What goes around comes around
I enjoy reading about Christian history, even this recent history: “Evangelicalism in modern Britain, a history from the 1730 – 1980s”. It provides a context to the church today, and lessons to be learned. I jumped in with an open mind reading the characteristics of Evangelicalism in chapter one, and I was hooked – “Yep, I am one.”[i] But I soon came to chapter five, concerning a movement that is near to my heart and to my experience, for better and for worse. The topic was “Holiness unto the Lord: Keswick and its Context in the Later Nineteenth Century.”[ii]
I grew up in northeastern New Jersey and my dad pastored a Presbyterian church. Dad was a Roman Catholic-bashing evangelical protestant with a private passion for experiencing God. When I was a kid in the 70s, we lived frugally and dad was a master of frugality; he was tight! So it stood out in my memory that he spent the money every year to go to a convention called Keswick, from which he would always return energized. This was America’s Keswick but with the same holiness roots, the message of the “higher life,” or more familiar to me, the “victorious Christian life.” As a kid I knew nothing about it, or what influence it might have had on my dad. I did, however, after my own teenage conversion, attend Columbia Bible College and Seminary. The president was Robertson McQuilkin, one of America’s leading advocates of the victorious Christian Life, a strain of the holiness movement with its British roots in Methodism, and a devotee of the Keswick message.
McQuilkin is one of my all-time favorite Christ-followers—I want to be like him—but as a college student “the victorious Christian life” sounded like unrealistic perfectionism. But on the other hand, McQuilkin’s spirit, his tone, and his actions were so full of the Spirit I couldn’t help but be drawn by the person even if I didn’t understand—or was put off—by the message.
I had no special attraction to the holiness movement, with all its talk about and Spirit’s further work after conversion. Nor did I care all that much about second blessings, and baptisms of the Spirit; I did, however, have a passion for overseas missions and found myself drawn toward the Christian and Missionary Alliance. After college my wife and I become part of a C&MA church and I was drawn further in by the pastor’s passion for Jesus. While being discipled by Pastor Doug, I found his thinking moved towards union with God, intimacy, communion. While he never claimed to be sinless, he seemed to talk about his spirit as being in communion with the Holy Spirit. Who doesn’t want that kind of communion?
I soon moved towards a full-time ministry in the C&MA; in preparing for ministry in this denomination I studied the founder A.B. Simpson, a former Presbyterian who advocated the crisis of sanctification, a second work of the Spirit that resulted in a deeper surrender and holier life with victory of sin and sickness. He was very much a leader in the American holiness movement, as well as a leader in bringing the gospel around the world. Others would take the mantle for A.B. Simpson in the C&MA family, like A.W Tozer, who didn’t focus so much on sinless perfection but on communion with God, and the righteousness of Christ in us.
Whether it be my dad, my Bible college president, my mentor and friend Doug and influential men in the history of my denomination, they all seemed to have been influenced by and a participant in this Keswick – Holiness movement, not unlike the Quakers and Brethren. Might I be so bold, with the view of a skeptical insider, (albeit one who has benefited greatly by this movement) to offer a criticism? Setting aside the rather volatile question of whether or not, or to what extent, sinless living, post-conversion and prior to glorification is possible, the holiness movement should really be about something else altogether. Of course it’s partially about the empowering of the Spirit to live our lives as God would have us live. It’s also about spirit-to-Spirit communion. Whether it’s Wesleyan, Brethren or Quaker there is a deeper life with Christ that is at the heart of the spiritual walk. My criticism comes by way of Krish Kandiah’s book “Paradoxology,” where he reminds us that God is both distant and close, that we’re called to both intimacy and reverence that while Moses was called to come close to God and listen to him he was also told to take off his sandals and come no further.[iii]
Ironically, ‘The holiness movement’ may have lost sight of God’s holiness. Maybe we’ve over-emphasized the immanence of God to the detriment of the transcendence of God. The holiness discussed throughout Bebbington’s history on Keswick is the holiness of Christian living, the approach being this: experience the immanence of God and we become holy by faith (the imputed righteousness of Christ). What’s being ignored is the unapproachable glory and burning holiness of God. If the holiness movement would take up the holiness of God, or the transcendence of God, and hold it in tension with what they already do so well, the immanence of God – I think we would find new fervor for this generation.
[i] David W Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989), 2-17.
[ii] Ibid, 151-180.
[iii] Krish Kandiah, Paradoxology: Why Christianity Was Never Meant to Be Simple (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014), 35-60.
About the Author
Dave Young
husband, dad, friend, student of culture and a pastor.8 responses to “What goes around comes around”
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Amen Dave,
I too came from the Holiness movement. The Chruch of God in Christ. One of the favorite verses that they use is “follow peace and holiness with all men without which no man shall see the Lord.” But many of them deal only with the holiness part. They forget it is connected with peace. A lot of them are not as peaceful as they are religious. The holiness movement is a deep and rich movement but it has to get to the root of holiness in my opionion and that is the love of God in Christ. Too me as we get closer to God we should experience more of a richer love for him and humankind. When love is missing in any denomination, religion or doctrine im not even interested in it! Great Dave!
Powerful, but sad, statement, Travis: they are “not as peaceful as they are religious.” Yikes. That’s dangerous territory, is it not?
It is Mary
Dave, it is about a deeper life, something that connects us in a real way to the other side of eternity… I’m not sure what that looks like in real time but I think we have to keep searching…
Great post as usual! When I grow up I want to be Dave!
J.
Me too! Wait, I’m already passed him in age, so maybe I should say, when I grow down? 🙂
Dave, Consider me ignorant but Bebbington’s description is the first I’ve heard of the Keswick – Holiness movement. After reading your post I think I like the Dave Young – Holiness movement better. (-:
What was interesting me in reading Bebbington was all the different denominations/movements that he described all seemed to be missing some sort of element. I think that gives me hope. Thankfully no one and no movement has it perfect.
Great post Dave. Thanks!
Dave, Love the immanence / transcendence tension. As a holiness new kid on the block (KNOTB!) being raised Catholic, I am thankful for the exposure to both sides of the coin and would agree that the balance is necessary for an authentic Christian life. It is funny how the weave of our backgrounds profoundly effect of need and view of an immanent and transcendent God.
Your words express the wrestling you experienced not only as a child growing up, but even now as you consider the “creative tension” of living in the paradoxes of our faith. Thank you for the window into your soul. It’s not easy to see what we’ve been taught without either entirely discarding it or fully embracing it. You demonstrate the ability to hold onto what it means to live into what Jon said of the “deeper life.”