International Pentecostal Holiness Church

Heritage

Two Southern holiness bodies — the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church, born of B. H. Irwin's radical holiness preaching in the 1890s, and A. B. Crumpler's Pentecostal Holiness Church of North Carolina — were both swept into the Pentecostal revival when G. B. Cashwell, freshly returned from Azusa Street, held his January 1907 meetings at Dunn, North Carolina. The two merged at Falcon, North Carolina in 1911, with the Tabernacle Pentecostal Church joining in 1915. Headquartered today at Bethany, Oklahoma as the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, it counts among its formed sons the healing evangelist Oral Roberts, who began his ministry within it.

Theological family

The clearest case in America of dual belonging: Wesleyan-holiness by descent — justification, then entire sanctification as a second definite work — and Pentecostal by experience, adding baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by tongues as a third blessing, with divine healing and Christ's imminent return. Reference works file it under Holiness or Pentecostal depending on which half they weigh; our taxonomy records the dual placement rather than choosing.

Who decides what

Episcopal in a conference form: a general conference, a presiding bishop and council of bishops, and regional conferences with superintendents relating congregations and clergy.

What a first-time visitor would find

Southern Pentecostal worship with a holiness undertow: congregational and contemporary song, testimony, prayer for healing as ordinary business, and preaching that expects both a clean heart and a Spirit-filled one.

What it has always cared about

The five-fold gospel of its heritage; Falcon's camp meeting; healing evangelism — the stream that carried Oral Roberts to the world; and the patient work of belonging fully to two families at once.

Its gift to the wider church

It bridged the holiness and Pentecostal movements in its own body and kept the bridge standing for a century — proof that the second and third blessings could live in one church — and through Cashwell's revival it midwifed Pentecost across the whole American South.

Commonly confused with

With the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and other Southern Pentecostal bodies of shared revival ancestry; with non-Pentecostal holiness churches, which share its sanctification doctrine but not its tongues; and with any congregation using "Pentecostal Holiness" wording informally.

Range of views inside it

Range in how strongly the entire-sanctification heritage is preached today versus a broader evangelical-charismatic accent; range in worship from revivalist to contemporary; and a large international fellowship beyond the American conferences.

Where International Pentecostal Holiness Church churches are on the map

4 International Pentecostal Holiness Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 4 states.

• North Carolina — 1
• Ohio — 1
• South Carolina — 1
• Virginia — 1