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A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL: SOUTHERN METHODISM AND THE GEORGIA HOLINESS ASSOCIATION Briane Keith Turley New Martinsville, West Virginia B.A., West Virginia University M.Div., Nazarene Theological Seminary M.A., University ofi Virginia A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Religious Studies University of Virginia May, 1994 ii @ Copyright by Br1ane Keith Turley All rights reserved May, 1994 iii ABSTRACT The dissertation 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 achieving 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 decree 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. Employing a blend of social and intellectual historical methods, the study pays particular iv attention to the shifting cultural conditions occurring in the Georgia and the rest of the Southeast around the turn of the century and determines that these changes had considerable impact on the theological expressions of the Holiness movement. V Acknowledgments I am indebted to my mentor and friend John A. Corrigan for his ability to see merit in my scholarship when I questioned its worth. Anything that is well-organized and carefully documented in the following pages reflects John's creative genius and painstaking editorial efforts. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Edward L. Ayers who helped focus my study on the South and encouraged my feeble attempts to emulate some aspects of the social historian's trade. Ed's marvelous gift of historical sensitivity and genuine sense of scholarly humility have served as a source of constant encouragement to me and countless others at the University of Virginia. Robert Stanley Ingersol, director of Church of the Nazarene Archives, suggested that I look to the Holiness association in Georgia as an important expression of the movement's development in the Southeast. During our many phone conversations, Stan provided me with a number of helpful ideas and suggestions. Moreover, he sent me nearly one hundred pages of primary source materials that helped round out my flagging documentation. To Stan and the entire staff at Nazarene archives I offer my gratitude. I wish to thank Heather Warren for her kind assistance in pulling my dissertation defense together with very short notice. I also want to express my gratitude to Heather, Gerald Fogarty, and Benjamin Ray for their penetrating vi comments and insightful advice for future revisions of the project. This dissertation would not be possible were it not for the help of the very supportive staff in the manuscripts department at Woodruff Library, Emory University. I also wish to acknowledge the many kindnesses shown me by the University of Georgia Library, Duke University Library, Alderman Library, the University of Virginia, and Wise Library, West Virginia University. I am indebted to the University of Virginia for awarding me a Philip Francis du Pont fellowship that helped fund my research trips to Georgia bet~een 1990 and 1991. Joseph P. Luce, President of the Indian Springs Holiness Camp, received me like a member of his family and made my visit to Indian Springs enjoyable in every respect. I owe a special debt of gratitude to him and all the folks at Indian Springs who helped with this study. I also thank Christopher for bearing patiently with me on numerous occasions when my time would have been better spent playing with the Matchbox racers or taking walks in the park. Finally, I express my unreserved gratitude to my wife, Ann Powers Turley, who served as research assistant and typist throughout the project. Above all, I thank her for her gifts of grace, friendship, and understanding. Without her model of perfect love in my life, I would never have undertaken this project. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS 2\I3~'1'~C'I' •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • v Chapter page I. INTRODUCTION AND THESIS SUMMARY•••••••••••••••• 1 II. HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION••••• 38 III. AMERICAN SHORTCUTS TO PERFECTION••••••••••••••• 78 IV. THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 127 V. THE GALVANIC HEAVENLY BATTERY: THE HOLINESS EXPERIENCE IN GEORGIA.••••••••••••••••••••••• 169 VI. THE PROBLEM OF METHODISM . .. 213 VII. THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS . 263 VIII. ALTERNATIVE METHODS FOR THE OLD-TIME RELIGION ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 302 CONCLUSION •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 333 BIBLIOGRAPHY . .. .. 341 viii For My Parents Barbara and Moe Chapter 1 Introduction and Thesis Summary The Answered Prayer A spirit of frustration and bitterness overspread the ranks of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at the close of the Civil War. Like the majority of their non-Methodist neighbors, most southern Methodists had experienced their portion of hard times after the outset of war, and most could not envision an upturn in their fortunes in their immediate future. The bitterness resulted from encounters with their kindred denomination to the north, the Methodist Episcopal Church. Relations between southern Methodists and their northern cousins were at best tepid and at worst intractable in the two decades following the 1844 schism, but the northerners managed to widen the breach even further during the war when church leaders took advantage of Federal territorial gains and the pitiable social conditions in the South in an attempt to occupy and control southern Methodist churches and force denominational reunification one congregation at a time. The inimical northern scheme ultimately failed when the southern Methodists appealed to 2 the Federal Court system, but southerners were slow to absolve the northern intrigue and would, for decades following the war, adjudge northern Methodists kindred to the carpetbagger, scalawag, and other unsavory Union res1'd ue. 1 In most respects, the years immediately following the Civil War were the bleakest period of morale within the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Many southern church leaders believed, for example, that their flock was threatened by serious internal problems not directly pertaining to relations with the northern church nor their overwhelming material losses. Writing in the Southern Christian Advocate, the Rev. H. G. Wells of Charleston, South Carolina, opined that his congregation had "suffered terribly. Morals have become lax, backsliding frequent and in some localities the Church is in a condition to dishearten its ministers." Wells's observations concerning the disheartened ministry were not unfounded. In the years immediately following the war the average annual income of ministers in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was about $600, and, subsequently, many preachers found it necessary to pursue some secular means of support. 2 Apparently denominational leadership concurred with Wells's judgment of the church's moral sluggishness. Bishop William Wightman delivered the episcopal address to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 3 gathered at Memphis on a Thursday morning in May, 1870. Wightman described the southern church as an institution that had grown "deficient as to several matters which were formally regarded as aids and tests of methodistic piety." Wightman echoed Wells's assessment of church morale and suggested that a growing number of southern Methodists had become "worldly" and "fashionable" pursuing pleasures such as dancing and other forms of "evil." Wightman and his episcopal colleagues hoped to rally their constituency and precipitate a revival that would soon establish order and stability within the denomination's tattered ranks. The key to the much-needed revival could be found, the bishops believed, in the neglected Wesleyan theology upon which Methodism was founded, the doctrine of Christian holiness or perfection'that cleanses the Christian from all deliberate sin and empowers him or her to obey God perfectly. The "only effectual remedy for most, if not all of our deficiencies, as a Christian people," Wightman declared, "is in an increase of inward, genuine, scriptural holiness." "We fear," Wightman said, "that the doctrine of perfect love, which casts out fear and purifies the heart, as taught in the Bible and explained and enforced in our standards, as a distinct and practicable attainment, is too much overlooked and neglected." It was the opinion of the episcopacy, Wightman continued, that "Nothing is so much

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