expressions of approval which have been employed in our services of worship and evangelism, particularly clapping of hands, stamping of feet, etc, and hereby request that such expressions of approval cease henceforth; and further, that this action be announced in each service until it becomes practically effective."

A. K. Bracken N. B. Herrell

J. Glenn Gould J. G. Morrison

E. P. Ellyson J. Walter Hall

J. B. Chapman Chas. A. McConnell

Edwin E. Hale

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