Spirit-Filled Protestantism

Holiness-Pentecostal Revivals and the Making of Filipino Methodist Identity

Luther Jeremiah Oconer

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781498203609
  9781498203623
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498203616
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In Spirit-filled Protestantism, Luther Oconer shows how holiness- and Pentecost-themed revival meetings called culto Pentecostal helped form the development of Methodism in the Philippines. He focuses on these revival meetings, their theological content, and the spiritual culture they helped perpetuate. The resulting narrative provides a rich rendering of both male and female American Methodist missionaries, their Filipino counterparts, and their followers that both celebrates and critiques them. Oconer also offers a unique perspective on Philippine Protestantism, which has often been dismissed for being too intellectual and formal. He defies the stereotype by demonstrating how culto Pentecostal revivals, with their emphasis on holiness and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, made Methodism the most innovative and successful of all Protestant denominations in the country prior to the Second World War. Accordingly, Oconer's treatment explains why Methodism provided a fertile seedbed for the emergence of the Manila Healing Revival and, consequently, the rise of Pentecostalism in the Philippines in the 1950s. A long-awaited volume on the history of Methodism in the Philippines, Spirit-filled Protestantism allows us to discern why Pentecostal impulses continue to shape Filipino Methodist identity in the twenty-first century.

1

American Holiness Roots and Methodist Missions

It is thus that we wait for entire sanctification, for a full salvation from all our sins, from pride, self-will, anger, unbelief, or, as the Apostle expresses it, “Go unto perfection.”

—John Wesley, “The Scripture way of Salvation”

Methodism itself was a reaction to the nominal Christianity or Anglicanism of John Wesley’s day and that Methodist societies were designed to make “real Christians” out of those who desired to “flee from the wrath to come.”24 Wesley’s doctrine of salvation extended the Protestant Reformation’s call for salvation by faith with a post-conversion experience of holiness or entire sanctification. Consequently, Methodists for decades emphasized this experience of holiness, and, therefore, have set high moral standards as benchmarks for true conversion. This quest for real Christianity was also accompanied by Methodist enthusiasm expressed through noisy and emotionally charged revivals that ritualized one’s conversion or entrance into a deeper level of Christian experience. The appeal of heart revivalism was not lost among Methodists for years as it contributed to its vibrancy and growth not only in the British Isles, but also in the American frontier where it primarily found full expression in the camp meetings and other gatherings.

Revivalism had become so embedded to Methodist identity that by the time American Methodists launched into the mission field in the nineteenth century, it was natural for them to carry the same revival impulse to usher people into an experience of justification and sanctification.25 However, by the turn of the twentieth century, as Methodists reached the Philippines, their revival preaching had already been dominated by Pentecostal motifs that expressed the Holy Spirit’s power to bring about holiness and renewal to the person. It was for this reason that their revival meetings were called culto Pentecostal (Pentecostal meetings). In order to understand the culto Pentecostal meetings, it is important that we first turn our attention to the Holiness movement.

The Holiness Movement

Though scholars offer different arguments to account for the emergence of the Holiness movement, most agree that its theological roots were in John Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection or entire sanctification, which he taught as a distinct second religious experience or “second blessing” subsequent to regeneration.26 Although Wesley, as scholars contend, explained such experience as having both instantaneous and gradual elements to it, the Holiness movement emphasized the former.27 The doctrine initially found a great following through the Methodist movement in America as it expanded from the eastern seaboard to the frontier throughout the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Some scholars suggest that Methodist interest in the doctrine went through a brief period of decline until it was reinvigorated by the emergence of a much broader perfectionist thrust within American culture during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.28

Within American Methodism, the increasing level of interest in the revival of the doctrine of holiness became evident in Timothy Merritt’s immensely popular book, The Christian’s Manual, a Treatise on Christian Perfection: with Directions for Obtaining That State (1824), which was a compilation of the writings of John Wesley and John Fletcher on the subject and was meant to be a guide for those who sought to experience the second blessing.29 Such interest also found denominational support when the bishops of the MEC made an appeal before the General Conference of 1832 for a revival the doctrine.30 Another prominent development was Sarah Worrall Lankford’s “Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness,” launched in 1835 in New York City, which eventually catapulted her sister Phoebe Worrall Palmer to the forefront of holiness revivalism. Some scholars, in fact, attribute the beginning of the Holiness movement to the Tuesday Meetings.31 Charles Jones even suggests that it was to Palmer, more than Wesley, that the Holiness movement owed much of its distinctive practices and teachings.32 Palmer taught a “shorter way” to experiencing entire sanctification through her “altar theology” by insisting on the immediate or present availability of entire sanctification through the following elements: 1) “entire consecration,” 2) faith in God’s promises to sanctify those who would come before the “Altar of Christ,” and 3) public testimony. Palmer’s holiness teaching represented a significant shift from that of Wesley’s by making holiness the beginning, rather than the culmination, of the Christian life.33 Though challenged by some, Palmer’s teachings found support among Methodist bishops and gained wide acceptance among lay people and clergy both within and outside Methodism.34

The perfectionist impetus in Methodism also found parallels in the Reformed tradition as the “Methodization” of Calvinism became more apparent among “revivalistic Calvinists”—like New School Presbyterians, most Congregationalists, regular Baptists, and othe...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: American Holiness Roots and Methodist Missions
• Chapter 2: Methodist Beginnings in the Philippines
• Chapter 3: Culto Pentecostal Revivals Begin
• Chapter 4: Seasons of Pentecost, 1911–1924
• Chapter 5: Refinement, Moral Crusades, and Schism, 1925–1933
• Chapter 6: The Methodist Healing Revival, and Its Consequences, 1934–1965
• Conclusion
• Bibliography