A small Los Angeles mission in 1906 launched a faith of hundreds of millions
In April 1906 a one-eyed Black preacher named William Seymour began leading worship on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. Black and white believers prayed side by side, spoke in tongues and ignored any fixed order of service. Nearly every Pentecostal denomination traces itself to that revival, and the movement now counts over 279 million classical adherents.
Pentecostalism is an evangelical Protestant movement centred on baptism in the Holy Spirit, a direct experience of God named after the Pentecost described in Acts, when the Spirit descended on Jesus's followers in Jerusalem. Like other evangelicals, Pentecostals stress biblical inerrancy and being born again, but they add Spirit baptism, usually marked by speaking in tongues, as an empowering experience beyond conversion.
Its roots lie in late 19th-century radical revivalism in the United States and Britain, especially the Wesleyan-Holiness and Higher Life movements, which expected Christ's imminent return and a revival of miracles. In 1900 Charles Parham, a former Methodist and faith healer, opened Bethel Bible School near Topeka, Kansas. On 1 January 1901 his students reported receiving the Spirit with tongues, the first being a woman, Agnes Ozman. Parham believed these were real foreign languages that would spare missionaries from studying.
Seymour studied under Parham in Houston before heading west. His revival broke out at a house on Bonnie Brae Street on 9 April 1906 and moved to 312 Azusa Street days later, running for three years and drawing thousands who carried the fervour home. From 1906 to 1924 several Pentecostal denominations were interracial in defiance of Jim Crow segregation, though North American Pentecostalism eventually split along racial lines. Women played leading roles, with Aimee Semple McPherson and others founding denominations, and most early denominations were pacifist.
Disputes over sanctification and then the Trinity produced three main streams: Holiness Pentecostals, trinitarian Finished Work churches, and non-trinitarian Oneness Pentecostals. Today there are more than 700 denominations with no central authority, many linked through the Pentecostal World Fellowship. Since the 1960s its ideas have spread into Catholic and mainline Protestant churches via the Charismatic movement, and together Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians number over 644 million. Many observers think no religious movement on Earth is growing faster, with the Global South leading the way.
Source: Pentecostalism
