The Radical Holiness Movement and The Christian and Missionary Alliance:
Twins, perhaps, but not Identical
The religious climate of late-nineteenth century American theology provided the fertile setting from which a great number of Christian denominations and organizations would be born. Two such movements include the Radical Holiness Movement, founded upon the ministries of Martin Wells Knapp (1853–1901) and Seth Cook Rees (1854–1933), and The Christian and Missionary Alliance, founded by former Presbyterian, Albert B. Simpson (1843-1919). In a sense, therefore, both movements were born of the same mother, the theological and practical emphases of popular late nineteenth-century Evangelicalism. Consequently, one should not be surprised to discover that there are clear and significant similarities between the two. Yet, as any sibling will be sure tell you, it is just as important to note that, in spite of the similarities, there are also significant and defining differences. Through an examination of these two movements and, particularly, through an consideration of the lives and thoughts of their founding fathers, the goal of this lecture is to identify both the significant similarities and the noteworthy distinctions of these two supposed “siblings.”
Similarities
Most students of the Radical Holiness Movement are, no doubt, aware of Seth Cook Rees’ noteworthy involvement in the early C&MA and his deep appreciation for Simpson’s ministry.[1] Not only did he engage in a teaching and preaching ministry within Alliance circles, he served, for a time, as the President of the Michigan Auxiliary of the Christian Alliance.[2] What is less known is the esteem that Simpson seems to have had for Rees. 1890 saw the completion of the complex—the Alliance Vatican, as it were—that would house the Gospel Tabernacle, the Berachah Home, the Missionary Training Institute, and would serve as the base of operations for a long list of other C&MA related ministries. When choosing participants for the Dedication Service, Simpson assigned the dedicatory prayer, an undoubtedly significant portion of this momentous occasion, to none other than Seth Cook Rees.[3]
Rees’ significant involvement in The Christian and Missionary Alliance early in his ministry meant that when, later, he partnered with Martin Wells Knapp to form the International Holiness Union and Prayer League (1897), the latter organization would share many of the same emphases as the former. The doctrinal basis of Rees’ and Knapp’s “simple, non-sectarian organisation” was the Fourfold Gospel and involved itself in “the formation of many missions, churches, rescue homes, and camp meetings, as well as the sending out of missionaries to many foreign lands.”[4] This description thoroughly mirrors the founding constitutions of Simpson’s own organizations, originally the Christian Alliance and the Evangelical Missionary Alliance formed just ten years earlier in 1887.[5] Furthermore, like Simpson, these men also published a regular periodical for the promotion both of the organization and of its “distinct” message. It is most likely no coincidence that with the birth of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League in 1897 the mention of Rees’ involvement in the C&MA disappears from latter’s periodical.
David Bundy has recently argued that there are five categories for understanding the progressive nature of the thought and theology of Martin Wells Knapp. He notes that Knapp’s ministry focussed on 1) Urbanization, 2) Democratization, 3) Humanization, 4) a Global Vision, and 5) Pentecost as paradigmatic.[6] Across the board, Simpson’s Gospel Tabernacle and the Alliance, not only shared these same emphases, in most cases they predated Knapp’s involvement in them. Simpson’s move to New York City was driven by his own desire to use the developing urban culture for the spread of the Gospel. Simpson, too, was a champion for democratization among the people of God, seeking to use “God’s neglected resources” (the laity and women) to reach “God’s neglected people,” the unreached people of the world. The lone requirement for ministry would be “entire consecration and practical adaptation to the various forms of missionary work.”[7] The Constitution of the Evangelical Missionary Alliance explicitly identities the divine enabling of both women and the laity, in general, and, consequently, argues for enlisting them in ministries of all sorts. Beyond that, this Constitution argues for enabling national churches to organize and govern themselves according to the manner that best fit their setting. In regard to “Humanization,” from its inception the Gospel Tabernacle was involved in effective ministry to the disenfranchised and down-trodden. Like Knapp, Simpson and his colleagues were also involved in “care for the poor, [ministry] to the prisoners, to lift up the down-trodden, (“fallen women,” orphans, uneducated person, African Americans,) and [healing] the sick.”[8] Simpson’s global vision is legend beyond the need for support. While his view may not have been as radical as Knapp’s, Simpson, too, had a vision for a “Pentecostal” movement that would share many of the characteristics that Bundy attributes to Knapp and his cohort.
In regard to theology, the greatest point of similarity, undoubtedly, revolves around what Simpson coined the Fourfold Gospel and its emphasis on Christ, our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. William Kostlevy, a leading Radical Holiness scholar, has noted that in the Fourfold Gospel, “Simpson brilliantly wove . . . disparate theological elements into a unified body of doctrine.”[9] In espousing the form of the Fourfold Gospel, Knapp and Rees asserted a normative soteriology beyond the scope of the “double cure” of classic Wesleyan theology and the National Holiness Association. That is, in addition to affirming the normative soteriological roles of regeneration and sanctification, these men also asserted the central, if not normative, place of divine healing and premillennial eschatology. Knapp’s and Rees’ similarity to Simpson theologically is not limited to the form but also to the content of the Fourfold Gospel. First, as was growingly common in the late nineteenth century, each man associated the reception of sanctification with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, they believed that sanctification was a “second work of grace,” received in response to a distinct action of faith subsequent to conversion. [10] Much like Simpson, and contrary to classic Wesleyan thought, Knapp emphasized that sanctification was, in nature, both a crisis and process. It began in a moment in time (“crisis”) but was not complete in that same moment in time. In fact, Simpson, himself, explicitly distanced C&MA teaching from traditional Wesleyan thought in this area.[11] In regard to divine healing, Rees noted that he “largely coincided with [Simpson’s teaching in this area.]”[12]
Differences
In spite of the fact that all three men hold to what each called “the Fourfold Gospel” and in spite of the fact that this Fourfold Gospel was iterated by each as Christ our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King, how each defined these various aspects was not identical. While their personal visions of Christ as Savior followed the revivalistic conventions of the day that is where the relative unanimity ceased. In delineating each of the last three aspects of the Fourfold Gospel, these men showed substantial differences. As noted earlier, Knapp and Simpson were in agreement that sanctification, though inaugurated in a moment in time, was, by divine intent, a process. For Simpson in particular, the work of sanctification was an on-going, divinely-enabled movement toward conformity to Christ. Seth Cook Rees’ position is clearly contrary. He emphasized a more classic Wesleyan (and, perhaps, Palmerian) understanding of the immediacy of entire sanctification. He flatly rejected the notion that sanctification was a process through which one was brought into Christ-likeness. Boldly, Rees wrote, “No one gets sanctified gradually. The Lord comes suddenly into His holy temple. While untold thousands stand and testify to having been sanctified, none profess to have grown into it or acquired it by degrees.”[13] Meesaeng Lee Choi has identified this as the instantaneous aspect of a Radical Holiness view of Christian perfection.[14] In addition, the Radical Holiness tradition has traditionally focussed the nature of sanctification in a direction distinct from that of Simpson. According to Choi, to be sanctified in Radical Holiness perspective is to be “cleansed from all inbred sin.”[15] Simpson’s focus is clearly different. While one may argue that the effects may be the same, given his mystic and Christo-centric approach, Simpson explicitly spoke of sanctification as the result of the presence of Christ and not, conversely, the absence of “inbred sin.” For Simpson, the mere absence of sin is not the primary definition or focus of Christ’s sanctifying work. He wrote,
We believe that the Alliance teaching on the subject is neither Wesleyan nor, strictly speaking, an echo of even the excellent teaching given at the meetings annually held at Keswick. While speaking in greatest appreciation of other teachers and of all who endeavor to hold up the true Scriptural standard of life, yet we believe that the point of view from which the subject of personal holiness is regarded by the teachers and workers in the Christian Alliance is what we might term the “Christ Life,” rather than even the sanctified life. There is always a little danger of seeing our experience more than the source of that experience, the Person and work of the Lord Jesus, we have ever been led to rise above all our experiences and recognize our new and resurrection life wholly in Him. At the same time we believe and teach that this will lead to the very highest kind of Christian life; higher than our best experiences, higher than Adamic perfection, for it is the life of Jesus, the second Adam, the Son of God, “manifested in our mortal flesh.[16]
For Simpson, clearly, sanctification is more about the elevation of human being, through the presence of the indwelling of Christ, than it is about the eradication of the sin nature.[17] Interestingly, in his major works on sanctification, in comparison to Simpson at least, Seth Cook Rees is relatively silent on Christ’s active role in the work; he is far more Pneumato-centric than Christo-centric.
As noted earlier, by his own admission, Seth Cook Rees found himself in general agreement with Simpson on the topic of divine healing. Martin Wells Knapp, however, was less in line with Simpson on this topic than was his colleague. There is no doubt that Knapp was convinced of divine healing. It formed part of the Fourfold Gospel that he espoused. His distinction from Simpson, though, emerged in regard to the extent that the believer could experience and count on vitality in this life. He was far more pessimistic than was Simpson. While healing was available to the believer in the present age, Knapp resisted making the seemingly grandiose claims of Simpson in regard to the degree of health that a believer could expect in this dispensation. (One source has suggested that Knapp’s more tempered views on divine healing may have been informed by the tragic and early death of his beloved and saintly wife.)
One final area in which the parties carried disparate views in regard to divine healing was in its theological and logical relationship to sanctification. For Simpson, the doctrine and blessing of divine healing was clearly an extension of the doctrine of sanctification to physical human being. In Wholly Sanctified, chapter four is titled, “A Sanctified Body.” There, Simpson expresses the following, “The sanctified body has been, or at least should be, separated from disease.” “Are you willing to be sanctified from disease, and is it valuable enough for you to throw you prejudices away and accept the salvation which Christ has come to bring for spirit, soul, and body?”[18] Choi notes that for Knapp, at least, divine healing was “not a radicalization of the sanctification doctrine.” Though still identified as a consequence of the redeeming work of Christ, it was, instead, “integral to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, regarded as the experience of Pentecost.”[19] This, quite clearly, was not Simpson’s view.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, these two movements—the Radical Holiness network and The Christian and Missionary Alliance—are children of a common parentage. That, it would seem, is beyond dispute. Their similarities are many and deep. Yet, the practice of implying that Knapp and Rees gained their theology of the Fourfold Gospel from Simpson does not follow, necessarily.[20] It is certainly likely that Knapp and Rees borrowed the phrase, “the Fourfold Gospel,” from Simpson. Rees seems to grant this.[21] Furthermore, it may be likely that in addition to the nomenclature, these two men found in Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel a theological framework and gestalt upon which to hang and to interpret their own theological views. It is less clear, however, that Knapp’s and Rees’ particular understandings on each of the various tenets of the Fourfold Gospel—regeneration, sanctification, divine healing, and premillennial eschatology—were derived from Simpson. Rees’s own testimony in this area would seem to grant more of a coincidence with than a dependence upon Simpson’s theology in these various areas.[22] The pervasive popularity of Revivalism, the Holiness Movement, the Divine Healing Movement, and Premillennialism in America in the late-nineteenth century, at this time, is reason enough to explain the theological similarities among these men and their respective movements. The significant differences are reason enough deny a dependent correlation. Consequently, it may be said that while the Radical Holiness movement and The Christian and Missionary Alliance may be twins, they are not identical.
[1] Paul S. Rees, Seth Cook Rees: The Warrior-Saint (Indianapolis: Pilgrim Book Room, 1934), 24.
[2] At the same time, his wife, Hulda, served as the same auxiliary’s secretary. Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 24.
[3] “Dedication Services,” The Christian Alliance, 4:9–10 (March 21 & 28, 1890): 200.
[4] Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 54.
[5] “Editorial Paragraphs,” The Word, Work, and World, 4:2–3 (August & September, 1887): 110-112. William Kostlevy also notes the close similarity of these two movements. William Kostlevy, Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America (New York: Oxford, 2010), 29.
[6] David Bundy, “Religion for Modernity: Martin Wells Knapp and the Radical Holiness Network of the American Progressive Era,” (unpublished article), 10-22.
[7] “Editorial Paragraphs,” The Word, Work, and World, 4:2-3 (August & September, 1887): 112.
[8] Bundy, “Religion for Modernity,” 17.
[9] Kostlevy, Holy Jumpers, 21.
[10] Meesaeng Lee Choi, The Rise of the Korean Holiness Church in Relation to the American Holiness Movement: Wesley’s “Scriptural Holiness” and the “Fourfold Gospel,” (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2008), 40.
[11] For this reason it is puzzling that some scholars, particularly those from a Wesleyan perspective, continue to claim Simpson as their own in this area and apply to his testimony and teaching distinctly Wesleyan categories and nomenclature. An example of this is seen in William Kostlevy’s identification of Simpson’s 1874 spiritual experience as one of “entire sanctification.” While, on occasion, Simpson used the term “entire sanctification,” in doing so he made no assertion regarding to the “perfection” of sanctification in a commonly-used Wesleyan sense. Kostlevy, Holy Jumpers, 20.
[12] Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 54.
[13] Seth Cook Rees, Fire from Heaven, (Cincinnati: Knapp, 1899), 28.
[14] Choi, Rise of the Korean Holiness Church, 44.
[15] Choi, Rise of the Korean Holiness Church, 40.
[16] Albert B. Simpson, “Christ-Centered,” Christian and Missionary Alliance, 23:1 (June 3, 1899): 8.
[17] For further reading on the idea of the elevation of the human nature in Simpson’s theology, see the following. Bernie A. Van De Walle, “A. B. Simpson and the Classic Doctrine of Theosis,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, 43:2 (Fall 2008): 136–153.
[18] Albert B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, (New York, Christian Alliance, 1893), 84-85.
[19] Choi, Rise of the Korean Holiness Church, 41.
[20] Examples of this practice may be found in both the writings of William Kostlevy and Meesaeng Lee Choi to name but two. It is explicit in Kostlevy and strongly implied in Choi to name but two. Kostlevy, Holy Jumpers, 21 and Choi, Rise of the Korean Holiness Church, 9–25.
[21] Paul Rees, however, also notes that his father was “never convinced of the accuracy of [Simpson’s] slogan-phrase, “The Fourfold Gospel.”” Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 24.
[22] Rees, Seth Cook Rees, 24.
