Biography
John Swanel Inskip was born on January 31, 1816, in Hamilton, England, and came to the United States as a boy of two, when his family settled in Utica, New York. His father was a plain man of Methodist background who worked in the building trades. John grew up in the American Northeast with little formal education. He was converted at the age of seventeen at a Methodist revival. He began as a lay preacher and was soon ordained as an itinerant Methodist minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He served in a number of churches in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey over a long period of time.
He was a conscientious and successful pastor. He was a loving man who cared for his people, though he had a keen sense of his own shortcomings. In his early years, he was troubled by a lack of spiritual power. He read about the doctrine of entire sanctification, which John Wesley had taught, and he longed for such an experience. In 1858, he was moved by the revival that swept the country, and he sought a deeper work of grace. In 1863, as a pastor in Brooklyn, he came to a new level of faith. He said that he received the blessing of a clean heart, and he gave himself wholly to the Lord.
He began to speak about the experience and to promote the teaching of holiness among Methodists. In New York, he became associated with Phoebe Palmer, the leader of the holiness movement, and the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness. He took part in a number of revivals. In 1867, he and several other ministers began to plan a camp meeting that was meant to stir up the Methodist church on the subject of holiness. They held the first meeting in Vineland, New Jersey, in July 1867. It lasted ten days, and thousands attended. It was a great success, with hundreds receiving the blessing.
The success of the first meeting led to the formation of the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness. Inskip was elected president, a post he held until his death. The association organized a series of camp meetings across the country for the next decades. They were held in places such as Manheim, Pennsylvania, Round Lake, New York, and Ocean Grove, New Jersey. The meetings drew crowds of tens of thousands, and they became the center of the holiness revival. He took a leading role in preaching. He was a man of a mild and gracious spirit who drew people by his gentleness. He was a leader who sought to unite the various parts of the holiness movement.
The movement spread throughout the nation and had a great effect on the development of American Protestantism. It gave rise to a number of new denominations, such as the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church and the Free Methodist Church. It also paved the way for Pentecostalism. At the same time, it caused tension within the Methodist church, as some bishops and leaders were suspicious of the holiness movement and of its teaching on a second blessing. Inskip tried to keep the movement within the Methodist church. He did not seek to form a separate body.
He edited a magazine, the Advocate of Christian Holiness, and wrote several books and pamphlets. He also helped to compile hymnbooks of the holiness movement. His wife, Martha, was a faithful partner in the work. He suffered from heart disease in his later years but kept up a heavy schedule. He died on March 7, 1884, in Philadelphia, at the age of sixty-eight. His life shows the effect of a man who gave himself to a single cause, and the way in which a movement may spread through a network of camp meetings and the prayers of ordinary people.