A Holiness Hermeneutic

America in the late nineteenth century was undergoing enormous societal shifts. Immigration and urbanization were changing the face of the country. New discoveries and new perspectives on old verities stretched its mind and stirred its soul. The recently concluded Civil War left America bloodied, its self-confidence bruised, and its capacity for controversy weakened. American churches responded to these upheavals in different ways with long-lasting consequences. The reaction of one small branch of American Protestantism rooted in the broader stream of Methodism opens a window into these troubled times. This book explores how the American holiness movement navigated the societal maelstrom and the role the Bible played in charting its course. The holiness movement's response illustrates the interaction between the Bible and culture. It sheds light on the development of the movement's younger cousin, Pentecostalism. It also adds texture to the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, an important struggle that marked the early decades of the twentieth century and continues to shape America today.

""When we explore Christian history, yesterday's church speaks to today's church about
tomorrow. Stephen Lennox's masterful study of the populist hermeneutic which characterized the Holiness Movement in the years around the turn of the twentieth century is a case in point. What he learned by shining a spotlight on seven leading authors of that period has real significance for biblical interpretation in the modern era. This book deserves its own spotlight.""
--Bob Black, Southern Wesleyan University

Stephen J. Lennox is President of Kingswood University in Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada. He has also served as Honors Professor of Bible and Humanities at Indiana Wesleyan University. Lennox is the author of commentaries on Psalms, Proverbs, and Joshua, and an introduction to the Old Testament, God's Story Revealed (2009).