A Wheel Within a Wheel

A Wheel Within a Wheel
Author: Briane K. Turley
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1999
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780865546301

This study examines the rise of the holiness movement in Georgia following the Civil War. Employing a blend of social and intellectual historical methods, the study pays particular attention to the shifting cultural conditions occurring in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast around the turn of the century and shows how these changes influenced the movement.The study offers two major theses regarding the Wesleyan-Holiness movement in the United States. First the Holiness movement which emerged in the North after 1830 emphasizing the speedy attainment of human perfectibility failed to attract receptive audiences in the South due primarily to the cultural conditions of the region. Southern Christians were deeply affected by the culture of honor and the frequent violence it spawned. Moreover, Southerners were reluctant to subscribe to the Northern formula of Phoebe Palmer's quick and easy means to achieve perfect love when they recognized the ambiguities of the slave system -- a system most Southerners understood as a necessary evil.Second, during the Reconstruction period, at a time when most Southerners were searching for new beginnings, the Wesleyan doctrine of immediately acquired perfect love began attracting widespread support in the Southeast. The study examines the Holiness movement's emergence in Georgia, and demonstrates that contrary to the views of several historians, a significant number of Wesleyan Holiness advocates in the New South were not drawn from the ranks of the dispossessed, but were in fact members of the region's burgeoning middle class.

Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism

Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism
Author: Edith Waldvogel Blumhofer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1999
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780252067563

"Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism addresses the theme of encounter within the Protestant faith by exploring moments in which identities and boundaries have been established or challenged as the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have taken their place on the American religious scene. Examining topics as diverse as the animosity that marked Pentecostalism's encounter with the Holiness movement, the forms and results of engagement between Pentecostal missionaries and Protestant mission boards in China, and the response of Southern and American Baptists to the charismatic renewal, contributors show how the confluence of the mainstream with other streams brings about questioning, realignment, and change."

The Fire Spreads

The Fire Spreads
Author: Randall J. Stephens
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2010-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674046854

Pentecostalism came to the South following the post–Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. With the growth of southern Pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement slipped cautiously into the evangelical mainstream.