Holiness Religion: Cultural Shock and Social Reorganization

Abstract

T HE PURPOSE of this paper is to suggest further research in the field of social organization and culture conflict. Within both these fields lies the problem of describing the social reorganization of migrants from rural to urban areas and, in some cases, to other rural areas. For reasons which will become obvious as we proceed, this discussion is limited in its application to the South and more particularly to the southeastern states. It is thus quite regional in scope. The writer's attention was drawn to the subject less by an abstract interest in the social factors of population migration than by his curiosity concerning the phenomenal growth of the Holiness and Pentecostal denominations or sects in the southeastern states. The largest of these groups, the Assemblies of God, increased from ii,ooo members in i9i6 to I48,043 in I936, and to around 200,000 in I939. The largest, the Nazarene, increased from 6657 in i906 to I36,227 in I936, and seems to have continued to grow rapidly since then. The three branches of the third largest group have today an aggregate membership of about 9o,ooo, as compared with 23,000 in i926.' Included in the following discussion are white churches only, exclusive of the Lutheran. The data cover the seven strongest bodies, which seem to be representative of the movement in its more organized phases.2 These seven are: (i) The Assemblies of God; (2) The Church of the Nazarene; (3) The Church of God, with headquarters at Cleveland, Tennessee; (4) The Church of God, with headquarters at Anderson, Indiana; (5) The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World; (6) The Pentecostal Holiness Church; (7) The Pilgrim Holiness Church. An eighth, on which no figures have yet been obtained, is the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ, founded since I930. These groups are frequently classed indiscriminately as holy rollers. This epithet is inspired by their highly emotional and physically energetic behavior at religious services. This behavior is characterized by themselves as the outward expression of their beatific or ecstatic feeling of sanctification, when God bestows upon their souls His so-called second blessing