Holiness and Pentecostal Movements: Intertwined Pasts, Presents, and Futures

Abstract

This volume is the first in a new Penn State University Press book series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements, which has its origins in an ongoing joint session of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary that began at the American Academy of Religion in 2018 with a focus on exploring the intersections between the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. The introduction to the book gives some of the background to that exploration and presents a potted history, highlighting the pioneering work of those looking to build closer academic relationships between Pentecostal and Wesleyan scholars, which does not always make comfortable reading for those of us in the latter camp. Here some more detail would have been helpful at times to better understand acts of seeming intransigence: why, for example did the Executive Committee of the Wesleyan Theological Society discontinue joint meetings with the Society for Pentecostal Studies in 2020 without even allowing a discussion? (11)The rest of the book is divided into three sections, the first offering perspectives on the beginnings of the emergence of Pentecostalism from the Holiness Movement toward the end of the nineteenth century, beginning with the role of God’s Bible School in the education of early Holiness and Pentecostal leaders explored by David Bundy. Of particular interest to British readers is Kimberly Ervin Alexander’s assessment of the Wesleyan roots of British Pentecostalism in the ministry of Alexander A. Boddy, the Anglican vicar who founded the Pentecostal Missionary Union. The chapter highlights Boddy’s intriguing descendance from Mary Vazeille, a fact Boddy spoke proudly of at a bicentenary celebration of his great-great-great-step-grandfather, where he expressed a feeling of ‘much sympathy with the Methodists’ (77). Alexander rightly highlights the importance of Boddy’s geographical location in Sunderland, where from 1908 until 1914 he hosted an annual convention. She does, however, misjudge the source of Wesleyan and Holiness influences on the area: Lorenzo Dow visited neither here nor Manchester, where Boddy grew up (77) but the influence of James Caughey’s visit to Sunderland in the 1840s and especially Phoebe Palmer’s hugely successful campaign in the town in November 1859 are much more likely to have had lasting impacts. Alexander, though, does offer a much needed and perceptive study of Boddy, a vital British link between the Wesleyan Holiness Movement and Pentecostalism. Here lies one of the strengths of the book, in revaluating the contribution of neglected figures in the development of Holiness and Pentecostal theology and praxis.The second section of the book looks at the unity and diversity of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements as they developed. Daniel Woods gives a captivating account of the role of the railroad between 1880 and 1920, both as a theological metaphor for salvation typified in gospel songs such as This Train Is Bound for Glory and as a practical method of transport for preaching the gospel and establishing new ecclesial communities. As well as rescuing key figures from relative obscurity, the strongest essays in the collection also offer new interpretive tools with which to view them, as when Cheryl Sanders makes imaginative and perceptive use of the lenses of the Womanist perspective offered by Alice Walker and the insights of H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture to evaluate the contribution of Black Radical Holiness women like Amanda Berry Smith, Mother Lizzy Robertson, and Mother Lilian Brookes Coffey.The concluding section of the volume offers some theological perspectives and begins with Frank Macchia’s reflection on the role of Christ as Spirit baptizer in Luke 3:16–17 and its relevance for Holiness and Pentecostal views of the atonement. The collection concludes where it began: in the academy, with an exploration of the importance of the work of the Cleveland School of Pentecostal scholars, which emerged from the Church of God Theological Seminary in Tennessee.This is a rich and fascinating collection of essays that offers a variety of historical and theological insights, the fruit of closer academic cooperation between two traditions with deep Wesleyan roots to the benefit of both. Along with the other planned volumes in the Penn State series, it is a hopeful sign that the sometime tendency toward isolationism described in the book’s introduction may become a thing of the past.