08-THE AZUSA STREET REVIVAL

When he arrived to preach, the church doors were locked. He had travelled from Texas to Southern California at the invitation of the pastor, but the message he preached caused the pastor to change her mind. The views espoused by this African-American preacher were questionable at best, at least in the pastor’s mind. There was no way she would allow that message to be preached in her church. She could not stop Seymour from preaching, but she could and would stop it from being preached in her church.

Still in his mid-thirties, William Joseph Seymour was well acquainted with rejection. He began life as the son of recently freed slaves living in Centreville, Louisiana. The South was in transition following the war, but despite the liberation of slaves, it was a society still steeped in class distinctions in 1870. Receiving a good education was out of the question for an African- American. If Seymour was going to learn how to read and write, he would have to teach himself. The fact that he did so is a commentary on his strength of will and determination. Still, as a young man in his twenties, Seymour had had enough. He left the South and headed north to Indianapolis. For several years, he waited on tables in a prominent hotel. By the time he was thirty, he was living in Cincinnati.

Early in life, Seymour had been drawn into the holiness movement then sweeping through the South. In Indianapolis, he attended the local Methodist Episcopal Church, a church that emphasized the ministry of Christ indwelling the life of the believer. By the time he was thirty, he had been "saved and sanctified" through the ministry of a revivalistic group called "the Evening Light Saints." This group believed human history was coming to an imminent end and anticipated Christ soon return to establish His kingdom. Just before that happened, the group believed there would be a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a "latter rain." To prepare for this, the group encouraged Christians to leave existing denominations to become part of a pure and interracial church God was beginning to raise up.

Despite the idealism of the Evening Light Saints, Seymour soon found himself back in the South. In Houston at the turn of the century if you were black and attended church, you attended a black church. It was while attending a black church in Houston that Seymour witnessed something he had never before seen. He heard a woman praying in what seemed like another language. It was widely held by Holiness groups of that day that "speaking in tongues" was a sign that would accompany the arrival of the last days. Seymour sensed this woman had something he longed for but had not yet found. He knew he had to talk with her. When he met with Lucy Farrow, the woman who had spoken in tongues, he learned she had recently worked as a governess in Topeka, Kansas. Her employer was a man named Charles Fox Parham, a white preacher who ran a holiness Bible school, Bethel College, in the same city. It was not long before Seymour headed to Topeka to seek out Parham. When he found him, he begged to be admitted into the school. In making his request, Seymour was once again brought face to face with the realities of life in the South at the turn of the century.

While Parham was always looking for students and welcomed the zeal of Seymour, Parham was also a sympathizer of the Ku Klux Klan. He was not sure he was ready to welcome a black student into his school. On the other hand, how could he turn him away. That just didn’t seem to be the Christian thing to do either. Finally, he arrived at a compromise. He would allow Seymour to listen to his lectures from a chair outside by an open window. In the event of rain, Seymour would be allowed to move his chair into the hall and the door would be left ajar so he could hear.

Seymour agreed to the terms established and began attending Parham’s lectures. Earnestly he sought the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" but without success. He continued preaching at black missions while waiting on God for his own "second blessing." A lady visiting from Los Angeles heard him preach in one of those meetings and recommended him to her pastor back home in California. That recommendation led to an immediate invitation to preach in a little store-front church on Santa Fe Avenue. The church had been started as a split from a local black Baptist church over the doctrine of the second blessing. When the invitation arrived, Seymour saw it as his own Macedonian vision. He borrowed train fare from Parham and made his way west. At his first meeting, Sister Hutchins, pastor of the church, recognized significant differences between the preaching of Seymour and her own views of the second blessing. She considered Seymour extreme in his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, perhaps even heretical. It was clear the two could not continue to work together. When Seymour arrived at the church to preach at an afternoon meeting, he found the church doors locked. He was no longer welcomed in the little store-front church on Santa Fe Avenue.

Undaunted, Seymour agreed to preach in a home on Bonnie Brae Avenue. Several from Sister Hutchins’ church attended the meeting along with others in the shabby neighbourhood north of Temple Street. Most of the congregation was composed of domestic servants and women who took in laundry. As word of the home meetings spread, the crowds grew. People came to hear a preacher who had never spoken in tongues tell how the blessing of God would come soon when all would have this unique gift. As Seymour was preparing to go to the meeting on April 9, 1906, Edward Lee told him he had received a vision. He claimed the Apostles had come to him and told him how to receive the gift of tongues. Together the men prayed, then made their way to the meeting. That night, "the power fell" on those assembled and several, including William Joseph Seymour himself, began praising God in "unknown tongues." As news of the outpouring spread through the community, the little home on Bonnie Brae Avenue soon became too small. The weight of the crowd gathered on the porch outside was so great it broke. While there were no serious injuries, everyone knew something had to be done. An abandoned church building at 312 Azusa Street was available, which had most recently been used as a warehouse and livery stable. The building was swept out and Seymour’s Apostolic Faith Mission moved to their new home on Easter Saturday, April 14, 1906.

Seymour preached an apocalyptic message assuring his listeners the end of the world was at hand. It was his view that Jesus was coming very soon to judge the world and establish His kingdom on earth. Prior to that coming, there would be a "latter rain" outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The evidence that the Spirit had indeed come would be "speaking in tongues." Everything seemed to be happening just as Seymour had said. Then, on the morning of April 18, 1906, four days after the Apostolic Faith Mission had begun holding services on Azusa Street, nine days after the first manifestation of tongues in their midst, the earth itself shook. A major earthquake along the San Andreas fault almost completely destroyed the city of San Francisco. Its impact was felt throughout Southern California. And as the ground shook beneath their feet, lives of many who had ignored Seymour’s message were shaken also.

Daily services at 312 Azusa Street quickly filled with both blacks and whites seeking both salvation and "the baptism of the Holy Ghost." One white preacher in the South commented, "the colour line was washed away by the blood." As the young church witnessed what they perceived to be evidences of the end of the world, their worship of God was noisy and filled with enthusiasm. A sceptical reporter with the Los Angeles Times heard about the meeting and attended. The next day, his report described "wild scenes" and a "weird babble of tongues." He was the first of many to publish negative descriptions of the revival. But not all who investigated the story left as antagonistic. Soon reports were being circulated in Pentecostal circles of those who "came to scorn and stayed to pray."

News of the Azusa Street Revival soon began drawing others from across America and around the world. Seymour himself began publishing an occasional paper describing the progress in the spread of his Pentecostal message. The Apostolic Faith soon had readers across America and beyond. In it, Seymour described the doctrines of the movements and published reports of tonguespeaking around the world. As many as three hundred soon crowded into the forty by sixty foot frame building. On occasion, that crowd doubled forcing worshippers to gather in the doorway and around the building outside. Many who came to investigate the revival were themselves touched and received the Azusa Street blessing. They became the pioneers of the Pentecostal movement of the twentieth century. In its earliest days, the meetings at Azusa Street were multi-racial in character. While Seymour initially taught speaking in tongues was the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, he felt increasingly uncomfortable with Christians who spoke in tongues, yet still harboured racial attitudes toward people of color. He soon began preaching that the dissolution of racial barriers "was the surest sign of the Spirit’s pentecostal presence and the approaching New Jerusalem." Unfortunately, not everyone in the emerging Pentecostal movement agreed.

Charles Parham, Seymour’s mentor in his pilgrimage to Pentecost, arrived in Los Angeles in October 1906 to investigate the revival for himself. Seymour welcomed the arrival of his teacher and invited him to preach in his pulpit. For years, Parham had preached about the need for a new dispensation of the Spirit and came to Azusa Street with great expectation, but what he saw there was far different from his own vision of the coming revival. He shuddered to see blacks and whites praying at the same altar. When a white women "slain in the spirit" fell back into the arms of a black man, he was horrified at what he began to describe as a "darkey revival." When he began preaching, he accused those gathered of practising Animism and rebuked them for their disregard for racial distinction. The elders of the Azusa Street Mission, both black and white, did not appreciate Parham’s condemnation. What Parham considered a work of the devil was perceived by them to be the work of the Holy Spirit. Parham was asked to leave and barred from returning. Unfortunately, he was not the only white holiness preacher sympathetic to the Pentecostal message who was unable to break from the cultural values of the day. Soon after the revival began, Pentecostal denominations began to be formed along racial lines. While they broke with Seymour and his vision of the outworking of Pentecostalism, they did not abandon the Pentecostal experience of speaking in tongues they had seen at Azusa Street.

Several major Pentecostal denominations including the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri, trace their historic roots to the impact of the Azusa Street Revival on their founders. Leaders of a black denomination who called themselves "the Church of God" attended the Azusa Street church for several weeks in June 1907 and returned to transform their entire denomination into what is still the largest black Pentecostal denomination in America. Another Church of God denomination, this one white, became Pentecostal when G. B. Cashwell, an Azusa Street convert described the Azusa Street Revival at the national convention of that denomination. During the meeting, the General Overseer of the group of churches, A. J. Tomlinson, listened attentively. Then suddenly, Tomlinson fell out of his chair and began speaking in tongues at Cashwell’s feet. While a few churches left the movement, most embraced the Pentecostal message. By the end of the century, they were the fastest growing white denomination in America. The influence of the Azusa Street Revival spread far beyond the national boundaries of America. The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada recognize their spiritual indebtedness to Seymour and the Azusa Street mission, especially in the earliest manifestations of charismatic phenomena in Winnipeg and Toronto. Many of their founding fathers first experienced the Pentecostal blessing under Seymour’s preaching, or were mentored by him in their early Pentecostal experience. The spread of the Pentecostal message to South Africa also grew out of the Azusa Street Revival. John G. Lake visited the Azusa Street Mission prior to taking the Pentecostal message to South Africa in 1908. Within five years he had established five hundred black and a hundred and twenty-five white Pentecostal churches in that nation. Others took the Pentecostal message to Europe and Asia. The Apostolic Faith soon reported, The Pentecost has crossed the water on both sides to the Hawaiian Islands on the west, and England, Norway, Sweden and India on the east. . . . We rejoice to hear that Pentecost has fallen in Calcutta, India. . . . We have letters from China, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Australia and other countries from hungry souls that want their Pentecost. . . . In Stockholm, Sweden . . . The first soul cam through tonight, receiving the baptism with the Holy Ghost with Bible evidence. . . . In Christiana, Norway—God is wonderfully demonstrating His power. The Azusa Street Revival continued for about three years. Its views of race relations proved to be too much even for revived Christians at the beginning of the twentieth century. The emphasis on the imminent end of the world also hindered its ability to endure. When Seymour married Jenny Moore, a black leader in his church, some of his strongest supporters objected that marriage was unwise so close to the end of the world. They left to begin a rival group in Portland, Oregon. Seymour himself died in 1922. The Azusa Street church was closed a few years later, demolished to make way for a new plaza. But the influence of the Azusa Street Revival has been felt around the world now for almost a century. In the Year of Our Lord, 1907