Oneness Pentecostals & Personal Holiness

Aside from the previously mentioned heresies, Oneness Pentecostals also have distinctive beliefs about personal holiness.

For instance, all forms of worldly entertainment, including secular music, movies, TV shows, sports are strictly forbidden along with smoking, drinking, dancing and mixed bathing.

Former OP, Gregory Boyd recalls being told by his UPCI pastor that “anyone ‘caught’ in a bowling alley when the Lord returned would be left behind” (Gregory A. Boyd, Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1992] 217).

On top of that, it is considered ungodly for women to wear any kind of makeup, jewelry or pants, and to ever cut or dye their hair. Therefore, in most United Pentecostal Church International (the largest oneness denomination) churches, women must wear their uncut hair in buns and in many southern UPCI churches, women wearing long-sleeved shirts or blouses or any bright colored clothes in general are sinning.

Aside from these rules, individual congregations are known to develop their own rules for their parishioners.

Often times, a person's pastor will need to be consulted and even asked permission to do certain things, like whether or not he or she can move and what kind of sexual activity married couples can have.

In the end, the overarching principle behind these standards is, “If the sinner has to forsake sin in order to be saved, the Christian must live free from sin in order to stay saved…. Salvation is maintaining fellowship with Jesus Christ, and when that fellowship is broken there is no salvation” (Boyd 215 quoting a Oneness tract entitled Why?).