Faith and public life are often treated as separate things. Either religion is a private matter between a person and God, or it gets tangled up in politics in ways that feel uncomfortable. John Wesley thought both approaches missed something important. His phrase "there is no holiness but social holiness" has been quoted, misquoted, and debated for nearly three centuries. Understanding what he actually meant reveals something worth knowing about personal faith and life in community.
Who Coined the Phrase “Social Holiness”?
John Wesley was an 18th-century Anglican minister and the founder of the Methodist movement. In 1739, he and his brother Charles published a collection called Hymns and Sacred Poems. In the preface, Wesley wrote that "holy solitaries" were a contradiction in terms. People who tried to pursue holiness alone, cut off from others, had misunderstood what Christianity was asking of them. The faith was never meant to be lived in isolation. For Wesley, holiness was formed in community through shared worship, fellowship, accountability, and acts of love. It required relationships with other people.
How Does Social Holiness Connect Faith and Justice?
Wesley's vision did not stop at the walls of the church. For him, inward transformation and outward action went together.
Scholar Dr. David Field argues that Wesley saw holiness as being about love — love of God and love of neighbor — and that this love had to show up in real, visible ways. Wesley described the Christian life as marked by "justice, mercy, and truth." These were not optional extras. They were part of what it meant to be holy.
This showed up in how Wesley lived. He visited prisoners on death row. He preached in open fields to reach people who never went to church. He created work for people who had nothing. His pamphlet Thoughts upon Slavery (1774) called the transatlantic slave trade a moral evil and pushed for abolition. For Wesley, the love at the center of holiness was never abstract. It demanded concrete expression in care for the poor, in prison reform, in medical relief, and in the fight against slavery.
What Are Works of Mercy and Works of Piety?
One of Wesley's key ideas was placing what he called "works of mercy" alongside "works of piety" as means of grace. Both were practices through which God works in and through people.
Works of piety included prayer, Bible reading, fasting, and communion. Works of mercy included visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and seeking justice for those being oppressed.
In his 1765 sermon "The Scripture Way of Salvation," Wesley described works of mercy as practices "required of all people who profess to be disciples of Jesus Christ.” Caring for others was not just a kind thing to do. It was a spiritual discipline — a way of encountering God and growing in holiness.
Randy Maddox, in his study Responsible Grace (1994), makes this point clearly: works of mercy were not a byproduct of holiness but part of it. To pursue spiritual growth while ignoring the poor and marginalized was, in Wesley's view, a mistake.
Is Social Holiness the Same as Social Justice?
The phrase "social holiness" has picked up a lot of extra meaning over the years. Some use it to mean social justice activism. Others use it to describe any kind of community involvement.
Scholars caution against stretching the term too far. Andrew Thompson, Th.D. argues that Wesley's original use was specifically about the communal setting in which holiness grows: worship together, mutual accountability, shared life in the body of Christ. The broader connection to social reform came later.
That does not make the link between holiness and justice wrong. Wesley's own life showed it clearly. But social holiness, rightly understood, starts inside the community of faith and moves outward from there. Roger Walton, writing in the journal Holiness, puts it well: "Inward holiness is the experience of God's Spirit enabling faith and new birth. Outward holiness is the expression of love through a life characterised by justice, mercy, and truth.”
The two are not in competition. They are part of the same whole.
Why This Matters at IWU
Indiana Wesleyan University is rooted in the Wesleyan tradition. The belief that faith is both personal and communal, that growing in holiness means growing in love for others, and that the church has a responsibility beyond its own walls — these are not abstract ideas. They shape how IWU approaches education.
Programs in social work, healthcare, education, and behavioral health are not accidental neighbors to theology at this university. They reflect a conviction that preparing students to serve others is itself a form of holiness. Helping someone care for a child in the foster care system, advocate for a patient, or teach in an under-resourced school is part of living out the love Wesley described.
Social holiness is not a slogan. It is a way of seeing the world — one in which personal faith and public life belong together, and in which becoming holy and becoming useful to others are part of the same journey.
