Submission Deadline: October 17, 2026

Sixty-Second Annual Meeting

March 12-13, 2027, Southern Nazarene University, Bethany, Oklahoma

Visions of Holiness

Keynote Address: Martin Wellings, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Past President of the World Methodist Historical Society, and Superintendent of the Barnet and Queensbury Circuit, the Methodist Church of Great Britain.

Presidential Address: Steven Hoskins, Professor of Church History, Trevecca Nazarene University.

Visions of Holiness have played a significant role throughout the history of the Wesleyan/Methodist/Holiness movement. The ideas, strategies, and practical re-presentations that have emerged out of “visions of holiness” have provided both telos and ethos for the churches, thinkers, artists, and preachers throughout its three-centuries long history. The Holiness of God, the ideal of a holy people, the architecture of its schools, churches, and camp meetings, and the picturing of the holiness movement in its various contexts, e.g. material embodiments, sermons, hymnody, and artwork both grand and everyday, have all proven to be something of a ‘north star’ that has guided much of its scholarship and practical divinity. Some visions have been necessarily Scriptural, some attributed to visionary leaders like the Wesleys and their early Methodist followers, the Booths, Phoebe Palmer, and various scholars and the denominations which have been formed by those visions. Some have been borrowed directly from the Scriptures, others from  sources and theologians both ancient and modern, some from the social concerns and needs of various eras, some from the desires for an ecumenicity between holiness groups, and some from schools of thought that have been formed by championing holy ideas about sanctification and Christian perfection—“the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists”—that have been both competing and complimentary. This call for papers asks for engagement around issues—definitions of Christian perfection, Biblical interpretation, pastoral practices--and expressions of those ‘visions’ in sermons, theologies both systematic and Biblical, Christian, dress codes, artwork which grandly graces houses of worship and works its way into the everyday lives of holy inspiration on Sunday School literature, church fans, and other ephemera that have become the staple ideas and the guiding visions of the holy life. Papers are particularly invited from both grand idea(l)s holiness and inter-disciplinary perspectives which directly address how those visions of holiness have been expressed and how their outcomes have proved significant in the movements and lives of holiness Christians. The theme should be interpreted broadly, and proposals that do not fit the theme will be considered, as space allows (only one proposal submission per submitter, please).

Potential topics that could be explored:

• The Holiness of God

• Biblical visions of holiness discipleship and disciple-making

• Historical accounts of Christian movements wrestling with definitions of and issues of holiness and sanctification

• Visions of Holiness in songs, hymns, spiritual songs, and hymnals

• Explanations and examples of visions of holiness held by various figures or movements

• Visions of holiness that Wesleyan/Methodist/Holiness groups have borrowed from other theological traditions

• Visions of holiness in the liturgies and worship practices Wesleyan/Methodist/Holiness groups

• Visions of holiness that have formed the revivals, denominations, churches and other institutions Wesleyan/Methodist/Holiness groups

• The relationship between Wesleyan/Methodist/Holiness theologies of sanctification and those from various theologians and theologies, both ancient and modern.

• Cultural contextualization (around the globe and over time) that have been inspired by visions of holiness

• Various and important expressions and re-presentations of the Holiness of God and the holy life in artistic works and cultural articulations

• Accounts of practical experiments inspired by visions of holiness.

• The specific history of the American holiness movement, the National Holiness Association, and the Wesleyan Theological Society as it has embraced and debated visions of the holy life