The Higher Life movement, also known as the Keswick movement, was a movement devoted to Christianholiness in England. Its name comes from The Higher Christian Life, a book by William Boardman published in 1858. The movement was promoted at Keswick Conventions in Keswick, which continue to this day. The contemporary conventions are evangelically conservative and do not promote the theology of the Higher Life movement. The main idea of the Higher Life movement is that the Christian should move on from his initial conversion experience to also experience a second work of God in his life. This work of God is called “entire sanctification,” “the second blessing,” “the second touch,” “being filled with the Holy Spirit,” and various other terms. Higher Life teachers promoted the idea that Christians who had received this blessing from God could live a more holy, that is less sinful or even a sinless, life. The Keswick approach seeks to provide a mediating and biblically balanced solution to the problem of subnormal Christian experience. The “official” teaching has been that every believer in this life is left with the natural proclivity to sin and will do so without the countervailing influence of the Holy Spirit.
History
The Higher Life movement was precipitated by the American Holiness movement, which had been gradually springing up, but made a definite appearance in the mid-1830s. It was at this time that Methodists in the northeastern United States and non-Methodists at Oberlin College in Ohio began to accept and promote the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection or entire sanctification, though Charles Finney of Oberlin thought his doctrine was distinctly different from the Wesleyan one which Asa Mahan was more attracted. The Americanholiness movement began to spread to England in the 1840s and 1850s. Methodist evangelist James Caughey, as well as Presbyterian Asa Mahan and Presbyterian-turned-Congregationalist Charles Finney began to teach the concept to churches in England and then in Ireland and Scotland. Soon after these initial infusions of holiness ideas, Dr. Walter Palmer and his wife Phoebe Palmer of New York City went to England in the 1850s and 1860s to promote them. Oddly enough, they were banned from ministering in Wesleyan churches, even though they were promoting Wesleyan doctrines and were themselves Methodist. During their time in England many people experienced initial conversion and many more who were already converted believed that they had received entire sanctification. Robert and Hannah Smith were among those who took the holiness message to England, and their ministries helped lay the foundation for the now-famous Keswick Convention. In the 1870s William Boardman, author of The Higher Christian Life, began his own evangelistic campaign in England, bringing with him Robert Pearsall Smith and his wife, Hannah Whitall Smith, to help spread the holiness message. On May 1, 1873, Rev'd William Haslam introduced Robert Pearsall Smith to a small meeting of Anglican clergymen held at Curzon Chapel, Mayfair, London. Two men whose lives were revolutionised by what they heard were Evan Henry Hopkins and Edward William Moore. Little by little, Methodist churches in the London area became open to the concept of Christian holiness, which was their rightful inheritance from their founder. Robert Pearsall Smith warned them that they would end up falling behind other churches who had embraced the movement, and they began to invite Higher Life teachers to explain the doctrine to them. The first large-scale Higher Life meetings took place from July 17–23, 1874, at the Broadlands estate of Lord and Lady Mount Temple, where the Higher Life was expounded in connection with spiritualism and Quaker teachings. The meetings were held primarily for Christian students at Cambridge University. At the end of these meetings, Sir Arthur Blackwood, Earl of Chichester and president of the Church Missionary Society, suggested that another series of meetings for the promotion of holiness be conducted at Oxford later that summer. A convention for the promotion of holiness was held at Brighton from May 29-June 7, 1875. The prominent American evangelist Dwight L. Moody told his London audiences that the Brighton meeting was to be a very important one. About eight thousand people attended it. T. D. Harford-Battersby attended this convention and made arrangements to have one in his parish in Keswick. He was the recognized leader of this annual convention for several years until his death. Robert Pearsall Smith was going to be the main speaker, but the public disclosure of his teaching a woman in a hotel bedroom that Spirit baptism was allegedly accompanied with sexual thrills led him to be disinvited from the meeting. Smith never recovered and having "lost his faith, withdrew from public gaze and spent most of the rest of his life as an invalid". A gradual distinction developed between traditional Methodists and the newer Keswick speakers. Keswick took on a more Calvinistic tone, as Keswick preachers took pains to distance themselves from the Wesleyan doctrine of eradication. Keswick speakers began using the term "counteraction" to describe the Holy Spirit's effect on original sin, often comparing it to how air pressure counteracts gravity in lifting an airplane. Modern Wesleyan-Arminian theologians regard the Keswick theology as something different from their own dogma of entire sanctification. Harford-Battersby organized and led the first Keswick Convention in 1875. Over four hundred people met under the banner of “All One in Christ Jesus.” British speakers included Anglicans, such as the J. W. Webb-Peploe, Evan H. Hopkins, and Handley Moule, as well as Frederick Brotherton Meyer, a Baptist, and Robert Wilson, a Friend. An annual convention has met in Keswick ever since and has had worldwide influence on Christianity. Columbia Bible College and Seminary was founded by one of the early leaders of the American Keswick movement, Robert C. McQuilkin. His son, Robertson McQuilkin, contributed the Keswick chapter to the book "Five Views of Sanctification."
Critiques
Keswick doctrine has been sharply criticized as a disguised form of entire sanctification by other Christian traditions, particularly Calvinism. Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield wrote a trenchant attack on the Keswick and Higher Life movement in his two-volume work , specifically in his articles and W. H. Griffith Thomas responded to Warfield and defended the Higher Life movement in two articles in the journal Bibliotheca Sacra. Another early opponent of Keswick was J. C. Ryle, who set forth the classic Protestant doctrine of sanctification in his book Holiness as an alternative to Keswick. More modern defenders of Keswick theology include J. Robertson McQuilkin in the book Five Views of Sanctification, as well as John R. VanGelderen. Modern Reformed criticism of Keswick has come from J. I. Packer, as well as from Andrew Naselli, who critiqued Keswick in his doctoral dissertation on the subject. The Higher Life and Keswick movement is also critiqued from a non-Reformed, historic Baptist viewpoint by Thomas Ross in his doctoral dissertation Charismatic and Pentecostal authors may critique the Higher Life movement also as not going far enough, but Pentecostal scholars recognize and appreciate the groundwork laid by Higher Life advocacy of the continuation of the gifts of healing and miracle-working for the rise of the Pentecostal movement. Modern Keswick writers often affirm that opponents of Keswick misunderstand the Higher Life movement, Keswick critics affirm that they understand the movement very well and that they do not routinely misunderstand Keswick theology.
