Congregational Holiness Church
Congregational Holiness Church belongs to the Wesleyan-Holiness family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
Congregational Holiness Church reports 188 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
NEEDS VERIFICATION (flagged 0256): named Holiness and filed Holiness, but this body separated from the Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1920 and is generally described as Pentecostal in doctrine. The mirror image of the COGIC name trap — "Holiness" in the name of a Pentecostal body. NOT moved: unverified against a classifying source. Resolve before any tradition record covering it is approved.
A Georgia-born church whose name says Holiness and whose doctrine says Pentecost — congregational in government, Spirit-filled in worship, and international in reach.
Heritage
The Congregational Holiness Church formed in Georgia in 1921, when ministers Watson Sorrow and Hugh Bowling and their supporters were put out of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in a dispute over divine healing — they defended the liberty to use medicine alongside prayer — and over church government. The new body chose congregational polity, hence its name, and grew through the Southeast and then dramatically in Latin America. RCMS 2020 counted 188 U.S. congregations.
Theological family
Pentecostal in doctrine by descent and practice — justification, sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues, with divine healing affirmed alongside medical care — though this map's source taxonomy files the body in the Holiness family, and the classification is flagged for review.
Who decides what
Congregational, as the name declares: local churches govern themselves and choose their own pastors, cooperating through district and general conferences.
What a first-time visitor would find
A visitor finds lively Pentecostal worship — expressive praise, prayer for healing, and freedom for the Spirit's gifts — in congregations that are often bilingual or Spanish-speaking.
What it has always cared about
The liberty of the local congregation; healing prayed for without forbidding the physician; and mission fields, especially in Central and South America, that now outnumber the home churches.
Its gift to the wider church
A small church's sane resolution of a hard question — prayer and medicine as friends, not rivals — reached in 1921 when that debate divided whole movements.
Commonly confused with
With the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, its parent; with Congregational churches of New England descent, wholly unrelated; and with non-Pentecostal holiness bodies, from which its doctrine of Spirit baptism distinguishes it.
Range of views inside it
Congregations vary in language, culture, and expressive intensity; doctrine is settled and Pentecostal.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation. This body's family classification is genuinely contested — the taxonomy flags it as Holiness-filed but Pentecostal-described, unresolved pending verification — and this record must not be used to settle that question. Sentences drawn from it hedge as "Congregational Holiness churches typically…".
Sources: Congregational Holiness Church — our history (Congregational Holiness Church) · The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (Vinson Synan, Eerdmans) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
Where Congregational Holiness Church churches are on the map
2 Congregational Holiness Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 2 states.
More of the Wesleyan-Holiness story · Find these churches on the map