To know the history of the Pentecostal movement, one needs to know what they believe. Pentecostalism is a movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit. During Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fell upon those in the upper room. Acts 2:1-4 says, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[ as the Spirit enabled them.” (1,3)
The Pentecostal movement started in the late 19th century in revival movements in Great Britain and in the United States of America. Within this movement more attention was placed on the person and the work of the Holy Spirit. Some people felt that the church was missing the power and authority of the church they read about in the bible. We will look at the Pentecostal movement from the past and look at it all the way up through to today. (1)
The earliest date given for the beginning of the Pentecostal movement is January 1, 1901. A man by the name of Charles Parham began teaching that the act of speaking in tongues was the biblical evidence that someone was filled with the Holy Spirit. He started teaching this at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas. Over time Charles Parham moved to Texas to teach. While Charles spoke in Texas, William J. Seymour was attending. William J. Seymour traveled to Los Angeles where he led the Azusa Street Revivals in 1906. The beginning of the w...
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...ecostals. It is important to know where we came from in order to know where we are going. The future is bright for the Assemblies of God if they just rely on God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Works Cited
1. Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001.
2. Miller, Donald E. and Tetsunao Yamamori. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2007.
3. Hollenweger, Walter. Pentecostalism : Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997
4. Burgess. Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity
5. Blumhofer, Edith L. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture, 1993
6. www.ag.org
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Schlossberg, Herbert. Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture. Weaton: Crossway, 1990.
Robert Laurence Moore has written a delightful, enlightening, and provocative survey of American church history centered around the theme of "mixing" the "sacred" with the "secular" and vice versa. The major points of conversation covered include the polarization caused by the public display of religious symbols, the important contribution that women and Africans have made to the American religious mosaic, the harmony and friction that has existed between science and religion, the impact of immigration on religious pluralism, and the twin push toward the union and separation of religion and politics.
· Lewis, CS. Mere Christianity. New York: Doubleday, 1982. · McBride, David. The Story of the Church.
The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement, by Douglas A. Sweeney. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005. 208 pages. Reviewed by Susan L. Schulte.
Mead, Loren B. The Once and Future Church Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier . The Alban Institute, Inc., 1991. Kindle eBook file.
William Joseph Seymour was born in 1870 in Louisiana. He was the first African American preacher to induce the Pentecostal religious movement (Alexander 9). Seymour was a scholars at Novel Bible School, which was established in 1905 by Charles Parham in Texas (Espinosa 12). This was where Seymour learned and embraced major doctrines and teachings that were propagated by the Holiness Movement, the common belief of speaking in tongues (Glossolalia) (Heaton 13). According to the belief, speaking in tongues was observed as an actual confirmation and assurance of the gift of the Holy Spirit in a Christian.
This mass enterprise is reviewed through five traditions in the early nineteenth century: the Christian movement, the Methodists, the Baptists, the black churches, and the Mormons. Hatch explains that these major American movements were led by young men who shared “an ethic of unrelenting toil, a passion for expansion, a hostility to orthodox belief and style, a zeal for religious reconstruction, and a systematic plan to realize their ideals” (4). These leaders changed the scope of American Christianity by orientating toward democratic or populist ideals. Their movements offered both individual potential and collective aspiration, which were ideas ready to be grasped by the young and booming population. These early leaders had a vision of a faith that disregarded social standing, and taught all to think, interpret, and organize their faith for themselves. It was a faith of “religious populism, reflecting the passions of ordinary people and the charisma of democratic movement-builders” (5).
May, Henry F. The Recovery of American Religious History. The American Historical Review. Vol. 70, No. 1. 1964.
Mead, Frank S., and Samuel S. Hill. Handbook of Denominations in the United States. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1995. Print.
Gaustad, Edwin S. The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today. N.p.: HarperOne, 2004. Print.
Noll, Mark A. The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002.
Jenkins, Phillips. The Lost History of Christianity. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. Print. Phillips, Jonathan.
The history of Pentecostalism is widely disputed amongst historians; some believe that Pentecostalism began with Jesus’ disciple’s baptism in the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost, while other historians argue that the religion itself dates as recent as the early ninety’s. In the historiographical essay, “Assessing the Roots of Pentecostalism,” Randall J. Stephens claims that the Pentecostal movement started in 1901 and the famous 1906 Los Angeles revival on Azusa Street helped the religion grow to currently contain approximately 420 million followers. The followers, being mostly lower and middle-class groups who were “multi-ethnic and often challenged racial norms” (Wilma Wells Davies 2), of the revival were unhappy...
Sweet, Leonard I. Communication and Change in American Religious History. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993.