Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also Roller) a member of a Pentecostal church.

1842		Southern Quarterly Rev. I 400: It is a new species of religion, which sprang up . . . contemporaneously with the enthusiasm of the ‘Holy Rollers’.
1893		C.G. Leland Memoirs 216: The Holy Rollers under such circumstances rolled over and over on the floor [DA].
1910		‘The Preacher and the Slave’ in Lingenfelter et al. Songs of the Amer. West (1968) 544: Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out, / And they holler, they jump and they shout.
1920		T.H. Kelly What Outfit, Buddy? 45: That night we were out to see for fair and the Panaman did some stunts that would make a good Holy Roller feel ashamed.
1926		Dundee Courier 11 Nov. 9/5: One could [...] imagine him becoming a Holy Roller or thumping a Salvation Army drum.
1928		Amer. Mercury Oct. 182/1: To the true Roller every word in his theological vocabulary [...] and every moral experience, no matter how trivial, is a symbol of forces whose presence inspires him to delirium [DA].
1929		J.T. Farrell ‘A Casual Incident’ in Short Stories (1937) 142: ‘Dat religion, you know, where dey all roll round, all crazy in de head.’ ‘Holy Rollers.’.
1935		J. Conroy World to Win 87: They can call me a Holy Roller if they want to, Amen! I just laugh at them – Bless Jesus! – I’m proud of bein’ a Holy Roller.
1936		‘Josphine Tey’ Shilling for Candles 147: ‘Nothing surprises me any more. Ever seen Holy Rollers?’.
1947		B. Stiles Serenade to the Big Bird 74: There are [...] beggars and holy-rollers.
1947		Chicago Daily News 4 Feb. 8/3: I get awfully tired of people who keep saying that we have to like the Negroes or the Jews or the Mongolians or the Holy Rollers [DA].
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 27: Some of these ‘Holy Rollers’ [...] would fall to the floor and start trembling rapidly.
1989		R.G. Barratt ‘Poofs on Parade’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] Fred assembled his flock of holy rollers and bible-bashers.
1992		T. Williams Crackhouse 20: Close to the crackhouse is a Haitian Christian church, and it is never without people on Sunday, when the high Holy Rollers shout next door to the lowly crack smokers.
2003		C.M. Dean-Burrows I See Da Sea Rise 108: Jumpers – local name given to the church of the Holy Rollers.
2019		A. Parks February’s Son 112: ‘Bit of a Holy Roller, I think. Church of Scotland, an elder’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1927		(con. 1900s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 33: One man, suspected of Holy Roller sympathies, managed to have the jerks.
1935		J. Conroy World to Win 36: The Holy Roller Church was a sagging frame building.
1950		in V. Randolph Pissing in the Snow (1988) 113: There was a Holy Roller preacher walking through the woods.
1973		in C. Browne Body Shop 60: We had a lot of revivals. Holy Roller revivals.
1985		G. Tate ‘Atomic Dog’ in Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) 30: A holy-roller preacher’s benediction for soldiers returning from Viet Nam.
1998		L. Stringer Grand Central Winter (1999) 94: I wonder why, then, the Holy Roller drag?

3. a sanctimonious person or a religious fundamentalist.

1930		J. Hanley German Prisoner 8: He had been known as [...] a pimp — a shit-house — a toad — a sucker — a blasted sod — a Holy Roller .
1962		D. Walcott ‘Pocomania’ Coll. Poems (1986) 32: Till [...] Babylon is yonder green, / Till dirty-holy roller feels / The obscene breeding the unseen.
1965		L. Haylen Big Red 7: Uncle Felix said the church people were Holy Rollers.
1970		G. Scott-Heron Vulture (1996) 29: Damn holy rollers iz always preachin’ ’bout the evil a this an’ the evil a that.
1977		R. Coover Public Burning (1979) 173: A kind of holy roller in his way.
2000		Observer Rev. 2 Apr. 1: The Reverend Grund and his friends are Bible-thumping holy rollers from Florida.
2022		A. Parks May God Forgive 62: ‘[T]hat nutty woman with the van who [...] [h]ands out cups of tea and Bible tracts?’ ‘Moira? The Holy Roller’.