JOINING HOLINESS AND ALL TRUTH

By Barry L. Callen

In its earliest decades the Holiness Movement in America sought to be a reforming force within existing church structures. Eventually many movement adherents, often reluctantly. became separatists, judging themselves forced out of the churches because of their commitment to holiness.¹

The Holiness Movement was “reformationist” early; elements of it later became more “restorationist” based on “primitivist” ideals often associated with the holiness emphasis. Daniel Warner (1842-1895) and the Church of God movement (Anderson, Ind.) he helped inspire came especially early in this “separatist” process, although his motivation was anything but the further dividing the church by setting up another human organization, even one justified by a concern for holiness. As early as 1880, Warner became an aggressive, idealistic “separatist,” not only from the established churches, but also from the formal structures of the Holiness Movement that seemed insistent on supporting them.

Warner’s come-outism was inspired by a vision of the church outside all denominations, enabled by the dynamic of holiness. He cared deeply about the unity of believers, saw holiness as the way to it, and judged the continuing existence of multiple and often competitive denominational structures to be an evil among God’s people that God intended to end.² Years later many other holiness people would feel “pushed out” of their denominational homes by the nominalism of unresponsive church establishments. They would organize their own alternatives. Warner, by contrast, “came out” in response to his own vision of what he had come to understand as God’s higher will for the sanctification of the church itself.

Sounding The Trumpet

Participants in the early Wesleyan/Holiness Movement apparently were avid readers. Holiness papers were common, sometimes competi­tive, and often ceased publication altogether or merged with others. For example, the official paper of the Church of the Nazarene, Herald of Holiness, was established as this denomination’s official organ in 1912, but its history stretches back into Warner’s time. Four papers lay behind this one, and “each of these had at least two direct ancestors.”³ A similar pattern is seen in the earliest editorial work of Daniel Warner.

The first issue of the Gospel Trumpet appeared January 1, 1881. It originated from Rome City, Indiana, and was a merging of The Pilgrim, published in Indianapolis by G. Haines, and the Herald of Gospel Freedom. Warner was founding editor, with publishing supervision provided by the Northern Indiana Eldership of the Churches of God (Winebrennerian) through whom Warner was ministering. Warner’s sub­sequent ministry would be felt by the world largely through the medium of this new holiness paper. Although he did not know it at the time, he was “standing on the threshold of an exciting adventure for both himself and the whole Christian church” (Smith 1965, 9).

The new paper carried this statement of purpose: “The glory of God in the salvation of men from all sin, and the union of all saints upon the Bible.” Expressed here were the major burdens of Warner. He had been “disillusioned with the shortcomings of the denominational system of his time—the fierce and unbrotherly rivalries, the rigidity of creedal systems, the lack of any real and deep commitment to serious Christian living on the part of so many nominal church members. With Bible in heart and hand, and by faith, Warner saw something better than this . . . “ (Phillips 1979, 21).

Only two issues of the new Gospel Trumpet were published in Rome City. Haines owned a job-printing business in Indianapolis, the state’s rapidly growing capital city, so he suggested moving the Trumpet there. Seeming a progressive opportunity, in February, 1881, this modest holiness periodical found a home at 70 North Illinois Street, Indianapolis, very close to the railroad station and the new statehouse then under construction. This was an exhilarating setting, certainly different for Daniel and his wife Sarah whose backgrounds were in small Ohio farm­ing communities. Maybe now, it was hoped, the publishing of holiness would move more to the center stage of public life.

By the summer of 1881 the Haines-Warner partnership had dis­solved. Warner paid Haines $100 for his share of this obviously modest operation. The negotiation led to the reluctant agreement of Haines not to launch a rival holiness paper in Indianapolis. He soon did, however, even sending samples of his new paper to Gospel Trumpet subscribers. All was not “perfect” in holiness circles!

Warner soon wrote of this awkward circumstance. He deplored such a development as necessarily hurtful to the holiness cause. Haines is said to have brought to the previous partnership “a chilling iceberg, an austere, worldly, complaining, and mere money policy.” Warner notes that the primary time commitment of Haines had been to his other role as Indian­apolis agent for the Cincinnati Times-Star.⁴ Already beginning was what has been called “the miracle of survival,”⁵ a miracle that would have to last for decades, clear to the present time. Publishing the holiness message, especially in opposition to the denominational establishments, was hardly a lucrative or persecution-free business. It required very dedicated and sacrificial servants. Daniel Warner was prepared to be one of these.

Warner managed on his own the best he could. He moved the printing office to his home at 625 West Vermont Street near downtown Indianapolis and built a makeshift office beside the house by using lumber from an old horse stable that he tore down himself. There he began printing the paper, setting all type and doing all the folding and addressing by hand—and by himself at first. There were only a few hun­dred subscribers to serve in this tedious way. When winter came, the drafty little office was not at all practical and there was no money to plaster the walls so that the cold could be kept out. There seemed only one option. He moved the noisy and ill-smelling printing press into the kitchen of his home, reporting that “Dear Wife tendered her kitchen to the Lord for the use of publishing salvation. Praise the Lord!” An independ­ent report from Sarah is not available, but one wonders how thankful she really was to have her kitchen so invaded.

Sarah Warner had just given birth to their second child, son Sidney. There they were, with little money, a new baby, a press in the kitchen, and few people who seemed to care. About the only bright spot was a sub­scriber in Michigan, a Joseph Fisher who was so enthusiastic about the Gospel Trumpet that he sent generous support and voluntarily sold subscriptions. Soon Warner was listing Fisher on the masthead as the co-publisher.

Growing Come-Outism Conviction

As the issues of the Trumpet kept coming, in spite of all obstacles, a conviction of Warner’s kept growing. In part it was rooted in the theologi­cal emphases of John Winebrenner (1797-1860) that had shaped him from his earliest life as a Christian. Winebrenner loomed large in Warner’s mind as “a spiritual father,” to the extent that “his very mental furniture bore the Winebrennerian stamp.”⁶ This stamp centers in a five-point theological transformation that Winebrenner experienced across the 1820s⁷ and led by 1830 to the rupture of his relationship with the German Reformed Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. These five points are:

1. The Bible is the Word of God, the only authoritative rule of faith and practice. This “only” left no place for church tradi­tion, including human inventions like creeds, catechisms, rituals, etc.;

2.  Spiritual regeneration, being born again, always is neces­sary for a person to become a real Christian and church member. Thus the Christian faith is rooted in the Bible and in such spiritual experience;

3.  Humankind possesses free moral agency and the ability. with the Spirit’s assistance, to repent, believe, and be saved, Thus denied were the Reformed doctrines of predestination. providence, and perseverance;

4.  Baptism and the Lord’s Supper became seen as symbolic “ordinances” rather than grace-conveying “sacraments.’ Baptism necessarily is to be preceded by belief and regenera­tion and is best administered by immersion (eliminating the appropriateness of infant baptism). Feetwashing also joined the list of the church’s ordinances;

5.  Regarding the church, the only requirement for member­ship in a local congregation is having been born again and the true Biblical name for a local congregation or for the Body of Christ as a whole is “Church of God.”⁸

Warner’s own spiritual conversion was in a revival meeting being held near Montpelier, Ohio, in 1865. The evangelist was a minister of the General Eldership of the Churches of God (Winebrennarian). Warner then received his ministerial license from the West Ohio Eldership in 1867, having decided that this body represented best the true faith and practices of the New Testament church.⁹

After years of ministry, Warner’s relationship with the West Ohio Eldership would also rupture, deepening his suspicion that human structures and creeds are a human intrusion into the life of God’s church. This suspicion would deepen further as he became involved in the holi­ness movement and saw in this the experiential means whereby Christians could counter the evil of sectarian chaos. In addition, in 1868, near the very beginning of his ministry, Warner had purchased a copy of the book Discourses on the Nature of Faith by William Starr (1857). Starr was a Congregational minister in Illinois who felt his ministry stifled by a restrictive church establishment. Sometime before 1880, Warner wrote this annotation in his personal copy, alongside Starr’s call for believers to rise up against sectarianism and bring to reality a “holy and unified church”: 

If this holy man, perceiving only the eavil [sic] of division, is thus moved to cry out, what must be the guilt of one who sees both the eavil [sic] and remedy and yet will close his mouth and see the world go to ruin? (231).

The conviction that God was calling for a freedom of the church from denominational division, on the basis of Christian holiness, had matured in Warner’s thinking.¹⁰ It was time to act.

The New Commission

By 1880 Daniel Warner himself was ready to cry out and act out against sectarianism. An increasing number of leaders of the holiness movement were feeling significant tension between their passion for church renewal and the viability of continuance in their home denominations. Soon there would be new holiness-oriented denominations, one way of finally dealing with the holiness movement’s “search for order” (Dieter 236-275). Another way was that of the more “radical” holiness reformers who soon became known as “come-outers.” Prominent and one of the first among them was Daniel Warner.¹¹

Warner now was growing impatient with compromises to his vision. He was gripped increasingly by the “new commission” that he felt God had given him. According to the March 7, 1878, entry in his personal journal:

The Lord showed me that holiness could never prosper upon sectarian soil encumbered by human creeds and party names, and he gave me a new commission to join holiness and all truth together and build up the apostolic church of the living God.

This new commission carried major implications that, at least in Warner’s judgment, could not be ignored any longer. Like a growing number of others, he “sought to apply the logic of Christian perfectionism, with all its ultraistic inclinations of the perfectionist mentality, to the church question” (Dieter 246). The first compromise that Warner called into serious question was his own participation in the Holiness Association. By doing so, he was “the first to propose such radical applications of the revival’s promise of unity among all true Christian believers” (Dieter 246).

Both Warner’s affinity with and his questioning of the reform-from-the-inside approach of the mainstream holiness movement can be seen in one setting in 1880. A convention of the Western Union Holiness Association convened from December 15-19 in the Brooklyn Methodist Episcopal Church in Jacksonville, Illinois.¹² The planning committee said that this gathering, comprised of about two hundred holiness leaders from a range of denominations and states, would only be in the interests of holi­ness. Thus, it was to be. “strictly and purely undenominational.” People were to come not representing any particular denomination, but only to celebrate and strengthen “the holiness cause.”

One delegate was to represent each holiness periodical, with all delegates to be in agreement with the doctrine of holiness “that sets forth entire sanctification as an instantaneous work of God, wrought in the heart through faith, subsequent to conversion.” Likely Daniel Warner was present both as a representative of the Herald of Gospel Freedom and because he had been asked to make a formal address, an honor in this select ecumenical crowd. He also was appointed to the program com­mittee charged with the responsibility of planning the next convention.

The topic of Warner’s address to the convention was “The Kind of Power Needed to Carry the Holiness Work.” The main point he made was that “it is the power of God Himself that is needed for this work.” He warned that “the devil is set against this work... . We need God’s power to the fullest degree promised to meet this adversary.” “God is looking around to find someone he can trust,” announced Warner. God “generally finds them among the holy ones.” 

Some of the statements by other speakers heard by Warner at this convention stirred the evolving struggle within him. For instance, Thomas Doty from Cleveland, Ohio, editor of the Christian Harvester, said that “if you belong to a church, it is your duty to promote holiness right in it: in the Presbyterian church, as a Presbyterian; in the Baptist church, as a Baptist, etc.” Doty admitted that he disliked the whole denominational idea, but said God “permits it, and so must we.” Warner did not address this issue in his formal remarks, but M. L. Haney (Methodist Episcopal leader) did. He attacked come-outers “who insist on the silly dogma of no-churchism, and favor the disorganization of all Christian forces.”

But J. W. Caughlan, editor of The Good Way, realized that there was a real problem to be addressed somehow. Holiness believers needed encouragement and support between holiness camp meetings, especially when and where denominational leaders were unsympathetic to the holi­ness cause. When the organized church comes into conflict with Christ, suggested Caughlan, maybe that “church” should be “consecrated” on the altar of sacrifice. By endorsing the idea of holiness associations and bands, this Western Convention “was a first step toward creating a poten­tially separatist group within the church” (Jones 55). 

It may be that, as Warner heard such men speak in these ways, “the conviction was being cemented in his heart and mind that there was no room for him and for the burning message he felt in a situation where denominationalism was being exalted and continued membership in a denomination was being made a requirement of continued fellowship and acceptance.”¹³ The message beginning to burn inside Warner tended 10 question the easy, status-quo assumption that God passively permits rampant division of Christ’s body, the church.

Maybe being a “come-outer” was the way to go. Warner saw the charge of no-churchism as very wrong, unfair, and demeaning of the unifying potential of the promised sanctifying power of the Spirit. He believed deeply in the church and refused to accept the claim that genuine reliance on the Holy Spirit to establish and guide the church inevitably is the way of anarchy. Is God the author of confusion? The church is, after all, God’s church! God is capable of constituting, gifting, and governing believers who are fully yielded to the Holy Spirit. Is that not exactly what the New Testament says? Since holiness cannot prosper on sectarian soil, Warner judged, his new commission to “join holiness and all truth together” impelled him to take definitive action.

I’m Coming Out!

The strength of Warner’s convictions grew and began to be acted out. In April, 1881, he was elected an Adjutant-General in the Salvation Army in Indianapolis. He promised that the Gospel Trumpet would carry reports of some “battles and conquests of the Lord’s Salvation Army.” But the February 8, 1882, issue reported an apparent end of this relationship. Being joined to anything but the Lord now was said to be a trick of Satan.

This vigorous come-out view rooted in a pivotal event in April, 1881. While conducting a revival meeting in Hardinsburg, Indiana, War­ner reported that he “saw the church.” No longer would he be patient with church bodies that organized their lives on the basis of sect recognition and requirements. For years Warner had been troubled about the inconsistency of his repudiating “sects” in principle and yet continuing to belong to organizations, that insisted on basing their memberships on formal sect recognition. Now he no longer would condone the disjunction between his holiness-generated unity vision and the standard acceptance of sect division. What he now “saw” was God’s intended alternative, a Spirit-inspired, Spirit-enabled, Spirit-governed, and Spirit-unified gathering of all God’s people. Holiness also is to extend to the church, not only to the inward experience of individual believers. Visible unity is a key aspect of the church’s intended holiness.

Instead of passive acceptance of the usual compromises, Warner determined to be faithful to a fresh vision, a new way of conceiving how things might be for the church of the Spirit. The Israelites of the Exodus and the Babylonian Exile finally were able to see dramatic new possibili­ties in the worst of circumstances. Their seeing opened their imaginations, inspired their faith, and generated new hope. God always has been in the business of regathering the faithful. God intends a church that is visible in this world, not one that is invisible (the typical Protestant theory that the true church is inevitably buried out of sight, somewhere within the spoiled “churches” of our sinful world).

Warner now chose to walk the ancient prophetic path that announced God’s higher intention. As Merle Strege puts it, Warner rejected “the American religious status quo, the business-as-usual way of denominational religion” (96). Since the church really is God’s, surely there is a better way of showing it to the world than settling for a network of quarreling and divisive denominations.

This prophetic position brought an immediate crisis in Warner’s rela­tionship with the National Holiness Association.¹⁴ “The Spirit showed me,” he wrote, “the inconsistency of repudiating sects and yet belonging to an association that is based on sect recognition.”¹⁵ No longer would he be patient with the placing of human conditions on membership in God’s church. He went to a meeting of the Indiana Holiness Association in Terre Haute, Indiana, and tried to get changed the “sect endorsing clause” of the association so that its membership would be open “to all true Christians everywhere” (whether denominational adherents or not). The effort failed. Many holiness people persisted in believing that abandoning the “churches,” with all their obvious faults, was not the best way to renew the people of God. So Warner reported in the Gospel Trumpet (June 1, 1881): “We wish to co-operate with all Christians, as such, in saving souls—but forever withdraw from all organisms that uphold and endorse sects and denominations in the body of Christ.”

The stance of the Holiness Movement at first did not generate for itself the dilemma faced by Warner. Its purpose was to be a trans­denominational renewal force. Its primary concern was not the evil of denominationalism as such, although some leaders were uncomfortable with all the formalized division; it was the evil of nominal Christianity. The intent was that participants in the holiness associations would remain loyal members in their respective denominations so that they could be renewed by the holiness emphasis and return to their denominational homes to broaden the renewal impact.

By the 1880s, however, frustrated by attempts to renew existing churches, many holiness converts had begun considering the possibility of one or more distinctively holiness denominations. Warner was a pioneer of this “come out” trend, although he opposed the very idea of denominations, even new ones organized under a holiness banner. The extent of Warner’s renewal vision was greater than this, thus the inevita­ble clash.¹⁶

Reported church historian Henry Wickersham in 1900: “Before this he [Warner] was in good standing with many editors and sectarian holiness workers, but because of his decided stand for the truth, he was denounced in their papers, set at naught by the ministry, and rejected by his former friends” (300). According to sociologist Val Clear (36):

It was in the small cells of the holiness-minded individuals scattered about the country in the 1870s and 1880s that the future adherents of Warner’s movement were to be found. Most of the holiness people stayed within their denominations, forming a type of church-within-the-church. But many others were disaffected, felt that Old Ship Zion was sure to sink. For many of these latter persons, D. S. Warner became a spokes­man, and the Gospel Trumpet was his voice.

The significance of Warner is clear. In this earliest phase of the life of the Church of God movement, “it was Warner who was prophet, teacher, evangelizer, poet, advisor, theologian—the voice of the reformation. Since the Gospel Trumpet was the only formal organizational entity, it was Warner’s dominant personality and the Trumpet that kept the movement from disintegrating into a thousand isolated and disconnected parts” (Reardon 24). So far as the larger holiness movement is concerned, Warner is the one who brought to the movement clear elements of the Anabaptist tradition. These elements came in part from his reliance on the central teachings of John Winebrenner and partly from his close asso­ciation with the Evangelical United Mennonites in northern Indiana.¹⁷

Having ruptured his formal tie to the holiness movement, Warner wasted no time in questioning his future with the Northern Indiana Eldership of the Churches of God by which he was licensed as a minister. In October, 1881, he attended a meeting of the Eldership in Beaver Dam, Indiana. There he tried and again failed to have accepted the radical implications of his holiness-unity vision. He proposed that this body “conform more perfectly to the Bible standard with reference to government” by ending the practice of granting ministerial licenses and eliminating formal church membership procedures so that all who bore the fruit of true regeneration would belong automatically by the action of God. When this body said a firm “no,” five people walked out of the meeting with Warner, declaring that they were “coming out” of all sectism. Thus was constituted in Beaver Dam the first congregation of the Church of God movement.

This walk-out was repeated later in the same month in Carson City, Michigan. Joseph and Allie Fisher, staunch Trumpet supporters, had asked Warner to come to Michigan to speak to a special holiness meeting being held prior to the annual camp meeting of the Northern Michigan Eldership, also a breakaway from the General Eldership of the Churches of God (Winebrennerian) over issues like Freemasonry. The local congregation objected to the holiness meeting, so the Fishers and twenty others, finding this the last straw, left the Eldership.

So a second group had separated from sectarianism. The “Carson City Resolutions” that they agreed to include this: “That we adhere to no body or organization but the church of God, bought by the blood of Christ, organized by the Holy Spirit, and governed by the Bible. . . . That we recognize and fellowship, as members with us in the one body of Christ, all truly regenerated and sincere saints who worship God in all the light they possess, and that we urge all the dear children of God to forsake the snares and yokes of human parties and stand alone in the ‘one fold’ of Christ upon the Bible, and in the unity of the Spirit” (see Callen, 1979, I, 295-96).

Here were elements of the rationale for a new movement, one intending to be truly trans-denominational in the sanctifying and unifying power of the Spirit. Joined were the passion for Christian holiness, the dream of Christian unity, and the belief that the first enables the second, but only when free of the artificial restrictions of human attempts to organize and “run” the church. Human hands must be taken off of God’s church! 

Warner’s thrust was echoed by John Morrison¹⁸ as he addressed the International Convention of the Church of God movement convened in Anderson, Indiana, in 1963. He told the crowd of thousands that “Christian fellowship ought to be wide enough and warm enough to take in a Christian wherever you may find him.” Then Morrison concluded:

So go home loving all Christians; but for heaven’s sake don’t join any of them! That’s right! As I understand it, D. S. War­ner’s major contention was that a person can be a good Chris­tian and cooperate with other Christians in proper fashion without joining any of the religious organizations known as churches. You do not join the Church—you are born into it! (see Callen, 1979, II, 651).

With the Beaver Dam and Carson City walk-out events, a new “movement” now was gaining momentum and definition. The Gospel Trumpet was the movement’s primary medium of conveyance, with Warner its tireless visionary and mouthpiece. The initial purpose of this holiness paper changed because of the dramatic events of 1881. Before then the Gospel Trumpet had been one of many holiness papers; but after Beaver Dam and Carson City it became Warner’s major vehicle for furthering a “cause” extending beyond the goals typical of the larger holiness movement.

This cause drew considerable sympathy from many Christians long­ing for more vision and power, more holiness and unity than they had found to date. Judges Melvin Dieter: “Warner’s promise of a group, gathered together under the guidance and instruction of the sanctifying Spirit, free of denominational and sectarian trammels, as he pictured them, com­bined with a reformatory, eschatological thrust, carried a certain populist magnetism” (256). Indeed it did, as the last years of the nineteenth cen­tury made very clear.

Most holiness people who separated from their denominations during the last quarter of the nineteenth century thought of themselves as “pushed-outers,” not “come-outers.” They judged themselves chased off by the increasing “carnality” in the churches, a sin situation intolerant of a holiness renewal.¹⁹ Warner was both pushed out (West Ohio Eldership) and later intentionally came out of the Holiness Association and the Northern Indiana and Northern Michigan Elderships. In all instances, holiness was the key issue. At first, holiness was an unwelcome emphasis. Then holiness generated a unifying vision that called believers out of the compromised and unresponsive denominations. This vision also was intensely opposed by many who judged it idealistic, impractical, even arrogant; but it was embraced enthusiastically by thousands who saw it as the will and direct action of God.

New Movement of the Church of God

Daniel Warner would devote the remaining fourteen years of his life to restoring the unity of God’s people through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. He was a “come-outer.” He and soon many others “saw the church,” a vision of the seamless, undivided body of Christ. Warner began sprinkling the pages of the Gospel Trumpet with testimonies of fresh sightings of the church beyond division.²⁰ One of his many poems soon became a central vehicle for singing and celebrating the vision of the Church of God movement concerning the relationship between holiness and the God-intended unity of the church. Reads verse one and the chorus:

How sweet this bond of perfectness,

The wondrous love of Jesus!

A pure fore-taste of heaven’s bliss,

O fellowship so precious!

Beloved, how this perfect love, Unites us all in Jesus!

One heart, and soul, and mind: we prove

the union heaven gave us.²¹

The “perfect love” of sanctification, it was argued, enables Christians to live above sin, including the sin of rending the body of Christ. Human lines of denomination, race, sex, and social status are to be dis­counted, even ignored in the face of the transforming grace of God in Christ. The emphasis should be on seeing, not arrogantly claiming to be the whole, pure, undivided church. The vision calls for refusing either to erect or recognize human controls on Christian fellowship. God sets the members in the church. It’s God’s church! The church exists for mission, and disunity is hurtful to the church’s attempt to bear a credible witness in the world.

Warner finally had found a church home. It was not one of the Winebrenrierian elderships or the Holiness Movement as such. It was the whole body of Christ. He sensed God moving to complete the sixteenth-century Protestant reformation and the eighteenth-century Wesleyan revival in a “last reformation.”²² There was a new sense of liberty and joy, inspiring Warner to compose many new songs that express the fresh vision. Testifies one song by Warner and his faithful colleague Barney Warren: “My soul is satisfied; my soul is satisfied; I am complete in Jesus’ love, and my soul is satisfied.”²³ Another announced, “There’s music in my soul.”

So strongly did Warner feel about the new movement that he later renumbered the volumes of the Gospel Trumpet, repudiating its first three volumes when it had appeared under earlier names and in connec­tion with the Northern Indiana Eldership of the Churches of God. He explained:

Since the Herald was started back in the fogs of Babylon, and died before it saw the evening light clearly, we have desired to drop off its three years and cast it back into the burning city where it belonged, and have our volume indicate the actual number of years that the Trumpet has been sounding. For when a person gets clean out of Babylon, that should be the beginning of months and years to him.²⁴

Historian John Smith summarizes Warner’s “enlightenment” experience this way:

He had found the freedom in Christ for which he had so long sought. A new ingredient entered his life. It was as if he had been released from a great load and for the first time was able to stand erect. He felt as though he had stepped from the condemnatory shadow of his own and all other sectarian walls and now stood in the full light of truth—the “evening” light of which the prophet Zechariah had spoken. There was indeed cause for rejoicing. God had begun a new work in the church.²⁵

These breaks from traditionally organized Christian denominations focused on (1) rejecting all sects, (2) refusing to form another, (3) in part by not defining or limiting the new cause by any set creed. The emerging movement was similar to many previous movements by its (1) seeing the church as a voluntary gathering of all and only the truly regenerate (like the Anabaptists, Campbellites, etc.) and (2) highlighting the Bible and the Spirit as together the sufficient guides to all truth (Quakers, etc.). The distinguishing feature of this new “cause” was primarily that Warner and others “put all of these emphases in a single package and then wedded them to the Wesleyan doctrine of holiness” (Smith 1980, 48).²⁶

The early tone of this new cause was celebrative in nature and aggressive in style. In the new year’s greeting for January, 1882, the Gospel Trumpet, that is, editor Daniel Warner, was very plain:

To Babylon and all her concomitants, we promise nothing but fire, sword and hammer, and confounding blasts from the armory of God’s Word. We have scarcely begun the bom­bardment of the wicked harlot city. By the grace of God, we expect to deal with sin and sinners as we never yet have done. . . . We know no man after the flesh, and we seek to please no man.

Propositions Still Worthy of Note

Several editors of other holiness papers, themselves now targets, reacted with criticism of Warner’s new stand that claimed to be outside the presumed evils of sectism. Warner sought to answer them at length.²⁷ The new freedom had its own dilemmas—and certainly its detractors (soon even to include Mrs. Warner!). It still does. It also has its vision, its hope, its determination to release the church back into God’s control.

In more recent years, and in a more irenic tone, various leaders of the Church of God movement have reflected on the new commission of Daniel Warner and have sought to state ways in which “joining holiness and all truth together” continues to have relevance for the contemporary church’s quest for Christian unity. Of particular note are the writings of Charles Ε. Brown (1939), Barry L. Callen (1969, 1979, 1995), James Earl Massey (1979), John W. V. Smith (1954, 1980), Gilbert Stafford (1973), and Merle Strege (1993).

A former historian of the Church of God movement, John W. V. Smith, recalled (1) that holiness groups have tended to remain aloof from general ecumenical activity and (2) that the work of Daniel Warner is a clear exception to the pattern of holiness leaders giving only marginal attention to the matter of Christian unity. He then offered six “concluding propositions” about the relationship between holiness and unity that reflect the “new commission” of Daniel Warner and remain worthy of careful consideration. They are:

1.  Believers in holiness must not be too ready to accept easy answers in rationalizing division in the Church. Even “liberal” Christians pray God’s forgiveness for participating in the sin of division.

2.  A passionate concern for personal sanctification should not subvert an equally great concern for the doctrine of the Church. It is well to keep in mind that the Apostle Paul used the word sanctify in regard to both persons and the Church.

3.  In the light of Christ’s prayer for the Church (John 17), the concepts of “spiritual unity” and “invisible oneness” are inadequate and inconsistent with the apparent implications of “perfect love.”

4.  Associationalism and conciliarism are abortive approaches to Christian unity in that they only mitigate the evils of divi­sion and do not remove it.

5.  Nondenominationalism is an inadequate concept for the full realization of Christian unity in that it expresses primarily a negative rather than a positive character to the Church.

6.  This time in Christian history seems to be an especially propitious one for all proponents of holiness to dedicate themselves to giving major attention to the relational implications of this doctrine to the end that, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we may be able to lead the way toward unification of the whole Church so that, indeed, the world may believe.²⁸

Works Cited

Brown, Charles Ε. 1939. The Church Beyond Division. Anderson, Ind.: Gospel Trumpet Company.

Brown, Charles Ε. 1951. When the Trumpet Sounded. Anderson, Ind.: Gospel Trumpet Company.

Byers, Andrew. 1921. Birth of a Reformation: Life and Labors of D. S. Warner. Anderson, hid.: Gospel Trumpet Company.

Callen, Barry. 1969. “Church of God Reformation Movement: A Study in Ecumenical Idealism.” Masters thesis, Asbury Theological Seminary.

Callen, Barry. 1979. The First Century. 2 Vols. Anderson, Ind.: Warner Press.

Callen, Barry. 1992. Guide of Soul and Mind: The Story of Anderson University. Anderson, Ind.: Anderson University and Warner Press.

Callen, Barry. 1995. It’s God’s Church!: Life and Legacy of Daniel Warner. Anderson, Ind.: Warner Press.

Clear, Valorous. 1977. Where the Saints Have Trod. Chesterfield, Ind.: Midwest Publications. Revision of his Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1953.

Dieter, Melvin. 1980. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press.

Jones, Charles. 1974. Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press.

 ¹For a tracing of this process, see Melvin Dieter elsewhere in this WTJ issue.

 ²For a full presentation of the evolution and application of the come-outism vision of Warner, see Barry Callen, It’s God’s Church!: The Life and Legacy of Daniel Warner (Anderson, Ind.: Warner Press, 1995).

³Paul Bassett, in Wesleyan Theological Journal (Spring/Fall, 1993), 104.

 ⁴Editorial, Gospel Trumpet, June 1, 1881.

 ⁵See the history of the Gospel Trumpet Company (Warner Press) by this title (Phillips 1979).

 ⁶L. Leon Long, “Το What Extent Was Warner a Winebrennerian?” in The Church Advocate (February, 1976), 6.

 ⁷Τhis transformation of Winebrenner was encouraged by his involvement in revivalism and his interaction with leaders of groups like the United Brethren in Christ that reflected roots in German Pietism and other “radical” elements of the Protestant Reformation that had been transplanted to America.

 ⁸J. Harvey Gossard, “John Winebrenner: Founder, Reformer, and Business­man” in Pennsylvania Religious Leaders (Historical Study Νο. 16, The Pennsyl­vania Historical Association, 1986), 89-90.

 ⁹Fοr a recounting of this whole story, see Barry Callen, It’s God’s Church! Life and Legacy of Daniel Warner (Anderson, Ind.: Warner Press, 1995).

¹⁰The major published expression of this conviction at the time was Warner’s Bible Proofs of the Second Work of Grace (1880). There also soon would be his booklet The Church of God (1885) that reflects key themes of Thomas Campbell’s classic restorationist Declaration and Address (1809) and bears close resemblance to John Winebrenner’s booklet The Church of God (1829, rev. ed. 1885, Harris­burg, Pa.: Board of Publication, General Eldership of the Churches of God).

 ¹¹Οthers were John P. Brooks, leader of a movement in Missouri that became the Church of God (Holiness), and James Washburn, leader of the Southern California and Arizona Holiness Association from which the Holiness Church was organized. See especially John Brooks, The Divine Church: A Treatise on the Origin, Constitution, Order, and Ordinances of the Church; Being a Vindication of the New Testament Ecclesia, and an Exposure of the Anti-Scriptural Character of the Modern Church or Sect (Columbia, Mo.: Herald Publishing House, 1891).

¹²See the published Proceedings (1881) now housed in the archives of Anderson University. Also see John Leland Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956, 136), and Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism (The Scarecrow Press, 1974, 55)

¹³Ηarοld Phillips, editorial in Vital Christianity (October 20, 1974), 8.

¹⁴Warner’s specific involvement focused primarily in the Indiana Holiness Association, which at one point named him as a vice-president (Dieter 255). He also had significant contact with the larger holiness movement in both Ohio and Illinois.

¹⁵Gοsρel Trumpet, June 1, 1881.

¹⁶In 1993 Barry Callen, a contemporary leader of the Church of God movement, became editor of the Wesleyan Theological Journal, current publica­tion of the holiness body from which Warner withdrew more than a century earlier. A sect-endorsing clause no longer is required by this holiness body. Warner’s vision is admired in principle by today’s Christian Holiness Associa­tion, but it still is not actively pursued as such. The primary agenda remains more the Christianizing of Christianity by in-depth renewal through the holiness experience and the holy life.

¹⁷Says Melvin Dieter (254): Warner’s “development of the church as the dwelling place of the Spirit, the baptism of believers only, the centrality of the Word of God in the midst of the congregation as the ‘universal law,’ the strong sense of mission as a reformer, the strongly apocalyptical tone, and even the retention of the rite of foot washing as an ordinance of the church—all may be closely identified with the Anabaptist tradition.” 

¹⁸From 1925 to 1958 Dr. John Morrison was president of Anderson College (University). For detail, see Barry Callen, Guide of Soul and Mind: The Story of Anderson University (Anderson, Ind.: Anderson University and Warner Press, 1992).

¹⁹See Paul Bassett, Wesleyan Theological Journal (Spring/Fall, 1993), 74. Α good example is the formation of the Free Methodist Church in 1860 following the experience of Rev. B. Ρ. Roberts being “pushed out” of the Methodist Episcopal Church. See L. R. Marston, From Age To Age a Living Witness (1960) and Clarence Zahniser, Earnest Christian: Life and Works of Benjamin Titus Roberts (1957).

²⁰Fοr examples, see Charles Brown (1939, 1951) and Barry Callen (1979, I. 123-240).

²¹Daniel Warner and Barney Warren, “The Bond of Perfectness,” verse one and chorus, as in Worship the Lord: Hymnal of the Church of God (Anderson, Ind.: Warner Press, 1989), 330.

²²Late in Daniel Warner’s ministry he increasingly couched his view of the evolving new movement of the Church of God in terms rooted in a church historical interpretation of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature (especially the books of Daniel and Revelation). See The Cleansing of the Sanctuary (Warner and Herbert Riggle, 1903), Frederick Smith’s What the Bible Teaches (1913) and The Last Reformation (1919), and John Stanley, “Unity Amid Diversity: Interpreting the Book of Revelation in the Church of God (Anderson),” Wesleyan Theological Journal (Fall 1990).

²³The full text is found in the current hymnal of the Church of God move­ment, Worship the Lord (Anderson, hid.: Warner Press, 1989), 649.

²⁴GosρeΙ Trumpet, August 1, 1889.

²⁵John Smith, in Vital Christianity (July 25, 1965), 8.

²⁶Αlsο see John Smith’s unpublished doctoral dissertation, “The Approach of the Church of God (Anderson, hid.) and Comparable Groups to the Problem of Christian Unity” (University of Southern California Graduate School of Religion, 1954).

²⁷See the Gospel Trumpet, Jan. 16, 1882. Also see Byers, 1921, 299ff.

²⁸Jοhn Smith, “Holiness and Unity,” Wesleyan Theological Journal (Spring, 1975), 35-36. 

 

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