Pentecostalism

The Pentecostal movement within Christianity was started around 1901 by Charles Fox Parham,

a minister of Methodist background.

The expansion of the movement

started with the Asuza Street Revival,

beginning April 9, 1906 at the Los Angeles home of

a Mr and Mrs Edward Lee when Mr Lee experienced

an episode of glossolalia during a prayer session.

The attending pastor,

William J. Seymour, was overcome with the Holy Spirit

on April 12, 1906. On April 18, 1906, the Los Angeles Times ran a front page story on the movement.

By the third week in April, 1906,

the small but growing

congregation had rented an abandoned AME

church at 312 Asuza Street and organized as the Apostolic Faith Mission.

The first decade of Pentecostalism was marked

by interracial assemblies,"...Whites and blacks mix in a religious frenzy,..."

according to a local newspaper account. Unfortunately,

this lasted only until 1924, when the church split along racial lines.

In 1994, Pentecostals returned to their roots of racial

reconciliation and proposed formal unification of the

the major white and black branches of the Pentecostal Church,

in a meeting subsequently known as the Memphis Miracle.

This unification occurred in 1998, again in Memphis, Tennessee.

The estimated size of the Pentecostal Church worldwide is

approximately 400 million. Pentecostalism is sometimes

referred to as the "third force of Christianity".

Links:

• Religious movements homepage: Pentecostalism

• "Pentacostalism" by Jeffrey K. Hadden, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia

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