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The MCA was the product of a division in the holiness movement between traditionalist moderates who remained loyal to the old denominations and radicals who wanted to form new bodies committed to innovative theological currents such as the eminent physical return of Jesus and divine healing. Martin Wells Knapp, editor of God’s Revivalist was the central figure in radical coalition. While holiness moderates in the National Holiness Association (NHA) attempt a two front war against foes that they believe where either dangerous liberals or rank fanatics, Knapp focused his attention the moderates who he believed were hopeless tied to such passing human documents as the Apostles Creed. Early radical centers were God’s Bible School in Cincinnati and the Chicago based ministries of E. L. Harvey and Duke Farson.

In March of 1901, Duke Farson skillfully using the daily press attracted Chicago residence and visitors to MCA revival services that ran for three months. Preacher actors including converted railroad engineer E. A. Ferguson, ex-prize fighter Andrew J. Dolbow and holiness movement folk hero Bud Robinson entertained listeners with colorful preaching and attacks on Chicago’s leading ministers. The theme song of the revival “The Pearly White City” captures the Holiness Movement’s critique of early twentieth century America. MCA leaders managed to co-opt a schedule moderate holiness convention and even attracted several key attendees to the radical cause including Colorado evangelist Alma White and W. E. Shepard. The General Holiness Assembly ended endorsing the imminent return of Jesus and faith healing.

This chapter investigates how growing numbers of Delta blacks rejected a number of the new dimensions to black religion, including the role of fraternal orders, the sight of ministers hawking market wares in person and in print, the popular stress on worldly goods as a sign of spiritual worth and success, and the marginalization of women from traditional roles of authority. It demonstrates how the disenchanted turned to a new breed of religious leader, men such as William Christian, Charles H. Mason, and Charles P. Jones, one-time Baptist ministers who urged blacks to recapture the spirit of primitive Christianity. Each was a founding father of the African American Holiness‐Pentecostal movement and criticized black denominational churches as too materialistic, rational, and hostile to ecstatic dimensions of worship. Yet within twenty years of its founding, the Holiness leaders, ironically, embraced some of the very denominational practices they had previously castigated, revealing not only the limits to their calls for reform but also some of the modern characteristics of Delta black religion as a whole.

This chapter presents in systematic form Congar’s pneumatological anthropology and pneumatological ecclesiology. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human person, Congar affirms, is a mystery that heals us from sin and leads us to a new level of participation in the divine life. In contrast to much of the Catholic theology of his era, Congar develops a corresponding pneumatological ecclesiology. The Holy Spirit is co-institutor of the church and principle of the church’s holiness, catholicity, apostolicity, and communion.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Methodists were the largest American denomination. But as they grew, so also did their theology Americanize. In the years following the death of Francis Asbury in 1815, Methodists grew closer to other denominations as they embraced American standards of commonsense moral philosophy and republican political thought. Still, it was not until the denomination divided over slavery in 1844 that the Methodists would come to look like most other American Protestant denominations in their embrace of commonsense and republican principles.

Besides the economic, political, and social challenges that face all human beings, the Catholic Church must cope with various particular issues: the need for ongoing conversion to Christ; a better practice of collegiality and subsidiarity, which will reduce over-centralization; more room for the ministry of laywomen and laymen; a happier balance between dialogue with ‘others’ and the mission to proclaim Christ.

This chapter explains how the language of 2 Kgs 23 provides entrée to the ritual dimensions of Josiah's reform. The text attests to language associated with two types of defilement ritual: apotropaic rites of riddance and ḥērem. The former, common in priestly texts, serves to avert danger, while the latter occurs often in Deuteronom(ist)ic texts and connotes the destruction of enemies and their consecration to Yahweh. These two ritual categories are essential to understanding the efficacy of Josiah's reform measures and the compositional history of the text. This chapter situates the book's conclusions regarding the composition of 2 Kgs 23 within the context of earlier models and establishes the critical foundations for the assertion of a Holiness substratum in the text.

This chapter first examines unique parallels between 2 Kgs 23 and priestly, apotropaic ritual texts. It then identifies language and interests in 2 Kgs 23 found elsewhere in the Bible only in the priestly Holiness Code (Lev 17–26). Recognizing Holiness interests in the text clarifies several long-standing interpretive cruxes: the repeated emphasis on defilement (טמא); the reading bāmôt hasě'irîm (“high places of the gates”) (23:8); reference to molekh offerings referred to by name (23:10); and the recurrent theme of eradication of bāmôt (“high places”) especially as punishment for transgression. This chapter concludes that 2 Kgs 23 shares its core programmatic interests with the school of priestly thought responsible for the Holiness Code, not with Deuteronomy.

This chapter establishes the literary historical relationship between priestly-Holiness and Deuteronomistic elements in the account of the reform and the mechanisms of Deuteronomistic transformation. Whereas the Holiness account was steeped in the political and material realities of preexilic Judah, the Deuteronomistic revision connected the composition to universal themes in Israel's landed history. Among these are: Israel's ancient covenant with Yahweh, mediated by the laws of Moses; the agency of Israel's earliest military leaders in realizing Yahweh's covenant promise; and the repeated failure of Israel's kings to fulfill the potential that Moses and Joshua embodied. Isolating the Holiness substratum in 2 Kgs 23 illuminates the postmonarchic Deuteronomist's modus operandi and contributes to a deeper understanding of both Deuteronomistic and Holiness writing.

This chapter addresses the implications of this study for certain central issues in biblical studies. These are: the nature of Holiness writing and the duration of the Holiness school's activity; the relationship between the Holiness and Deuteronomistic schools; the use of 2 Kgs 23 to date Deuteronomy to the seventh century; the idea of a Josianic redaction of the book of Kings; the import of the idea of centralization within the literary traditions of the Deuteronom(ist)ic school; and the historicity of Josiah's reform. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the core traditions of sanctified violence embedded in the account of the reform and how these were preserved and manipulated in the process of narrativizing emergent Israelite identity.

Chapter thirty-one analyzes Hodge’s most popular book, his devotional The Way of Life. Hodge took over the role of Professor of Theology from Archibald Alexander in 1840, and thereby became the lead professor at the Seminary. By 1845, he was co-teaching the core theology courses of the school with Alexander. His The Way of Life provides a unique window into the formative years of his systematic theological thinking and his commitment to personal holiness in the Christian life.

In some of the more colorful groups on the American religious spectrum, the religious faith of believers involves a willingness to take substantial physical risks — risks to health, physical functioning, and even the risk of death. This chapter takes a closer look at the influence of religion on high-risk decision making that can result in death. In addressing these issues, it casts a morally inquiring eye on the way in which religious institutions engender these sincere, devout beliefs. This chapter discusses informed consent in faith healing, serpent handling, and refusing medical treatment, along with risk budget and risk style. It also examines three religious groups that participate in practices that impose varying degrees of indirect risk of death by refusal of medical treatment or some component of it: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Faith Assembly. The practices of a fourth group impose, in addition, a direct threat of death — the various serpent-handling, strychnine-drinking pentecostal groups within the Holiness churches.

This chapter gives an analysis of the texts that constrain mourning behaviour by proscribing rites of laceration and shaving for priests and for Israelites in general. Using Holiness and Deutronomistic texts, it investigates what distinguishes shaving and laceration from other mourning rites. The discussion explains that they differ from other mourning rites in two ways. First, shaving and laceration are not easily reversible, unlike the majority of mourning practices that may be abandoned at will. Second, in contrast to other mourning rites, laceration and shaving outlast the commonly attested seven-day mourning period for the dead. It follows that these two practices may leave visible tokens of mourning on the bodies of people who have abandoned the mourning ritual stance and shifted to a posture of rejoicing. The mixing of mourning and rejoicing practices may pose a threat to the continuity of the ritual order.

This chapter examines beliefs and practices of The Church faith community and, after immersing the reader in a worship experience, explores four elements of “getting saved”: law, holiness, scripture, and spirit. Law is explored in terms of compliance with selected Levitical laws, especially Sabbath-keeping. Holiness is discussed in terms of boundaries between The Church and The World, and this section also reflects on the author's childhood experience of being “saved” in 1950s Cold War America. Scripture is explored as both vehicle of revelation and focus of communal intellectual life; being “filled with the Holy Ghost” as an outcome of “pressing through.” The ritual and symbolic content of The Church is then situated within contexts of African Diaspora religion, with special attention to Diane Stewart's examination of Afrophobia.