The Church of the Nazarene

Denomination·Founded 1908 CE·est. 2,724,006 members in 30,747 congregations across 165 world areas, from the denomination's own reporting. Growth is almost entirely outside the United States and Canada — the Africa and Asia-Pacific regions have expanded while the American membership has been flat or declining for two decades.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Church of the Nazarene

Church of the Nazarene

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Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Church of the Nazarene Discussion
Story of The Church of the Nazarene

Pilot Point, Texas, 13 October 1908.

Holiness bodies from the west, the east and the south — groups that had every reason to distrust each other on questions of church order — voted to become one denomination in a small north Texas town. The Nazarenes date themselves from that day rather than from Bresee's founding in 1895.

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Where it is toldNazarene histories and the minutes of the 1908 assembly
Who appearsThe delegates at Pilot Point, Texas, 13 October 1908
What it teachesThat a dozen scattered holiness bodies chose union over purity, which is not the usual direction of travel
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Pilot Point is the Nazarene founding date because it is the moment the movement chose consolidation. The 1907 Chicago union brought together Bresee's western Church of the Nazarene and the eastern Association of Pentecostal Churches of America; on 13 October 1908 that merged body joined with the Holiness Church of Christ, a southern group. Further unions followed: the Pentecostal Mission in 1915, the Pentecostal Church of Scotland and the Laymen's Holiness Association, and others. Holiness movements characteristically fracture, since the doctrine invites judgements about who is really sanctified, and the Nazarenes are the exception that went the other way — which is why they are the largest body in the family rather than one of several dozen small ones. The word Pentecostal was dropped from the denominational name at the 1919 General Assembly to avoid identification with the tongues-speaking movement that had emerged at Azusa Street a few miles from Bresee's own church.

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