This study examines the rise of the holiness movement in Georgia following the Civil War. Employing a blend of social and intellectual historical methods, the study pays particular attention to the shifting cultural conditions occurring in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast around the turn of the century and shows how these changes influenced the movement.The study 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 achieve 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 the views 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.

Ye That Are Men Now Serve Him: Radical Holiness Theology and Gender in the South examines how religious belief reshaped concepts of gender during the New South period that took place from 1877 to 1915 in ways that continue to manifest today.

This richly detailed biography examines the colorful life and preaching of evangelist John Lakin Brasher (1868-1971), effectively destroying old stereotypes that portrayed holiness folk as fanatical and uneducated. Relying primarily on Brasher's 25,000 manuscripts and on extensive sound recordings of his preaching and storytelling, J. Lawrence Brasher analyzes the dynamics of holiness religious experience and explores the beliefs, rituals, politics, cultural context, and folklore of the southern holiness movement.

The Wesleyan Holiness Movement began out of the teachings of John Wesley, who held that Christ's atonement provided sufficient grace for the believer to live in this world continually loving God and neighbor unconditionally, although the believer's expressions of that love would not be perfect. Since its founding, different movements have been spawned and have interpreted Wesley's doctrine in their own way. The two volumes presented here represent the first installation of a three-part series that greatly expands upon Charles Jones's landmark 1974 work. This work focuses on the Wesleyan Holiness Movement, while the third and fourth volumes have the Keswick Movement and the Holiness Pentecostal Movement as their focal points. This series provides materials for study of doctrine, worship, institutional development and personalities, as well as antecedent and related movements. It will serve to illustrate the history both of the Holiness Movement and the rural-urban transition in which it developed. Theological reconsiderations, realignments, and changes, as well as the nearly exponential growth of the Movement since the book's publication, make these new publications almost absolutely necessary. The guides retain all of the good and strong qualities exhibited in the first edition, and have strengthened them.