The Church of the Nazarene has one of the more confusing names in Protestantism. It isn’t a movement devoted to the town of Nazareth, and despite once having Pentecostal in its official name, it isn’t a Pentecostal denomination in the modern sense. What it is, however, is one of the clearest surviving expressions of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition: evangelical, Arminian, strongly missionary, committed to the authority of Scripture, and distinguished especially by its doctrine of entire sanctification.

The denomination officially dates its organization to 1908, but its roots extend through the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement back to John Wesley and early Methodism. The Nazarenes emerged because Christians from several Holiness groups believed Wesley’s emphasis upon holy living needed to remain at the center of the Christian life. They weren’t trying to create a radically new theology. In their minds, they were recovering something Methodism had allowed to fade.

Why “Nazarene”?

One of the central figures in the story was Phineas F. Bresee, a Methodist Episcopal minister who became increasingly committed to the Holiness Movement. Bresee had spent decades in Methodist ministry before becoming convinced that the church needed a stronger emphasis upon sanctification and ministry among ordinary and disadvantaged people.

In 1895, Bresee, physician and educator Joseph P. Widney, and roughly one hundred others organized the Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles. The name deliberately pointed toward Jesus of Nazareth. Bresee wanted a church identified with the Christ who ministered among the poor rather than one defined by wealth, social prestige, or ecclesiastical respectability.

That concern wasn’t merely theoretical. Early Nazarenes emphasized evangelism among people who could easily be overlooked by prosperous churches. Bresee believed Christians sanctified by faith should follow Christ’s example by preaching the gospel to the poor and using their resources to relieve human need.

Holiness, in other words, wasn’t supposed to make Christians feel spiritually superior. It was supposed to make them more like Jesus.

More Than One Beginning

Bresee’s Los Angeles church wasn’t the only stream that eventually became the Church of the Nazarene. Across the United States, numerous Holiness associations and congregations had developed independently during the nineteenth century. They shared enough Wesleyan theology that leaders eventually began asking whether they should unite.

In the Northeast, Holiness churches had organized into what became the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America. In the South, organizations including the Holiness Church of Christ had developed. Bresee’s Church of the Nazarene represented an important western stream. Other groups would join later.

The denomination therefore wasn’t simply founded by one charismatic leader who gathered followers around himself. It emerged through the union of several Holiness traditions.

That helps explain why Nazarenes eventually chose 1908 rather than 1895 as the denomination’s official beginning. The later date emphasized the creation of a united church rather than merely the founding of Bresee’s original congregation.

Pilot Point, Texas

The decisive moment occurred in Pilot Point, Texas, on October 13, 1908. Representatives of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene and the Holiness Church of Christ voted unanimously to unite.

The scene must have been remarkable. Northern, southern, eastern, and western Holiness Christians were attempting to overcome some of the regional divisions that had characterized American Protestantism since the Civil War. These weren’t people who agreed about absolutely everything, but they shared Wesleyan theology, entire sanctification, evangelism, and a desire for a genuinely national Holiness church. Additional Holiness bodies subsequently joined the denomination, including groups from Scotland and the American Southeast in 1915. The result was increasingly international almost from the beginning.

And yes, you noticed the name: Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. That’s where the story gets fun.

Nazarenes Were Pentecostal Before Pentecostals Were Pentecostal

When the early Nazarenes used the word Pentecostal, they generally meant something like Holiness—a Christianity characterized by the transforming work and power of the Holy Spirit. The term didn’t yet automatically mean speaking in tongues.

Then came the modern Pentecostal movement. The Azusa Street Revival, beginning in Los Angeles in 1906, helped spread the teaching that baptism in the Holy Spirit was accompanied by speaking in tongues. Assemblies, churches, and eventually entire denominations began using Pentecostal in this newer and increasingly familiar sense. That created a branding problem for the Nazarenes.

People heard Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene and naturally assumed the denomination taught what the emerging Pentecostal churches taught. It didn’t. So in 1919, the denomination removed Pentecostal from its name and became simply the Church of the Nazarene.

That’s one of my favorite pieces of denominational trivia: the Nazarenes didn’t stop being Pentecostal. Pentecostal changed what Pentecostal meant. They decided it was easier to change the sign.

Wesleyan-Arminian Theology

Nazarenes belong squarely within the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. Like Wesley, they teach that humanity is fallen and unable to save itself, but God’s grace reaches people before conversion and enables them to respond to the gospel. This is prevenient grace—grace that goes before. God takes the initiative. The sinner doesn’t independently decide to climb his way back to God. The Holy Spirit convicts, awakens, draws, and enables a genuine response.

Nazarenes therefore reject the Calvinist idea that God has unconditionally chosen only certain individuals for salvation while passing over everyone else. Christ died for all, God’s grace is genuinely offered to all, and people may genuinely receive or resist that grace. Salvation is entirely by grace, but grace doesn’t eliminate meaningful human response. That is classic Wesley.

Entire Sanctification

If one doctrine distinguishes Nazarene theology more than any other, it’s entire sanctification. The denomination itself identifies this as the teaching that particularly distinguishes Nazarenes and other classical Wesleyan-Holiness Christians from most other Christian traditions.

Nazarenes believe conversion begins the Christian life but doesn’t exhaust what God intends to do within believers. The Holy Spirit continues transforming Christians and calls them toward wholehearted devotion to God. Entire sanctification describes a decisive work of grace in which the believer surrenders fully to God and is cleansed from what Holiness theology traditionally calls original sin or the carnal nature. The believer is filled with love for God and neighbor and empowered for holy living.

That doesn’t mean a sanctified Christian becomes omniscient, incapable of temptation, or incapable of committing sin. Nazarenes distinguish Christian perfection from absolute perfection. The goal is perfect love, not perfect knowledge or flawless performance.

Unfortunately, Christians occasionally become more confident about their perfection than their spouses are. That problem isn’t unique to Nazarenes.

A Second Work of Grace

Classical Nazarene theology generally distinguishes regeneration from entire sanctification. A person is born again through repentance and faith in Christ. Entire sanctification is understood as a subsequent work of God’s grace in the life of a believer. That gives Nazarene theology an interesting resemblance to classical Pentecostalism. Both traditions have historically expected significant spiritual experience after conversion. But they define that experience differently.

For Nazarenes, the central issue is sanctification and perfect love. For many classical Pentecostals, baptism in the Holy Spirit is understood primarily as empowerment for witness, commonly accompanied by speaking in tongues. That difference becomes especially interesting because Pentecostalism itself grew substantially out of the Holiness environment. The two movements are close relatives who eventually emphasized different parts of their inheritance.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is therefore central to Nazarene theology even though Nazarenes aren’t Pentecostals in the contemporary denominational sense. The Spirit convicts sinners, regenerates believers, bears witness to salvation, sanctifies Christians, empowers the Church, distributes gifts, and enables holy living.

Nazarenes expect Christianity to be experiential. Faith isn’t simply agreement with correct propositions about God. People encounter God’s grace, experience conversion, receive assurance, grow spiritually, and depend upon the Spirit for transformation.

At the same time, the denomination doesn’t teach that speaking in tongues is the necessary evidence of Spirit baptism. Historically, the rise of that doctrine was one of the reasons Nazarenes stopped using Pentecostal in their denominational name. That makes the Nazarene-Pentecostal relationship fascinating. They share a great deal of spiritual DNA while disagreeing about what some of the family traits mean.

The Bible

Nazarenes affirm the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture. The Bible reveals God’s will concerning salvation and provides the authoritative foundation for Christian faith and practice. Like other Wesleyans, Nazarenes don’t normally approach Scripture through the categories of Reformed theology. Their understanding of salvation, grace, sanctification, human freedom, and apostasy is distinctly Wesleyan-Arminian.

They also recognize the value of reason, Christian tradition, and experience in theological reflection. But these don’t replace Scripture or function as independent revelations capable of overturning biblical teaching. For Nazarenes, holiness itself must be scriptural holiness. Spiritual experience requires biblical boundaries. That’s a useful principle in any church that expects the Holy Spirit to do something.

Can Christians Fall Away?

Nazarene theology doesn’t teach unconditional eternal security. Because God’s relationship with human beings includes genuine response, believers can resist grace and ultimately turn away from faith. That doesn’t mean Nazarenes believe Christians lose their salvation every time they stumble, experience doubt, or commit a sin. Christian life is lived within God’s sustaining grace, and repentance remains available.

But neither do they believe a person can permanently renounce Christ and nevertheless remain eternally secure simply because of a conversion experience decades earlier. That places Nazarenes alongside the broader Wesleyan-Arminian tradition and distinguishes them from many Baptists and Reformed Christians. Grace can be resisted before conversion, and Nazarenes believe grace can also be resisted afterward.

Baptism

The Church of the Nazarene recognizes Christian baptism as a sacrament and means of grace. It baptizes believers and also permits the baptism of young children at the request of Christian parents or guardians.

Here’s another interesting Nazarene feature: the denomination isn’t particularly interested in fighting over how wet somebody gets. Baptism may be administered by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion. The theological meaning of baptism matters more than insisting upon one particular amount of water.

Baptism signifies acceptance of the benefits of Christ’s atonement, incorporation into the Body of Christ, and Christian faith and obedience. The church also assumes responsibility for Christian nurture when children are baptized. That places Nazarenes clearly within their Methodist sacramental heritage, even though many Nazarene congregations may look and feel more like evangelical churches than traditional Methodism.

The Lord’s Supper

Nazarenes likewise recognize the Lord’s Supper as a sacrament and means of grace. Communion remembers Christ’s sacrificial death and proclaims faith in him while providing spiritual nourishment to believers. They don’t teach Roman Catholic transubstantiation. Bread and the cup don’t become Christ’s physical body and blood. But neither is Communion treated as an empty ritual or merely an intellectual reminder.

Christ meets his people through the sacrament, and God’s grace is active as believers participate in faith. This is another reminder that the Holiness tradition isn’t simply revivalism with a few Wesley quotations attached. Underneath the revival meetings and evangelical preaching lies a recognizably Methodist sacramental theology.

Women in Ministry

Women have exercised ordained ministry in Nazarene circles from remarkably early in the movement. Anna S. Hanscome was ordained in 1892, before the united Church of the Nazarene existed, and she became the first ordained woman in the denomination’s historical lineage. Other Nazarene parent bodies also ordained women before the 1908 union. By the time the various regional movements came together, dozens of women were already serving as clergy. Phineas Bresee himself ordained women, and women served as pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and even district leaders during the denomination’s formative years. The Church of the Nazarene continues to ordain women today.

As with the Free Methodists and Wesleyans, this history matters. Women’s ordination within Nazarene Christianity isn’t a recent accommodation to modern progressive Protestantism. Nazarenes trace the practice into their nineteenth-century evangelical Holiness heritage. Christians can still disagree about whether their interpretation of Scripture is correct. But historically, that’s where the position comes from.

Ministry to the Poor

Bresee’s original vision emphasized preaching the gospel to the poor, and social ministry became embedded in Nazarene identity very early. The southern Holiness groups that entered the denomination had supported ministries to orphans, unmarried mothers, poor families, and socially marginalized people. Western Nazarenes likewise emphasized ministry among people who lacked social prestige.

This flowed directly from their understanding of holiness. A heart filled with love for God should become more compassionate toward people rather than less interested in them. Nazarenes therefore inherited a recurring Wesleyan conviction: personal holiness and social concern belong together. If sanctification makes someone less loving toward suffering people, something has gone wrong with the sanctification.

Holiness and Legalism

Like other Holiness denominations, Nazarenes have had to wrestle with the relationship between holy living and legalism. Earlier generations frequently maintained detailed expectations concerning entertainment, alcohol, dancing, dress, tobacco, jewelry, and other behaviors. Many of those standards grew from a sincere desire to distinguish Christian life from the surrounding culture. Nazarenes believed conversion and sanctification should produce visible differences in behavior.

But visible standards can gradually become substitutes for inward transformation. It’s easier to measure whether someone goes to a movie than whether someone loves his enemy. Modern Nazarene teaching generally places greater emphasis upon the underlying biblical principles of holy living rather than reducing holiness to a checklist inherited from a particular period of American culture. The tension remains important. Holiness without moral boundaries becomes meaningless, but holiness reduced to rules can miss the very transformation the rules were intended to protect.

Marriage and Sexuality

The Church of the Nazarene maintains the historic Christian understanding of marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman. Sexual intimacy belongs within that marriage covenant, and the denomination doesn’t perform same-sex marriages or ordain practicing homosexual clergy. At the same time, Nazarene teaching insists upon the dignity and worth of every person and calls Christians to respond with compassion rather than hostility. That places the denomination among the more theologically conservative Wesleyan-Holiness bodies on contemporary sexuality while it continues to ordain women and maintain a substantial social-ministry tradition.

Once again, nineteenth-century Wesleyan categories don’t fit neatly into twenty-first-century American political boxes. Church history keeps refusing to cooperate with our filing system.

Church Government

Nazarenes use a connectional form of government combining episcopal oversight with meaningful participation by clergy and laypeople. Local congregations belong to districts, districts participate in regional and global structures, and the denomination gathers periodically in General Assembly.

At the highest level, the church is led by a Board of General Superintendents rather than a single denominational bishop. Six general superintendents currently share responsibility for spiritual and administrative oversight of the worldwide denomination. That shared structure reflects an old Nazarene concern about balancing centralized leadership with congregational participation. The denomination’s founders were already wrestling with that issue during the mergers of 1907 and 1908.

Apparently church government meetings have been part of the Holiness experience from the beginning. Entire sanctification doesn’t eliminate committees.

Education

Nazarenes have invested heavily in Christian higher education and ministerial training. In the United States and elsewhere, the denomination has developed colleges, universities, seminaries, Bible schools, and theological institutions. Schools such as Trevecca Nazarene University, Point Loma Nazarene University, Southern Nazarene University, Northwest Nazarene University, Olivet Nazarene University, MidAmerica Nazarene University, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Eastern Nazarene College, and Nazarene Theological Seminary have played important roles in developing pastors, missionaries, educators, and lay leaders.

Education fits naturally within the denomination’s theology. Nazarenes don’t understand holiness as anti-intellectual enthusiasm. The mind, like the rest of human life, belongs to God and should be cultivated for Christian service. You can be entirely sanctified and still have homework. Apparently there are limits to everything.

Missions

From its earliest years, the Nazarene movement looked beyond the United States. Even before the major denominational unions were completed, its parent organizations had established ministries in places such as India, Cape Verde, Mexico, Guatemala, Japan, and Canada.

That missionary emphasis became one of the denomination’s defining characteristics. Nazarene churches support evangelism, theological education, humanitarian ministries, medical work, disaster response, church planting, and leadership development throughout the world. The denomination’s mission is summarized simply: “To make Christlike disciples in the nations.”

That language combines the two central Nazarene emphases. Make disciples expresses evangelism. Christlike expresses holiness. For Nazarenes, the goal isn’t merely getting people converted. It’s helping people become like Christ.

A Surprisingly Global Church

Americans can easily think of Nazarenes as a relatively small denomination with churches scattered around the Midwest and South. That picture is badly outdated.

The Church of the Nazarene is now a genuinely global denomination with about 2.7 million members and roughly 30,000 congregations across 165 world areas. Much of its growth and vitality now lies outside the United States, particularly in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the Global South. That increasingly changes the character of the denomination. Nazarene Christianity isn’t simply American Holiness culture exported overseas. National and regional leaders increasingly shape the church within their own cultures while remaining connected through shared doctrine and mission.

The denomination’s international character also reaches remarkably far back. By 1930, Nazarenes were already established in countries across several continents. The little Holiness movement from Los Angeles and Pilot Point grew up.

Nazarenes and Methodists

Nazarenes are unmistakably descendants of Methodism, but their relationship to modern Methodist denominations is interesting. They preserved Wesley’s theology while developing outside the major Methodist institutions. Like Methodists, Nazarenes are Arminian, connectional, sacramental, and willing to baptize infants. They recognize women in ordained ministry and emphasize God’s grace throughout salvation.

But Nazarenes place much greater emphasis upon entire sanctification as a distinct work of grace and developed within the revivalistic Holiness Movement rather than remaining within institutional Methodism. In a sense, Nazarenes represent what happened when nineteenth-century Christians asked, “What if we built an entire denomination around the part of Wesley’s theology we think everybody else is neglecting?” That’s what they did.

Nazarenes and Pentecostals

The relationship with Pentecostalism is even more fascinating. Pentecostalism arose from much of the same Holiness soil, and many early Pentecostals already believed in sanctification before they encountered the newer teaching concerning baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Nazarenes and Pentecostals therefore share emphases upon conversion, spiritual experience, revival, divine activity, holy living, missions, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

But they diverge over tongues and Spirit baptism. Nazarenes don’t teach that speaking in tongues is the necessary initial evidence of Spirit baptism, while classical Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God do. Historically, Pentecostalism moved in one direction while the Nazarenes remained within classical Wesleyan-Holiness theology. That’s why the denomination that once called itself Pentecostal eventually decided it needed to stop.

The Church of the Nazarene Today

Today’s Church of the Nazarene identifies itself through three core values: Christian, Holiness, and Missional. Those three words summarize the denomination remarkably well. Christian places Nazarenes within historic orthodox Christianity. Holiness identifies their distinctive Wesleyan conviction that God’s grace genuinely transforms believers. Missional reflects their commitment to making Christlike disciples throughout the world.

The denomination remains evangelical without being Baptist, Wesleyan without being United Methodist, Spirit-conscious without being Pentecostal, sacramental without being highly liturgical, and socially engaged without abandoning traditional Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality. That’s quite a combination. It also explains why the Nazarenes have endured while many smaller Holiness groups gradually disappeared.

Why the Church of the Nazarene Matters

The Church of the Nazarene may be the best denomination to study if someone wants to understand what the classical Holiness Movement was actually trying to accomplish. Its founders weren’t primarily interested in creating another institutional brand. They believed Christianity should produce people whose hearts and lives were transformed by the grace of God. They expected sinners to be converted, believers to be sanctified, the Holy Spirit to work, the poor to hear the gospel, women and men to answer God’s call to ministry, churches to send missionaries, and Christians to become increasingly like Jesus.

Whether one agrees with every feature of Nazarene theology—particularly its understanding of entire sanctification—the central question it asks is difficult to dismiss: How much transformation should we actually expect the gospel to produce in a Christian?The Nazarenes have spent more than a century answering, “A lot.” And somewhere along the way, they managed to become Pentecostal, stop being Pentecostal, and never actually change denominations.