The Holiness movement grew from Methodism, seeking a life wholly given to God; the Salvation Army and the Nazarenes come from it.
Methodists who pressed Wesley's teaching on entire sanctification founded camp meetings (the National Camp Meeting Association, 1867) and, in time, churches: the Salvation Army (1865), the Church of the Nazarene (1908), the Wesleyan and Free Methodist churches. Pentecostalism grew out of this soil.
The tree's references for this branch: Britannica: Holiness movement · World Council of Churches: Holiness churches · Wikipedia: Holiness movement.
Lineage: Israel and Judah: the First Temple›Second Temple Judaism›The early, undivided Church›Catholic Church›Church of England (Anglican)›Methodist›Holiness movement
Branches that grew from it: Pentecostal (1906).
The Holiness movement began inside American Methodism in the 1830s among people who thought the church had gone quiet about something Wesley had taught: that God can so fill a believer with love that sin no longer rules them, and that this is meant for everyone rather than for a few saints. It produced camp meetings first and then churches, among them the Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church and the Church of God.
It started in a house. In 1835 Sarah Lankford began a weekly prayer meeting for Methodist women in New York; two years later her sister Phoebe Palmer took it over, and the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness ran for decades, admitting men from 1839 until Methodist bishops and theologians were sitting in a private parlour to hear a laywoman teach. Palmer's book The Way of Holiness set out what became the movement's method: consecrate everything to God, lay it on the altar, and believe that the altar sanctifies the gift. She took it to Canada in 1857 and to Britain in 1859 16.
After the Civil War it organised. In 1867 Methodist ministers led by John Inskip, John Wood and Alfred Cookman called the first camp meeting given over entirely to holiness, at Vineland in New Jersey; as many as 10,000 people came, and at the close of it, on their knees, the ministers formed the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness 14,18. Its leaders wanted holiness taught inside the existing churches, and argued against leaving them. That is not what happened. Between the 1880s and about 1910 the movement produced its own denominations, most of them small, some of them very large today 12.
The movement then broke the churches it came from, and its own leaders saw it coming: the National Camp Meeting Association argued against come-outism and urged people who believed in entire sanctification to stay in their denominations and work there 14. Within twenty years congregations were splitting and holiness associations were becoming denominations. Two further divisions set the shape of things. Charles Price Jones and Charles Harrison Mason led a Holiness work in Mississippi from the 1890s that divided in 1907, Mason's part becoming the Church of God in Christ and Jones's continuing as the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. 11,25. And when Pentecostals began teaching that speaking in tongues is the evidence of the Spirit's baptism, the Holiness churches said no: in 1919 the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene voted at its General Assembly to drop the word Pentecostal from its name, because the word had come to mean something the church did not teach 23. Two movements that had shared a doctrine, a hymnody and a set of camp meetings became strangers.
See it on the family treeThe one belief that defines this movement is that there is a second work of grace. Conversion forgives; something further cleanses. The Church of the Nazarene's own Agreed Statement of Belief puts it in a single line: that believers are to be sanctified wholly, subsequent to regeneration, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ 2.
The World Council of Churches, describing the movement from outside, puts the point the movement itself would want made: this perfection is the wholehearted love of God and of other people, and it is not to be confused with human flawlessness, and it is God's will for every believer rather than for a special class 12. A sanctified person still makes mistakes and still grows. What is claimed is that the settled will to sin can be taken away 15. A British cousin of the movement, the Keswick Convention that grew from meetings in the 1870s, described the same territory differently, speaking of a Spirit-filled life in which sin is counteracted rather than a nature cleansed; the two strands have argued about that ever since 29.
The rest is Wesleyan and shared with other Methodists: Scripture containing all truth necessary to faith and Christian living, a fallen human nature, an atonement offered to the whole human race, and the Holy Spirit bearing witness both to the new birth and to entire sanctification 2. Holiness churches teach that this shows in conduct, and they have historically been specific about which conduct, which is both the source of their moral seriousness and the source of most complaints about them. Each body sets this out in its own discipline: the Nazarene Manual, the Wesleyan Articles of Religion and the Wesleyan statement of beliefs each carry the doctrine and the rules together 3,5,6.
Holiness worship is warm, plain and participatory. Singing carries a large part of the service, testimony is expected rather than optional, and preaching aims at a decision. The altar call at the front of the church is the physical centre of the tradition: people come forward to kneel, and the sanctification the preacher has described is sought there and then rather than left as an idea.
The camp meeting is the movement's own institution. A week of preaching several times a day, families living on the ground, and the whole thing built to bring people to that altar. Church government varies with the body, from the Salvation Army's ranks and officers to the Nazarenes' districts and general superintendents to congregational government in the Church of God 1,8,10. Most Holiness churches keep two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper; the Salvation Army keeps neither, holding that the inward reality is what the outward sign was for.
Holiness people read the Bible for the promise of a clean heart, and they read it in a particular set of passages: Matthew 5:48 on being perfect as the Father is perfect, 1 Peter 1:15-16 on being holy because God is holy, Acts 15:8-9 on hearts purified by faith, 1 John 1:7 on the blood that cleanses from all sin, and Romans 12:1 on presenting the body as a living sacrifice, which is where Phoebe Palmer's language of the altar comes from.
The King James Version was the Bible of the movement for its whole formative period and its phrases are embedded in Holiness vocabulary; congregations now also read the New International Version and the New Living Translation. The Nazarene statement of belief holds that the Old and New Testaments, given by plenary inspiration, contain all truth necessary to faith and Christian living, which is a deliberately narrower claim than some other churches make and leaves room for the Wesleyan use of reason, tradition and experience alongside Scripture 2.
Free to read here: Berean Standard Bible, Free Bible Version, King James Version. The full note on which Bible Holiness movement use, with sources ›
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the King James (Authorized) Version and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Fourteen words that this movement declined to soften. Wesley took the command as a promise, and the Holiness movement was founded on taking him at his word.
But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
Be ye holy. The text the movement is named for, and the one preached from more camp meeting platforms than any other.
And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.
Purifying their hearts by faith. The verse Holiness preachers used to argue that cleansing is received by trust, not earned by effort.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
A living sacrifice on the altar. Phoebe Palmer built her whole teaching on this image: lay everything down and believe the altar sanctifies the gift.
But 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.
Cleanseth us from all sin. Holiness people put the weight on the word all, and built a movement on it.
The Christian Holiness Partnership counts the movement in about 160 nations, with roughly four million adherents in North America, three million in Africa and four million in Asia, and around twelve million in total; twenty-one denominations cooperate in the Partnership, alongside hundreds of independent congregations 12. One of the largest single Holiness churches in the world is the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church, with about a million members, and Holiness denominations in Korea together account for some three million 12.
The largest bodies are recognisable names. The Church of the Nazarene, organised in 1908, now reports its membership by region, with more than 600,000 in Africa alone and further large numbers in Eurasia, MesoAmerica and South America 23. The Wesleyan Church, formed by the 1968 merger of the Wesleyan Methodists and the Pilgrim Holiness Church with a combined 122,000 members, now reports almost 600,000 people worshipping weekly across 99 countries 4. The Salvation Army works in more than a hundred countries and is better known to most people for its social work than for the Holiness theology that produced it 8,9,28. The Free Methodist Church and the Wesleyan Church both work in dozens of countries from much smaller American bases 26,27. Several of these churches have ordained women since the nineteenth century, which is longer than almost anyone else.
One part of the movement's early record is worth setting down plainly. The Church of God at Anderson held from the 1880s that interracial worship was a mark of the true church, and its people testified that they were saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed; when its preachers visited other denominations' camp meetings, the rope dividing white from Black worshippers was untied and both went forward to pray. Outsiders attacked those services, and the Church of God kept on 24.
The belief that after a person is forgiven and converted, God does a further work in them that cleanses the heart and makes their love for God and other people whole. It is also called the second blessing or the second work of grace. It does not mean the person stops making mistakes, growing or needing forgiveness; it means the settled will to sin has been taken away 2,12.
No, though they are close relatives and Pentecostalism grew out of Holiness soil. Both teach a work of the Spirit after conversion. Pentecostals came to teach that speaking in tongues is its evidence; Holiness churches do not, and rejected that teaching after 1906. The Church of the Nazarene dropped the word Pentecostal from its name in 1919 for exactly this reason 23.
The largest are the Church of the Nazarene, The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army, the Church of God with headquarters at Anderson, Indiana, and the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A., along with the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church and many others overseas. Twenty-one denominations cooperate through the Christian Holiness Partnership, and a good many independent congregations belong to none of them 12.
Women have long preached in Holiness churches, but ordination policies developed differently among denominations. In the Free Methodist Church, founded in 1860, women could preach and pastor before gaining equal ministerial status in 1974; ordination as deacons had been permitted from 1911 30,7. The Wesleyan Methodists hosted the first women's rights convention in American history in their chapel at Seneca Falls in 1848, and a Wesleyan minister preached the ordination sermon for the first woman ordained in the United States 4,13. The Salvation Army was co-founded by Catherine Booth, who preached. Supporters of women's ministry connect it to their understanding of the Spirit's gifts and calling.
The Salvation Army does not practise baptism or the Lord's Supper as ordinances. Its position is not that these things are wrong but that the inward reality they point to, a life given wholly to God, is what matters, and that the outward rite had become for many people a substitute for it. It is the one significant point at which a major Holiness body departs from ordinary Protestant practice 8,9.
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Holiness movement: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/holiness/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-07; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BC, and later years plainly, as the site's Christian pages do.
Found something wrong? Send it through the contact page. A correction checked against two sources is made within a week and logged in this page's change history.
How this page was made, and the standards it was held to: How these pages were made.
Most of the church has read this as an aim nobody reaches. The Holiness movement read it as a promise, and reorganised itself around expecting it.
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.