Pentecostals and Charismatics

Roots in the Holiness movement

Pentecostalism did not come out of nowhere. Its deepest root is John Wesley's teaching on "Christian perfection," a second work of grace after conversion that purifies the heart (see John Wesley and the Methodists). In 19th-century America, the Holiness movement, led by figures like Phoebe Palmer (see Christianity in America), taught that believers could receive this "entire sanctification" instantly. Many began to call it the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." Holiness camp meetings expected dramatic experiences of God's power. Some also taught divine healing and expected Christ's imminent return.

Around 1900, some asked: if there is a "baptism in the Spirit," what is the biblical evidence that one has received it? In Acts 2, at Pentecost, the disciples "began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance."

Topeka and Azusa Street

Charles Fox Parham (1873–1929), a Holiness preacher, ran a small Bible school in Topeka, Kansas. On 1 January 1901, a student named Agnes Ozman asked him to lay hands on her and pray that she might receive the Spirit. She reportedly began speaking in what was believed to be Chinese. Parham taught that speaking in tongues (Glossolalia) was the "initial evidence" of Spirit baptism. He believed tongues were real foreign languages that would let missionaries preach without studying. That idea soon failed.

One of Parham's students in Houston was William J. Seymour (1870–1922), the son of formerly enslaved parents, blind in one eye. Because of segregation laws, Parham made him listen to lectures from the hallway outside the classroom. In 1906 Seymour was invited to preach in Los Angeles. Locked out of the church that had invited him, he held meetings in a home on Bonnie Brae Street. On 9 April 1906, several people began speaking in tongues. Crowds gathered. Seymour moved the meetings to a run-down former African Methodist Episcopal building at 312 Azusa Street, used most recently as a stable.

The Azusa Street Revival continued with three services a day, almost every day, for about three years. Worshipers sat on planks. Seymour often sat behind a pulpit made of shoe crates, his head inside the top box, praying. People spoke in tongues, prophesied, fell down "slain in the Spirit," sang in tongues, and reported healings. Visitors came from across America and the world, and they carried the fire home. Within two years Pentecostal missionaries had reached over fifty countries.

What struck observers most was the mixing of races and classes. In segregated America, Black, white, Latino and Asian worshipers, rich and poor, men and women, prayed together, and white people knelt at the feet of a Black pastor. One participant, Frank Bartleman, wrote that "the color line was washed away in the blood." The Los Angeles press mocked the "weird babel of tongues." The unity did not last. Within a few years Pentecostal denominations divided along racial lines, but Azusa's vision remained powerful.

Growth of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity (approximate)

Spreading worldwide

Pentecostalism spread with astonishing speed, carried by ordinary believers and missionaries with little formal training:

• In the US, the mostly Black Church of God in Christ, led by Charles Harrison Mason, became Pentecostal in 1907. It is now one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in America. The mostly white Assemblies of God formed in 1914 and is now a worldwide fellowship of some 70 million or more.
• Revivals with Pentecostal features broke out independently in many places: Wales (1904–05), the Mukti Mission of Pandita Ramabai in India (1905), Korea (1907) and Chile (1909).
• Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines all became Pentecostal heartlands.

Early Pentecostals were mostly poor and working-class, despised by "respectable" churches as "holy rollers." But they offered something powerful: direct experience of God, emotional worship, prayer for healing in places with little medical care, a strong community, moral discipline (no drinking, gambling or adultery), and leadership roles for ordinary people, including women. The flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944) built the 5,300-seat Angelus Temple in Los Angeles (1923), pioneered religious radio, and founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Core beliefs and practices

• Baptism in the Holy Spirit as an experience after conversion, empowering believers for witness.
• Spiritual gifts (charismata, 1 Corinthians 12) for today: tongues, interpretation, prophecy, healing and miracles. Many earlier Protestants had taught that these gifts ceased after the apostles.
• Divine healing as part of salvation.
• Expectation of Christ's soon return, driving urgent evangelism.
• Exuberant worship: raised hands, clapping, dancing, spontaneous prayer, and contemporary music.

Pentecostals are diverse. A significant minority, the "Oneness" Pentecostals, reject the traditional doctrine of the Trinity and baptize "in Jesus' name" only. Later, some streams developed the controversial "prosperity gospel," teaching that faith brings health and wealth.

The charismatic renewal

For half a century Pentecostals were outsiders. That changed around 1960. In April 1960, Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal priest in Van Nuys, California, told his congregation that he had spoken in tongues. The ensuing uproar made national news. It marked the start of the Charismatic movement, which spread Pentecostal experience within mainline Protestant churches: Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist. The South African Pentecostal David du Plessis, "Mr Pentecost," built bridges to the World Council of Churches and the Vatican.

In 1967, at a retreat of students and faculty from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, a group of Catholics experienced Spirit baptism. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal spread rapidly. It was cautiously welcomed by Paul VI and later popes, and it now involves well over 100 million Catholics, especially in Latin America and Africa.

From the 1970s, independent "neo-charismatic" churches multiplied, often non-denominational, from the Vineyard movement in California to megachurches in Lagos, São Paulo and Seoul. David Yonggi Cho's Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, founded in a tent in 1958, grew into the largest congregation in the world, with around 800,000 members at its peak, organized in thousands of home "cell groups."

A new reformation?

Diarmaid MacCulloch and other historians see Pentecostalism as one of the most important developments in Christian history. Some compare its significance to the Reformation [check]. The historian Philip Jenkins has argued that Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in the Global South is the face of the "next Christendom." Its success comes partly from its flexibility. Without a central authority or required education, it adapts easily to local cultures. It has much in common with traditional African and Asian worldviews, which take spirits, healing and spiritual power seriously.

Critics raise concerns about the prosperity gospel, authoritarian leaders, financial scandals, shallow theology and divisiveness. Pentecostals reply that they have recovered the apostolic church's experience of the Spirit, which the older churches had lost.

Women and the Spirit

From the beginning, Pentecostalism gave women unusual freedom. If the Spirit fell on "sons and daughters" alike, as the prophet Joel and Peter's Pentecost sermon said, then women too could preach, prophesy and lead. Women preached at Azusa Street, edited its newspaper, and went out as missionaries. Many early Pentecostal evangelists and church founders were women, like Aimee Semple McPherson in America and Maria Woodworth-Etter, a healing evangelist. Over time many Pentecostal denominations became more restrictive, following wider evangelical patterns. But around the world women remain the majority of Pentecostal believers and often lead prayer groups, house churches and ministries.