One of the Churches that grew out of the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement, this is now an international denomination affiliated to the World Methodist Council. Its British beginnings were simultaneously in Glasgow and London in 1906. Dr George Sharpe, a Congregationalist minister strongly committed to the Wesleyan emphasis on Christian holiness, founded the Pentecostal Church of Scotland. Mr David Thomas, a Welsh draper with business at Clapham Junction, organized the International Holiness Mission in Battersea. Both Sharpe and Thomas ardently believed that the new movements were called, in John Wesley's words, to 'spread Scriptural holiness across the land'. In 1915 the Pentecostal Church of Scotland united with the Church of the Nazarene and the International Holiness Mission joined in 1952. The Calvary Holiness Church, formed in 1934, joined in 1955. Wesleyan in its doctrinal convictions, the denomination is congregationalist in church government and holds representative District Assemblies annually. Missionary enterprise is central to the denomination's ethos and ethically it stands in the evangelical Pietist tradition. Its theological college, founded near Paisley in Scotland in 1944, is now Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, offering both graduate and post-graduate courses in affiliation with Manchester University.

Entry written by: HMG
Category: Denomination
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