| Chapter : | Introduction |
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It drew upon such varied religious traditions as Wesleyan-Holiness sanctification and the intense emotionalism of slave religious experience to produce a fervent evangelical movement that promoted a renewed emphasis upon the Holy Spirit and personal devotion.4 Pentecostals sought to restore their perception of New Testament Christianity to the modern church they believed to be spiritually corrupt. They differed from Fundamentalists in that Pentecostalism was not concerned with social or historical issues because they believed the “end of all things” was at hand. However, they agreed with the Fundamentalist view of biblical inerrancy. Pentecostals are experiential and speaking in unknown tongues, demonstrations of the “gifts of the Spirit,” and acts of divine healing and miracles are central to their belief and practice. The largest Pentecostal denominations trace their origin to the Azusa Street Revival. By the end of the 1970s, Pentecostalism was considered a major worldwide religious movement and the “fastest growing” segment of the Christian faith.5
Early Pentecostals usually belonged to the poorer and less educated segments of American society. Prior to 1920, white Pentecostals generally lived in the rural areas of the South, particularly on the small farms and communities in the mountains of the Ozarks and Appalachia. Most of them lived in primitive conditions with few modern conveniences. Travel and communication were difficult. As a result, revival meetings and church services presented the greatest opportunities for socialization. When the movement spread to California in 1906 it acquired an urban following in the African American community. William J. Seymour’s Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles brought Pentecostalism into the Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee and led to the establishment of numerous independent Pentecostal missions to ethnic groups in Chicago, Illinois. By the end of World War I, white Pentecostal organizations, such as the Assemblies of God and Church of God, had established headquarters operations in small mountain towns of the South such as Springfield, Missouri, and Cleveland, Tennessee, respectively. The majority of their constituency was southern and rural.6 In contrast, most African American Pentecostals were found in urban areas in the South, Midwest, and California.