Evangelical Gotham by Kyle B. Roberts

Author:Kyle B. Roberts [Roberts, Kyle B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, United States, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), 19th Century, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), Religion, Christianity, Social Science, Sociology, Urban
ISBN: 9780226388281
Google: qspDDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-11-07T22:11:07+00:00

The Way of Holiness

“Is there not a shorter way?” The provocative question confronted readers in the lead article of the last number of the Christian Advocate and Journal for 1842. Subscribers were more accustomed to doctrinal and polemical writings by ministers than to a narrative written by a housewife about the spiritual journey of a female protagonist toward sanctification. The article commenced a series that offered a novel roadmap to gaining the “second blessing,” the state of growing in divine grace after conversion and living without sin. There is an urgency in the work that spoke to those raised in a culture of youthful conversion and anxious about the authenticity of their early impressions. The author’s privileging of sanctification over conversion, the Bible over personal experience, reason over emotion, and the individual over community spoke as much to the realities of the antebellum urban condition as to contemporary developments within evangelicalism. Readers might not at first have known the author, who modestly signed the series “P,” but in time they did. Evangelical embrace of The Way of Holiness made it one of the most popular devotional works of the nineteenth century and launched Phoebe Worrall Palmer’s ministry.26

In the mid-1830s, evangelicals began to rediscover John Wesley’s writings on sanctification. Wesley believed the process of cleansing man from sin began at the moment of conversion and continued, through grace, over the life of the believer. Conversion thus marked a stage, not the culmination, of the spiritual journey. He argued that a second work of grace—a “second blessing”—should occur at a later point and cleanse the converted of sin entirely and imbue her or him with perfect love. This second blessing initiated a stage in an “ongoing, dynamic process of grace that engenders a Christlike and socially responsible nature in the believer.” He rejected Calvinist understandings of sin as a component of the passions or the emotions and believed that it was instead a derivative of man’s will. His emphasis on man’s perfectibility led followers to refer to the state of sanctification as holiness or perfectionism, even though Wesley never believed that anyone could become completely perfect.27

Perfectionism appealed to antebellum urban evangelicals. Focus on individual conversion among the postrevolutionary generation and on community-centered social activism by their children overshadowed eighteenth-century ideas about sanctification. Yet evangelicals unsatisfied with their conversion experience increasingly sought something more; they desired for God to free them from their inner disposition to sin and to fill them with divine love. Just how to do this became a matter of considerable, and occasionally contentious, dispute. Denominational papers, such as the Methodist Christian Advocate and Journal, and nondenominational journals, such as Timothy Merritt’s Guide to Christian Perfection, provided forums for discussion. Palmer actively contributed to these publications, engaged in public debates with other advocates, and eventually edited her own holiness periodical.28

Palmer came to understand sanctification firsthand through the experience of her sister Sarah. A class leader at the Duane Street Church first introduced Sarah to the concept soon after her conversion. Over the next fifteen years, Sarah wrestled with how she would achieve the second blessing.

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