Higher Life movement

The Higher Life movement, also known as the Keswick movement, was a movement devoted to Christian holiness in England. Its name comes from a book by William Boardman, entitled The Higher Christian Life, which was published in 1858. The movement is sometimes referred to as the Keswick movement because it was promoted at Keswick Conventions in Keswick, which continue to this day.

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 so-called 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.

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 to. The American holiness 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.

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