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In his Plain Account of Christian Perfection, John Wesley affirmed that as Christians we are "to be 'perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.' " Many Protestants have read such verses from Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount as intended to convince sinners of their need for grace, not as indicative of anything attainable this side of the Jordan. Wesley, by contrast, saw "entire sanctification" as required of the Christian, "not only at or after death, but 'in this world.' " Wesleyans cited verses such as 1 John 3:6—"Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not"—as clear biblical proof for their doctrine. Over time, though, many Methodists neglected or discarded perfectionism, which Wesley had termed the "grand depositum" of his movement.
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Randall Stephens offers a rich portrait of Christians in the American South who embraced perfectionist teachings. Mining untapped pamphlets, periodicals, diaries, and church records, he presents a lucid chronological and regional study of the holiness and Pentecostal movements that eventually dominated the national perception of southern religion. Himself the grandson of a "barnstorming holiness preacher," Stephens chronicles the many ironies that led to this unexpected triumph.
At first, southerners resisted northern holiness missionaries through a combination of anti-abolitionist regionalism, a "musky chauvinism," and deep-rooted Calvinist pessimism. Eventually, however, "carpetbag" evangelists and a flood of literature—Stephens pays careful attention to the role of holiness publishers—converted a stream of "holiness scalawags" to the "double cure." Unlike their mainstream evangelical counterparts, these "religious mavericks" largely rejected the Lost Cause and at least sometimes challenged Dixie's regnant racism and patriarchy. Methodists who adopted holiness teachings saw themselves as restoring the fervor of earlier Wesleyanism, and many longed for the restoration of the New Testament church's spiritual gifts while anticipating the imminent return of their Savior. Similar to the way southern Democrats met the Populist challenge, southern denominations responded with derision and expulsions, which holiness preachers endured as badges of persecution and signs of the Second Coming. "The Quarterly Conference will just be reading the verdict on some holiness evangelist," wrote the preacher and publisher H.C. Morrison, " … And, behold! The man has disappeared [in the rapture]."
News of the 1906 Azusa Street revival reached southern holiness churches awaiting signs of a latter-day Pentecost. Thousands of holiness Christians embraced what detractors dubbed the "tongues movement," both as evidence of Holy Spirit baptism and "the ultimate sign of the world's end." Citing Freud's theory of the "narcissism of minor differences," Stephens observes that holiness denominations treated Pentecostals much as mainline denominations had treated them. In the face of denominational discipline and predictions of inevitable demise, Pentecostalism quickly superseded the holiness movement in terms of numbers and cultural significance. During the nadir of race relations in the South, at least some Pentecostals also trod a dangerous path that was "almost progressive." F.F. Bosworth, a white Pentecostal itinerant, preached at an interracial camp meeting in Texas; afterwards a group of ruffians met him at the train station, beat him with boat oars, and left him on the train tracks. Bosworth noted that God avenged him when a train later struck and killed one of the miscreants on the very same tracks.
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