The church was founded in 1896 by Rev.
Benjamin Hardin Irwin of
Lincoln, Nebraska. Irwin was educated as a lawyer but entered
ordained ministry after he was converted to a
Baptist church. After contacting members of the Iowa Holiness Association, Irwin accepted holiness beliefs and claimed to experience
entire sanctification in 1891. He was a student of the writings of
John Wesley and
John William Fletcher and eventually joined the
Wesleyan Methodist Church. Irwin became convinced that there was an experience beyond sanctification called the "baptism of fire", or in short, "the fire". After receiving this experience in October 1895, he began to preach this "third blessing" among holiness adherents in the Midwest, particularly among Wesleyan Methodists and
Brethren in Christ, a
River Brethren denomination. His services were highly emotional, with participants often getting the "jerks", shouting,
speaking in tongues, and holy dancing and laughing. Thousands attended his meetings, and his teaching was circulated widely within the holiness movement, with its greatest strength in the Midwest and South. His message was largely rejected, however, and was denounced as a "third blessing heresy". Because of opposition, Irwin formed an organization in 1895 called the Iowa Fire-Baptized Holiness Association at
Olmitz, Iowa. As he traveled nationwide, Irwin established associations to promote his message. By the time these associations were organized into one denomination in 1898, there were churches in eight American
states and two Canadian
provinces. An organizational convention was held in
Anderson, South Carolina, from July 28 to August 28, 1898. The constitution of the Iowa Fire Baptized Holiness Association was accepted by the Neosha Valley Holiness Association in 1897. It became the Southeastern Kansas Fire-Baptized Holiness Association. According to Synan, "All [(Pentecostal) statements for or against racial integration failed to obscure one important fact——the practical integration of poor whites and blacks in backwoods Pentecostal revival services" and this was "a type of race-mixing that has occurred in the South since before the Civil War." By 1900, Fuller had organized 50 black Fire-Baptized churches and a convention. The Constitution and General Rules of the Fire Baptized Holiness Association taught three definite works of grace: The Southeastern Kansas Fire Baptized Holiness Association dissolved its relationship with the rest of the denomination in 1898 after Irwin began to preach the necessity of maintaining Jewish dietary laws; the Southeastern Kansas Fire Baptized Holiness Association renamed itself as the Fire Baptized Holiness Association of Southeastern Kansas in 1904 and then the Fire Baptized Holiness Church in 1945 and then the present-day name of Bible Holiness Church in 1995. By 1906, King led the majority of the original Fire Baptized Holiness Church into third-blessing Pentecostalism (
Holiness Pentecostalism), taking the line that the
baptism in the Holy Spirit with evidence of
speaking in tongues had been the "baptism of fire" the church had been seeking. After 1908, the denomination split on racial lines when Fuller left, with the blessing of the white leadership, and started what would become the
Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas. In 1911, the church merged with the Pentecostal Holiness Church and took the latter organization's name even though the Fire-Baptized church was larger; it is called the
International Pentecostal Holiness Church . The body resulting from the merger would be renamed the International Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1975. ==Theological distinctives==