Fire-Baptized Holiness Church

The Fire-Baptized Holiness Church was a holiness Christian denomination in North America and much of the denomination was involved in the early formation of Pentecostalism, the advent of which caused a schism in the church; it continues today in the following denominations: International Pentecostal Holiness Church, Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas, Bible Holiness Church and Wesleyan Holiness Alliance.

The Fire-Baptized Holiness Church was founded in 1896, mainly from a Methodist background, with Benjamin Wesley Young and Benjamin Hardin Irwin serving as leaders. Irwin, a Wesleyan Methodist elder taught belief in a baptism by fire (known in short as "the fire"), influenced by his reading of John William Fletcher, an early Methodist divine.

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.

In 1908, most of the African-American members withdrew to form a church, the Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas. Most of the original Fire-Baptized Holiness Church merged with the Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1911, forming a new denomination known as the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. Before the merger, the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church was an interracial body.