John Wesley taught that a believer could be entirely sanctified, cleansed in heart from the root of sin rather than merely forgiven its acts, but he deliberately left open whether this came gradually, over a lifetime of growth in grace, or in a single identifiable moment, and he resisted pressure from his own followers to fix the timing more precisely. Nineteenth century American revivalists were less willing to leave the question open.
Phoebe Palmer, a Methodist laywoman whose New York parlor meetings became a center of the movement from the 1830s, taught what she called the shorter way, an altar theology in which a believer could claim entire sanctification immediately by faith rather than waiting years for it. The movement crystallized organizationally at a camp meeting in Vineland, New Jersey, in 1867, which founded the National Campmeeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness and gave the newly sharpened doctrine, a definite, nameable, instantaneous second blessing following conversion, a national platform and a name recognizable across denominational lines.
As the parent Methodist Episcopal Church cooled toward the revivalists' insistence on a required, dateable second experience through the 1880s and 1890s, Holiness preachers who would not soften the doctrine began organizing congregations and eventually whole denominations of their own to carry it forward as settled article of faith rather than as one emphasis among several.