This new edition expands and updates the only general interpretation of the rise and influence of perfectionist revivalism in America and Europe. Fifteen years of expanding research on the holiness movement reinforce this volume's continuing seminal value to cultural and social research. The new concluding essay describes the history of the revival through the turn of the century. This book expands our understanding of the fragmentation and coalescence of American religion by analyzing the factors which created numerous new holiness denominations. Dieter also outlines the historical and theological factors that separate this largely Wesleyan and Methodist wing of evangelicalism from the fundamentalism of Reformed evangelicals. The identification of such nuances will prove especially helpful to those struggling with the extreme diversity in American religion, especially in evangelicalism. For students and scholars of American religious movements as well as students of the feminist, temperance, abolitionist, and populist movements in American society.

"This book is a discussion of the part played by religious revivalism, and by the American professional religious revivalist, in the religious world of nineteenth-century England. It was during the Victorian period that popular Protestantism began to lose its grip on English society. This was true despite the strength of the denominations. It is therefore against a background of slowly changing popular religion that the role of the professional revivalist has to be studied." --From the First Chapter

How did Pentecostalism become the fastest growing movement within Christendom in the twentieth century? Faupel contends that Pentecostalism was propelled onto the world stage when early adherents felt commissioned by God to announce that Christ would soon return to establish his kingdom on earth. The gift of tongues would equip them supernaturally to proclaim this message to the nations in the language of the people. Although this expectation was soon disproved, the eschatological hope nevertheless remained the motivating force for Pentecostalism’s rapid growth. This book has been prescribed reading on the Pentecostal hope for many years. This edition makes it available once again to a worldwide readership.

From the Preface: Every year, during the month of July, thousands of Christians from all parts of the world gather for a Convention for the deepening of the spiritual life, lasting one week, in the little town of Keswick, which nestles at the foot of Skiddaw mountain and beside beautiful Lake Derwentwater, in the Lake District of northern England, a region famous by association with the Lake poets - Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey - and for picturesque and fascinating scenery unsurpassed in all England, if not in all Europe. Since 1875, when the first of these Conventions was held, the influence of what is taught there has been increasingly felt in the Christian world, until Keswick teaching has come to be regarded as one of the most potent spiritual forces in recent Church history. The 'Keswick movement' has become historic.... Here, then, we have the teaching of Keswick, one of the most interesting religious phenomena of our time.