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1906 CEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

The Azusa Street Revival Launches Global Pentecostalism

A one-eyed son of formerly enslaved parents starts a movement in a converted stable that reaches the Vatican within a century

On the timeline · around 1906 CE · Modern ChristianityModern ChristianityThe Azusa Street Revival Launches Global Pentecostalism18001850190019502000

Quick facts

Leader
William J. Seymour
Location
312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles
Began
April 1906 CE
Missionaries sent out by 1910
More than 200, mostly women

What happened

William Seymour, born in Louisiana in 1870 to formerly enslaved parents, brought the Pentecostal teaching of Charles Fox Parham, that speaking in tongues was evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit, to Los Angeles in early 1906 CE. After a month of prayer and fasting, Seymour and several companions spoke in tongues on April 9, 1906, and the growing crowds soon moved services into a former African Methodist Episcopal church building on Azusa Street, a plain structure that packed in as many as 600 people at a time for services marked by shouting, trances, and interracial worship that was unusual for its time and place. News of the revival spread through Seymour's own periodical, The Apostolic Faith, and through missionaries who carried the movement abroad; more than 200 Pentecostal missionaries, most of them women, had gone out from Azusa and related centers by 1910.

Why it matters

The Azusa Street revival is the event historians most commonly point to as the origin of the modern global Pentecostal and charismatic movement, which by the early 21st century had grown into one of Christianity's largest and fastest-growing branches, with particular strength across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

How we know

Contemporary accounts survive in Seymour's own newspaper The Apostolic Faith, published from the revival itself between 1906 and 1908, supplemented by later historical scholarship drawing on those same primary records.

Sources

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Part of a timelineHistory of Christianity28 events · A crucified Jewish teacher, a persecuted sect that became an empire's official religion, and two thousand years of councils, schisms, and missions that carried it to every continentView all →
The Azusa Street Revival Launches Global Pentecostalism · History of Christianity · SourcedStory