Azusa Street Revival

The event

William J. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents from Louisiana, had studied briefly under Charles Parham, an early proponent of the teaching that speaking in tongues constituted the necessary evidence of a subsequent baptism in the Holy Spirit distinct from conversion — a teaching that, combined with Seymour's own preaching, sparked an intense spiritual outpouring after he was invited to lead a small Los Angeles holiness congregation in 1906.

As crowds grew beyond the capacity of the original house meeting, the revival relocated to a former livery stable and African Methodist Episcopal church building at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles, where services continued for extended periods almost daily for roughly three years, featuring speaking in tongues, reported healings, and intensely emotional worship.

The revival was notable, and to many contemporary observers startling, for its racial and social integration at the height of the era of American racial segregation: Black, white, Latino, and Asian worshippers, along with men and women, participated and exercised spiritual leadership together in a manner virtually unprecedented in American religious life of the period, a fact both celebrated by participants and viewed with considerable hostility by segregationist critics, including in the contemporary press.

Visitors traveled to Azusa Street from across the United States and internationally, and Seymour's periodical The Apostolic Faith spread news and testimony of the revival widely; the movement that grew from this and related early twentieth-century revivals — organized eventually into denominations including the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, and numerous others — expanded over the following century into the global Pentecostal and charismatic movement, which by the early twenty-first century numbered several hundred million adherents worldwide, among the most significant developments in the entire history of global Christianity.

Other witnesses

• The Apostolic Faith (Azusa Street mission periodical, 1906-1908 issues)

Further reading

• Christian History Magazine 58: The Rise of Pentecostalism — free full issue
• Christian History Magazine 153: Global Outpouring — free full issue