Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874)

Sources

Evangelist

Spiritual Longing. Phoebe Palmer was among the best-known female evangelists of the mid nineteenth century. She was also a leading figure in the holiness movement, which was guided by the belief that Christians could obtain complete freedom from sin. Born Phoebe Warrall in New York City on 18 December 1807, she was raised in a devout Methodist family. She was deeply pious from an early age but was troubled by the fact that she had never experienced the kind of dramatic conversion experience that convinced most believers of their own sin and salvation. In 1827 she married Walter Palmer, a young Methodist physician with whom she felt a deep spiritual bond. During the early years of their marriage the couple struggled through the deaths of three young children. Although devastated by her loss, Phoebe Palmer retained her faith and continued to work as a private Bible teacher, still longing for a deeper religious experience. This came at last on 26 July 1837, when she suddenly felt the Spirit of God within her and experienced sanctification, a sense that she had been freed from the necessity of sin and called to full devotion to God. After that “day of days,” she later noted, she felt “that I would rather die than knowingly sin against God. I have enjoyed the consciousness that He is the supreme object of my affections.”

Sanctification. Phoebe Palmer’s experience of sanctification occurred while she was attending a series of weekly prayer meetings run by her sister, Sarah Lankford. Known as the “Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness,” these gatherings were rooted in the theology of Methodist founder John Wesley. Wesley had contended that after an initial conversion experience, in which one’s sins were forgiven by God, one might experience a “second blessing” (or sanctification) that would make one holy, released from all intentional or conscious sin, and capable of moral perfection. Although it originated among the Methodists, from the 1830s onward this doctrine of sanctification became popular among revivalists from other denominations as well, many of whom urged their congregants to strive for a perfect state of sinlessness. After Phoebe Palmer experienced sanctification, she took over leadership of the Tuesday meetings, which were open to both men and women and attracted a distinguished group of believers, including leading members of several denominations and prominent teachers of holiness from throughout the Englishspeaking world. There she first expounded upon her view that holiness was available to all who had faith in Christ and truly surrendered their souls to his service. The response to her simple message was enthusiastic, and in 1839 editor Timothy Merrit launched a monthly periodical called the Guide to Holiness that printed the testimonies heard at her meetings.

A Woman’s Right. Although Palmer was at first reluctant to share her experiences in the presence of men, the enthusiastic support of many ministers, including Methodist leader Nathan Bangs, began to alter her thinking and encouraged her to set social conventions aside. After a prominent Congregationalist minister, Thomas Upham, received the second blessing under her guidance, she lost what reservations remained and began to write for the religious press and to travel broadly, speaking at revivals in front of large audiences. In 1843 some of her essays were collected into a volume called The Way of Holiness, an immediate international success that sold twenty-four thousand copies by 1851. Nine more books followed. While Palmer worked to avoid calling attention to herself when she spoke, at the same time she insisted that God’s grace fell on men and women equally and that every person who experienced such a great gift had a duty to share and pass it on to others. She avoided the woman’s rights movement and cannot be called a feminist, but she contributed much to the movement by example and in 1850 published The Promise of the Father, in which she unwaveringly defended the right of women to preach.

Benevolence. Motivated by her commitment to the possibility of moral and spiritual perfection for every human being, Phoebe Palmer actively engaged in missionary and benevolent work. Hoping to save the souls of the poor, she sponsored and worked for several missionary efforts, including the first Methodist mission to China. While distributing religious tracts in the slums of New York City, she came to see that the need for food and shelter might have to come before salvation. She helped to provide both, donating time and money and occasionally acting as a foster parent. At her insistence the Ladies Home Missionary Society in 1850 established a mission in the desperately poor Five Points district of New York, where people in need could have access to rent-free apartments, a chapel, schools, and public baths. After 1850 Palmer and her husband became increasingly active as revivalists. Her Tuesday Meetings remained popular after the Civil War and were continued after her death in 1874. Interest in holiness and the attainment of Christian perfection is still strong today.

Sources

Timothy Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980);

Charles Edward White, The Beauty of Holiness: Phoebe Palmer as Theologian, Revivalist, Feminist, and Humanitarian (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Francis Asbury Press, 1986).