Are The Golden Oldies Still Worth Playing Reflections On History Writing Among Early Pentecostals

Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars

81 Are the Golden Oldies Still Worth Playing? Reflections on History Writing among Early Pentecostals Grant Wacker* When religious movements are young they rarely exhibit much interest in their own history. Undoubtedly the principal reason for that trait is that they are preoccupied with the urgency of proclaiming their message. Moreover, movements invariably believe that their origins were supernatural, which is to say, forged outside the ordinary processes of history. In time, however, as movements become self-conscious about who they are and where they fit on the religious landscape, they become curious about their origins. Their initial attempts to trace their beginnings are, however, almost always triumphalist and uncritical. The construction of a self- critical account that can withstand the scrutiny of nonpartisan readers rarely appears until second or third-generation members enter graduate programs in secular universities and write doctoral dissertations on their tradition. Nonetheless, the work of first- generation historians usually merits attention, for it often contains data not available anywhere else and, more importantly, reveals a great deal about the moods and motivations of the movement itself. The early historians of the pentecostal revival fit this pattern. Their writing was fiercely apologetic, but it was packed with information gleaned from first-hand observation and, more significantly, it bristled with rich evocations of the cultural texture of the early days. When we look at the work of the early historians, three broad questions come to mind. First, how did they interpret the nature of history itself? What social mechanisms made it move? Where was it going? Simply stated, what was their general philosophy of history? The second broad question is how did the early writers conceive the theological, geographical, and social origins of the movement? What was pentecostalism? Where did it begin? What kind of people converted? And finally, how did the first historians interpret the long range meaning or significance of the movement? Where did it fit in the sweep of world history? What did it signify about the end of history? Before examining the way that the early historians dealt with those questions, it may be helpful to review who the principal writers were and what the corpus of their work looks like. They fall into two .broad categories. The first group consisted of authors who self-consciously under- stood themselves to be writing a general account of the movement’s 1 82 beginnings. Significantly, no one attempted a work of that sort for the first fifteen years, but in 1916 B.F. Lawrence published The Apostolic Faith Restored. Although the latter purported to be a survey of pentecostal origins, the focus was upon events in the lower Midwest, especially Texas. About a third of the volume consisted of Lawrence’s personal recollections, while the remaining portion consisted of extracts from periodicals and letters from leaders. The book was singularly valuable, partly because it was, as far as I know, the first serious historical study written by a pentecostal, and partly because it contained lengthy extracts from periodicals that later were lost. In 1925 Frank Bartleman published How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles-How It Was in the Beginning. Although this work was largely autobiographical, Bartleman was a central figure in the California revival, and a bit player in subsequent stirrings in the Northeast. Thus his recol- lections revealed a good deal about broader developments. Like all of the early writers, Bartleman was a relatively uneducated man, but he possessed shrewd historical instincts. He had a fine eye for significant details, and displayed a colorful writing style filled with memorable one-liners (the ” `Pillar of Fire”‘, he deadpanned, “had gone up in smoke”). The following year Stanley Frodsham published “With Signs Following” The Story of the Latter-Day Pentecostal Revival. Perhaps four-fifths of this work consisted of extracts from periodicals and letters from converts in all parts of the world. Although Frodsham was more a compiler than a historian, his book broke out of the parochial geographical scope and reflected a much greater range of sources than those by Lawrence and Bartleman. In 1958 Ethel E. Goss released, The Winds of God: The Story of the Early Pentecostal Days (1901- 1914) in the Life of Howard A. Goss, as told by Ethel E. Goss. This volume is, apparently, a redaction of her husband’s personal diary, but since the latter is not publicly available, it is difficult to know to what extent they differ. In any event, Goss was a key figure in the development of the movement in the lower Midwest. Thus his autobiography, like Bartleman’s, bears a broader significance than the title suggests. Finally we should note The Phenomenon of Pentecost: (a history of “The Latter Rain’), published by Frank J. Ewart in 1947. Although written many years after the flowering the of revival, Ewart’s account probably should be ranked with the ones mentioned above. He was on hand nearly from the beginning (taking over William H. Durham’s mission in Los Angeles in 1912), and his book seems to have been based upon careful diary notes. Ewart emphasized developments on the West Coast and the movement’s expansion in the Orient 1 ° 2 Cotton, who sought consciously historical fashion, by , expositions following general sequence 83 Zelma Argue, and Mother Emma and by less well known figures such and Elizabeth V. Baker. Such . ‘ . The second category of primitive historical writing that we shall consider might be called “incidental” history. This group includes authors like Henry Tuthill, to tell the story of the early days in a self- but devoted only one or two articles to the task. It also includes theological and polemical expositions well known figures such as Charles Fox Parham, William J. Seymour, and A.J. Tomlinson, as A.A. Boddy, J.G. Campbell, are relevant to this essay-and frequently cited in the pages-when they contained recollections about the of events or state of affairs in the early years. A final source embraced under the rubric of “incidental” history were studies by contemporary outsiders. Examples include the five- volume autobiography of Alma White, The Story of My Life and Pillar of Fire, and Charles W. Shumway’s 1914 A.B. thesis at the of Southern California, “A Study of the ‘Gift of was principally in the history of in Christianity, but he included considerable data on the of the movement in the United States based upon personal interviews with or questionnaires sent to pentecostal leaders.2 University Tongues.'” Shumway glossolalia origins ‘ starting point history pentecostals partly dependent upon interested II historians Let us begin by asking how the early pentecostal understood the nature of history itself. Simply stated, what was their philosophy of history? At the most general level, pentecostals, like most Christians, assumed that history was linear, moving by divine guidance from a to an ending point. That meant that ultimately was providential, progressing inexorably from Creation to the Final Judgment, whether human beings cooperated or not. But unlike many Christians, or at least many modern Christians, also believed that God’s governance of history was human responses. Theoretically the situation was logically contradictory. God was sovereign and immutable yet to human entreaties. Pentecostal writers seem not to by the contradiction, convinced that God intended to bring about a worldwide men and women for the Lord’s Coming, but exactly when and where the revival would take place was dependent upon the Christians. Bartleman was certain, for susceptible have been worried prepare depth of repentence among however. They were revival to 3 84 . that God had sent the earthquake to San Francisco in example, order to alert people to their spiritual peril. He was equally certain that his own prayers and the repentence of the saints in the Los Angeles area had prevented a similar disaster in that area.3 Against that background of a generally but not completely providential view of history, pentecostals constructed an elaborate notion of historical cycles and epicycles. Fundamentally, history was linear, yet in their minds history also displayed countless cycles of spiritual coldness within the established churches, repentence by a select few, God’s blessing upon the latter, who inevitably slipped into spiritual pride, organization, ossification, and finally outright apostasy. At that point a new cycle would begin.4 Pentecostals were certain, of course, that their revival represented an authentic reform movement, but they rarely considered the possibility that someday they too would backslide into apostasy and that another renewal would displace them. Probably there were two reasons. First, they expected the Lord’s return momentarily, and thus did not imagine that there would be enough time for a relapse. Second, they believed that the historical time line was curving back to the beginning, forming a full circle. That meant that the current revival represented not merely another epicycle of decay and renewal, but the final epicycle that would bring history full circle. Simply stated, the present revival had nearly become a perfect replication of the beginning of the Christian era, and when that process was complete, when the present became a mirror of the beginning, history would come to an end. First-generation pentecostals sometimes talked about providence, successive waves of renewal, and the full circle of history, but ordinarily they described those events in a different vocabulary. They called it the promise of the Latter Rain. The structure of Latter Rain theology, and the cultural assumptions from which it emerged, have been discussed at some length in another context and need not be repeated here. At this point it is sufficient to say that the Latter Rain theology principally asserted that the signs and wonders-including, most notably, speaking in tongues-that characterized the apostolic church would reappear at the end of history. Differently stated, when the miracles of the apostolic church finally reappeared after centuries of apostasy and disuse, Christians would know that the end of history and the Lord’s return was near.5 , The early writers’ conviction that their revival uniquely replicated the beliefs and practices of the apostolic church partly accounts for their deliberate disinterest (as opposed to a simple lack of interest) in the centuries of Christian tradition stretching from the second to 4 85 the twentieth centuries. The older denominations, Lawrence judged, had existed long enough to “establish precedent, create habit, formulate custom.” In this way they have become possessed of a two-fold criterion of doctrine-the New Testament and the church position. [But pentecostals] do not recognize a doctrine or a custom as authoritative unless it can be traced to … the Lord and His apostles. This reversion to the New Testament [is] responsible for … the absence of any serious effort … to trace an historical connection with the primitive church. .. The Pentecostal Movement has no such history; it leaps the intervening years crying, “BACK TO PENTECOST!”6 It should be admitted that the disinterest in Christian tradition sometimes was more apparent than real. From time to time pentecostal historians compared their leaders with Martin Luther, George Fox, and John Wesley, or portrayed their revival as the direct successor to the Irvingite and holiness revivals of the previous century. The reasons for this ambivalence are easy to see. Fear of being depicted as schismatics-or worse-prompted them to claim some measure of continuity with the main body of Christians.8 Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that the movement’s fundamental was to deny its rootedness in Christian tradition and the final ‘ . impulse to insist, as noted above, that it represented renewal that would complete history by bringing it full circle. To summarize, the early pentecostal view of history was simul- taneously providential, cyclical, and restorationist. Beyond that, pentecostal historians had virtually no sense of what modern scholars call historicism: the assumption that all social and cultural patterns are products of, and therefore explainable in terms of, antecedent social and cultural patterns. I say “virtually” because they instinctively employed historicist principles when they sought to explain (or more precisely, explain away) the motivations of their opponents. But when pentecostals tried to account for their own beginnings and development, they readily wove natural and supernatural forces into a seamless web. Examples are countless. Bartleman was certain, for example, that the devil tried to keep him from attending a revival service by electrocuting the motorman on the streetcar he was riding. When a Baptist church expelled members who spoke in tongues, Ewart triumphantly pointed out that the meeting house burned down and the pastor died. Goss similarly noted that a real estate agent was “struck down” in a fatal car accident when she refused to sell a lot to a pentecostal prayer band. Pentecostals were equally hard on each other. When Parham got into a fight with William H. Durham over the timing of sanctification, he publicly prayed that God would smite dead ‘ . 5 86 whoever was wrong-and crowed about the results when Durham died six months later.9 – The early writer’s disposition to weave natural and supernatural causes, and their corresponding inclination to avoid historicist principles of explanation (except for polemical purposes), helps explain their readiness to attribute the movement’s origins to direct supernatural interventions in the historical process. No idea was more pervasive than the implication that the revival dropped from heaven like a sacred meteor. That theme tended to take two forms. One was the insistence that the movement emerged without human leadership-or as Seymour put it, “the source is from the skies.” Again and again pentecostals suggested that although spokesmen such as Parham, Seymour, and Tomlinson were as great as any in the history of Christianity, they were, nonetheless, essentially accidental to the inner life of the movement. An unnamed historian writing in the (Tomlinson) Church of God’s Faithful Standard characteristically proclaimed that “THE HOLY GHOST [has been] THE LEADER-not any man.” Elizabeth V. Baker extolled the “absence of human machinery.” This determined denial of human causality helps account for its lack of curiosity about its beginnings. If the source was from the skies, and if human instruments were irrelevant, there really was not much about which to write. It is significant that the first major effort by a pentecostal scholar to reconstruct the history of the Assemblies of God, published as late as 1961, was called Suddenly … from Heaven-a title that hardly could have been more non-historical, if not anti- historical, in intent.10 The sacred meteor theme showed up in another form as well. That was the assertion that the revival had arisen in all parts of the world without sparks of influence from any other part of the movement. The Faithful Standard historian noted, for example, that the “first really great shower of the Latter Rain fell in Los Angeles … but before news could have reached them, a similar shower fell in a Mission School in India.” From there it swept around the world, “even though no one had brought the message. It was the Lord’s doing.” As late as 1949 Donald Gee, arguably the most astute and worldly-wise figure pentecostalism has produced, wrote that the movement did “not owe its origin to any outstanding personality or religious leader, but was a spontaneous revival appearing almost simultaneously in various parts of the world.” Sometimes the early historians skirted the question of influence, as if the problem had never occurred to them. And sometimes, admittedly, they did trace lines of connection, pointing out, for example, that Seymour took the message from Houston to Los 6 87 Angeles, or that Barratt carried it from New York to Oslo. Yet linkages of that sort were made haphazardly. Circuits of information and patterns of influence were interesting bits of information perhaps, but irrelevant to understanding the real reasons the movement had emerged. ? ? I Pentecostal historians did not believe, however, that the mechanisms of cultural change were entirely providential. Although they did not worry very much about the way that divine and human agencies interlocked, they were convinced that human repentence and obedience-or the lack of them-had a lot to do with the timing and placement of God’s actions in history. Bartleman, more than anyone, stressed the causal efficacy of self-mortifying humility. Goss, taking a somewhat different tack, boasted that most of the leaders were young, not formally educated, and not affiliated with the established denominations-which meant that they had nothing to lose, no ecclesiastical traditions to preserve or educational interests to protect. Human failures were just as important. The fact that the revival did not emerge within the ranks of the established denominations came as no suprise, for in pentecostal eyes the established denominations were spiritually dead, hopelessly entangled in traditions and institutions. The holiness folk were almost as bad. The Faithful Standard historian spoke for countless pentecostals when he judged that God had by-passed the holiness churches because they proved too proud to admit the incomplete- ness of their spiritual experience. They used to experience real signs and wonders, he jabbed, “but alas, we hear practically none of these . ‘ things [now].”‘2 For the early pentecostal historians, in sum, historical process was anything but simple. History moved inexorably from Creation to Final Judgment, to be sure, but within that framework there were cycles and epicycles, and the engine that drove the mechanism was fueled by an unfathomable mixture of divine providence and human response. When we turn from questions about their philosophy of history to concrete questions about their view of the immediate theological, geographical, and social origins of the movement, the picture becomes even more complex. . III When asking how the primitive historians interpreted the origins of the movement, we first need to recognize that their under- standing of what pentecostalism was, determined to a great extent their depiction of where and among whom it began. Let us begin then by asking how they defined the movement. 7 88 Donald Dayton has rightly argued that it is anachronistic to define primitive pentecostalism in terms of the doctrine that speaking in tongues is the sole initial physical evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. There can be little doubt that that norm became the litmus test of orthodoxy among pentecostals, or at least among white ones, after World War I, but during the first ten or fifteen years of the movement’s life there was considerable debate about the essence of the pentecostal message. Although it would be an overstatement to say that during this period everything was up for grabs, the early periodicals make clear that the boundary lines that defined who was in or out were extremely porous. Today one might plausibly argue that John Alexander Dowie, A.B. Simpson, or even F.F. Bosworth, did not qualify as pentecostals because they did not have the right views about speaking in tongues, but discriminations of that sort were not self-evident in the early 1 900s. 13 The cultural and theological fluidity of first-generation pente- costalism shows up in the work of the initial historians. To be sure, all of them assumed that the “four-square” gospel of salvation, divine healing, speaking in tongues, and expectation of the Lord’s return constituted the indispensable core of the movement. But the interpretation and priority they ascribed to one or another of those notions, and the array of doctrines, rituals, and social practices they tacked on to them, varied according to time and place. Goss, for example, stressed “fast music” as a uniquely distinctive feature of the movement. J.G. Campbell, editor of the Apostolic Faith in Goose Creek, Texas, believed that the most notable aspect of Parham’s Bible school in Topeka (both before and after 1901) was . the fact that all property was held in common and that no one held outside jobs. In 1912 Parham himself declared that the principle of conditional immortality (that is, the annihilation of the wicked) was the “most important doctrine in the world today,” and he insisted that believers might possess the gift but not the sign of tongues. The Faithful Standard historian ranked baptism by immersion right along with tongues and healing as necessary doctrines. Homer Tomlinson claimed that in the early days footwashing had been considered just as crucial. Elizabeth V. Baker, a prominent evangelist and a founder of the Rochester Bible and Missionary Training Institute, debunked the idea that tongues was the only evidence of baptism of the Holy Spirit. To say that . stalwarts like Huss and Wesley did not have the baptism, she urged, was the “same as to say that one can live the most Christ-like life, bringing forth all the fruits of the Spirit, without the Holy Spirit.” A.J. Tomlinson first spoke in tongues in January 1907, but did not . 8 89 mention tongues in his diary until June of that year, and did not use the word pentecostal until November of the following year. Indeed, – as late as September 1905, long after he had heard about tongues as the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Tomlinson described the “most wonderful meeting” he was ever in without mentioning tongues. “People fell in the floor and some writhed like serpents…. Some fell in the road, one seemed to be off in a trance four or five hours. The church seemed to be greatly edified. “14 Theological predilections governed the historical imagination in other respects too. Although the data are elusive, there are good reasons to doubt that the Azusa Mission was as important as some of the early historians suggested.15 Yet writers like A.A. Boddy, who assumed that speaking in tongues constituted the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, may have been predisposed to heighten Azusa’s influence partly because many of the persons associated with Azusa became spokesmen for that doctrine. To take a different example, Charles Shumway dramatized Parham’s importance at the expense of other leaders and sectors of the movement. The reason Parham loomed large in Shumway’s account undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that Shumway, a well educated Methodist, considered pentecostalism socially disruptive and theologically aberrant. While Parham’s meetings were hardly sedate, Parham seems, nonetheless, to have enforced a degree of decorum that was unusual among early pentecostals. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that Shumway puffed Parham while downplaying figures like Seymour. and Tomlinson who encouraged a more freewheeling style of worship Personal friendship or animosity also influenced the historical imagination. Parham offers a case in point. Again, the data are elusive, but it is indisputable that he dropped out of the mainstream of the pentecostal movement after he was charged with a sexual irregularity of some sort in 1907. ?? Tuthill, who was a close friend of Parham’s and believed that Parham had been framed by “one who confesses to a vile life,” nonetheless depicted Parham as the premier figure of the first-generation. Lawrence took a middle tack. Clearly believing that Parham was a good man gone astray, Lawrence mentioned Parham’s name two or three times, but no more than necessary to establish a connected sequence of events. Frodsham weighed in at the far side of the ring. He wrote two chapters about Parham’s schools and revivals in Kansas and Texas, all in the passive mode (“a Bible school was opened at Topeka”). Frodsham thereby managed not once to mention Parham’s name nor even to hint that someone named Parham had existed. 18 9 90 As things turned out, however, no one was more adamant about getting the story straight than Parham himself. His recollections about who founded the movement, and who did not, are revealing. They show that very human feelings of pride and hurt also influenced the historical memory. “My position,” he declared in a retrospective article of 1912, “given July 4th, 1900, was a God-given commission to deliver to this age the truths of a restored PENTECOST.” But the commission was “lifted” in 1907, and an array of “men- leaders” immediately started jostling for power. The first was W.O. Carothers, who became “crazed with the desire for leadership and sought the destruction of everyone … that stood in the way.” Then came a “confessed hypnotist by the name of [Glenn] Cook who soon made Azusa a hotbed of … religious orgies outrivaling scenes in devil … worship.” Carothers and Cook were followed by Levi Lupton, who “spoke no real languages, but only the fleshly chattering”; William H. Piper, who was “under the influence of a spiritualistic medium”; Elmer Fisher, who “stole his congregation from Azusa”; then William H. Durham, who “found the sewage of Azusa congenial to his influence.” But the worst was Seymour, who tried to “fill the earth with the worst prostitution of Christianity I ever witnessed.” In the beginning, Parham allowed, Seymour acknowledged the true origins of the revival, but as he grew “drunken with power and flattery [he] used all his papers to prove that Azusa was the original ‘crib’ of this Movement.” The plain truth, Parham concluded, was that the apostolic faith started in Topeka, Kansas, January 1, 1901, and “all who now accept … the wildfire, fanatical, windsucking, chattering, jabbering, trance, bodyshaking originating in Azusa … will fall.”‘9 If there was disagreement among the early historians regarding the theological boundaries of the movement, there was substantial consensus about the theological inner core. That meant, in turn, that there was measureable agreement not about the exact place where the movement began, but about the range of options that might reasonably be considered. Consider, for example, the case of Frank S. Sandford’s Shiloh Movement near Brunswick, Maine, which was rarely mentioned by the early historians. Through the 1890s and 1900s all of the characteristic beliefs and practices of pentecostalism, including resurrections from the dead, took place at Shiloh. All, that is, except speaking in tongues. Although primitive pentecostals disputed the theological meaning and linguistic nature of tongues, none doubted that it was a coveted part of Christian experience. Clearly the absence (or at most, minimal role) of tongues at Shiloh precluded it from serious consideration as a fountain of the pentecostal revival.2° ‘ . 10 91 The early historians’ disagreement-albeit a circumscribed one-about the theological boundaries of the revival resulted in disagreement about where it started. Some writers manifestly tried to be even-handed. Lawrence and Goss, for example, attributed the movement’s origins in about equal measure to the Houston and Los Angeles revivals; Frodsham tossed in Zion City. Tuthill suggested that the first sprinkle of the Latter Rain had fallen in Cherokee County, North Carolina, in 1896, but that greater showers had fallen in the Midwest after the turn of the century, culminating in the cloudburst at Azusa in 1906. Often, however, the question of origins provoked hot dispute. No one doubted that there had been authentic stirrings in western North Carolina, eastern Kansas, southeastern Texas, and southern California, within the ten or twelve years spanning the turn of the century. The issue was the chronological and spiritual priority of those events. Seymour attributed the beginning of the “world wide revival” to the Azusa Mission, barely acknowledging its connection with antecedent fires in other parts of the country. Bartleman showed visible irritation at the suggestion that the California stirring was dependent upon others. “-We had prayed down our own revival,” he growled. “The revival in California was unique and separate as to origin.” A.J. Tomlinson tried to do an end run by insisting that the revival had no beginning. The Church of God simply uncovered or made explicit what always had been present-albeit covertly-since the days of the apostles. Homer Tomlinson claimed that all branches of the pentecostal movement grew from the little band of believers that his father had discovered in North Carolina in 1896. One by one, he argued, Parham, Seymour, Florence Crawford, E.N. Bell, even the Church of the Nazarene, had split from his father’s group.21 Just as there was circumscribed disagreement about what the pentecostal movement was and where it began, so too there was limited disagreement about what kind of people the first pente- costals were. Although there was some discussion about Wesleyan versus Reformed patrimony, so far as I can tell, none of the early historians was particularly concerned about which denominational groups the initial converts represented. Nor did they say much about their racial or ethnic backgrounds. Almost all of the historians made incidental comments about the interracial and multi-ethnic character of the early meetings, and Bartleman made a minor point of the fact that the direction of the pentecostal movement on the West Coast was soon taken over by whites, while Mother Emma Cotton emphasized its black origins.22 But no one seems to have been strongly interested in the question. They were, however, very much interested in the movement’s social composition. . . , . . 11 92 Two tendencies prevailed. One was to stress its lower class character. Seymour, for example, pointed out that the revival had started among poor colored and Spanish people. If God had waited for (middle class) folk in the established churches to open their hearts to the Spirit, it never would have happened. The other-and seemingly opposite-tendency was to stress the movement’s middle or even upper middle class character. Goss boasted that some of the “best people” in Texas attended his services. L.C. Hall proudly noted how one meeting was held in the “neighborhood of three large universities. Many attended from these and some of the theologues were baptized.” A.W. Orwig remembered that the Azusa Mission attracted all types of people, “not a few of them educated and refined.” Pentecostals rarely missed a chance to excoriate secular entertainment, but also gloated about converts from that world. “One of the results of the revival [in Copenhagen],” Frodsham wrote, “was the salvation of a great Danish actress, Anna Larsen…. Another Danish actress, Anna Lewini, was also saved and filled.” Remarks like these probably reveal more about the status hunger of the writers than the actual social position of the converts, but they do indicate that the movement was not, in its own historical perception at least, uniformly drawn from the most destitute ranks of society.23 . . . IV . If the early historians evinced healthy disagreement about the theological, geographical, and social provenance of the movement, they displayed remarkable unanimity when they assessed its significance in the history of Christianity. For all of them, the revival bore “a meaning that might be called cosmocentric. That meant, for one thing, that they were certain that the eyes of the world were upon them. In January 1907 Seymour headlined a brief survey of the movement’s development with the words: “Beginning of World Wide Revival.” Eleven months later Bartleman exuberantly wrote that the California work was “spreading worldwide.” Parham, not surprisingly, insisted that the epicenter of the global revival was to be found in southeastern Kansas; A.J. Tomlinson thought western North Carolina more likely. The Faithful Standard assured its readers, in any event, that this was the ‘ “greatest revival the world has ever known.”24 But it was more than that. It was the fulcrum of human history as well. As noted above, the early historians (like all pentecostals) were certain that the present revival betokened the Latter Rain, the 12 93 final epicycle of history that would bring the human saga full circle, thus ushering in the apocalyptic events of the Last Days. This is to say that the “signs and wonders” of the revival were regarded as dispensational signals, divine outpourings, as Elizabeth Baker put it, designed to “ripen the grain before the Husbandman gathers it.” In A.J. Tomlinson,’s words, the purpose of the revival was to bring about the “evangelization of the world, gathering of Israel, new order of things at the close of the Gentile age.”No one captured the cosmocentric orientation of their vision better than Ewart: “By one great revolutionary wrench [God] is lifting His church back over the head of every sect, every creed, every organized system of theology, and [putting] it back where it was in power, doctrine and glory, on and after the Day of Pentecost.” And the Day of Pentecost-we can almost see the grin-“was the most important day in the history of the human race.” for all other great days of Christian history “emptied themselves in essence into the great day of Pentecost.”25 Robert Anderson has argued that “fratricidal warfare” constituted one of the most pervasive features of early pentecostal life. He is right, yet it is important to see that many of those brawls were arguments not about each other, per se, but about their place in history. Jostling for pride of place entailed endless disputes about which branch of the movement was going to win in the long run. Ewart, who stood on the Reformed side of the tradition, wrote off his Wesleyan rivals as “inconsequential … die-hards.” Parham dismissed those who were attempting to organize the Assemblies of God as a “bunch of imitating, chattering, wind-sucking, holy-roller preachers.” The latter were riding toward their fall, he warned, for “God is truly separating the wheat from the tares to gather them into his garner.” As for the holiness people who had rejected the pentecostal message, there was no hope at all. Most, intoned the Faithful Standard, are now back into “formal churches, or out all together…. It is difficult to find a little group of Holiness people anywhere.” The wonder is not that pentecostal writers made harsh judgments of this sort, but that they did not make them more often. Pentecostals were convinced beyond question that they-and they alone-were riding the crest of history. When Frodsham drew an analogy between the Apostle John’s effort to write a narrative of the ” `things which Jesus did”‘ and his own effort to describe “how the Holy Spirit fell in … this twentieth century,” he may have revealed more about his assumptions than he intended.26 ‘ 13 94 . v That brings us finally to the question we started with: Are the golden oldies still worth playing? The initial answer is no, not if we expect them to serve as reliable representations of what “really happened.” All historical works are of course interpretive; none offers a God’s-eye view. But some come closer than others. And by the’standards of modern, professional historical scholarship, the , studies by self-ascribed historians like Bartleman and Frodsham, not to mention the historical recollections of popular leaders like Parham and Tomlinson, are far from reliable. There are several reasons. Although the works of all of the early writers were marred with simple factual errors of name, date, place, and sequence, my sense is that the errors were not so numerous as to render those works automatically unfit. Indeed, far more often than not, their factual assertions prove corroborable. The real problems have to do with defensivness and the absence of critical standards. Defensiveness showed up most often as a determination to omit any data that might reflect poorly upon persons the author wanted to protect or upon the movement as a whole. Bartleman and Parham tended to let the chips fall where they would, but most writers elided any person or any aspect of the story they found distasteful. Indeed, Frodsham was quite explicit about this, acknow- ledging that he did not intend to say anything about anyone’s mistakes. The sentiment was laudable, but the result was not, for in his zeal to protect the movement he omitted the names of many deserving figures whom he disliked or considered theologically unsound. The most egregious omission, as noted, was of Parham, but others such as Goss, Maria Woodworth-Etter, and Aimee McPherson also failed to make his roster. The kind of defensiveness Frodsham and most of the early writers exhibited also proved counterproductive. Sanitizing the story rendered it less than believeable, thus guaranteeing that unsympathetic outsiders would step in to fill the lacuna with exaggerated tales of sexual and financial turpitude.2? A more serious deficiency in the work of the early historians was their lack of critical standards. By that I mean that they were unable or unwilling to see that sound historical writing consisted of a recitation of publicly available facts and an interpretation of those facts in terms of publicly available theories of human motivation and social change. Simply stated, they failed to recognize that history was not theology. Figuring out what God had or had not done in human history was not the business of the historian but of 14 . But pentecostal They rarely God unpersuasive to outsiders. . house-the rules by But unreliable as ‘ institutional early ‘ it was history Seized upon as against light, gender bias. 95 historians rarely understood this. of the of pentecostal history abound. One , the theologian. realized that when they openly and deliberately placed “at the center of the action” they were making their works That was not because outsiders were necessarily irreligious, nor even unsympathetic, but because theological assertions smuggled in as historical “facts” violated the rules of the which the game was supposed to be played.28 that is not the end of the story. If the golden oldies are conventional historical works, they are, nonetheless, useful as “ritualized” works. By that I mean that they present a version of the past that was congruent with the theological and needs of the movement at the time they were written. Consequently the data were filtered and the interpretations data were simplified and dramatized in order to make them serve the larger purposes of the movement. Davis Bitton’s assessment of Mormon history writing is relevant to early pentecostals’s. Ritualized history, he has pointed out, “was not invention.” Rather cast in the form of a morality play. a useful symbol of the struggle of darkness of the triumph of the latter, and of God’s … providential care over his Saints, the incident was simplified, dramatized and commemorated…..New converts, as part of their assimilation into the body of the faithful, could easily master the simplified history and accept it as their own.29 Examples of the ritualization of the more egregious was white racial bias. The problem was not so much that the role of blacks was elided as that the influence of black culture upon white pentecostal worship patterns and folk theology was ignored.3° A more serious distortion was persistent male There are, for example, tantalizing indications in the primary evidence that Lucy Farrow may have been as instrumental as William Seymour in bringing about the Azusa Street revival,.31 women pastors and evangelists Maria Woodworth-Etter, Carrie Judd Montgomery, Elizabeth V. Baker, and Susan Duncan was systematically eclipsed. Rather than offering a lengthy potpourri of additional examples, it may be more useful to examine one in some detail. , The ritualization of early pentecostal history is well illustrated by the manner in which the sequence of events at Parham’s Bible school in Topeka in the fall of 1900 was depicted by Parham and, as far as I know, by all pentecostal historians after him. In Parham’s autobiography, published posthumously in 1930, he stated that in December 1900 he and his students determined diligent study of Acts 2, “what was the Bible The pivotal role of McPherson, however, such as Aimee . to learn, through evidence of the 15 96 baptism of the Holy Ghost.” Parham then left the school for three days. When he returned the morning of December 31st, he asked the students what their study of the Bible had revealed. “To my astonishment,” he wrote, “they all had the same story, that while .. there were different things which occured when the Pentecostal blessing fell, that the indisputable proof on each occasion was, that. they spake with other tongues.” That night, when Agnes Ozman asked that hands be laid upon her so that she might receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost, “glory fell upon her … and she began speaking in the Chinese language. “32 There was a subtle but important difference between this 1930 account and Parham’s description of those same events in a sermon preached twenty one days after they took place (that is, 22 January 1901). In the sermon he stated that “in the closing days of the fall term of 1900” the students sought to discover the “real Bible evidence of this. Baptism so that we might know and obtain it.” Soon Ozman “desired hands laid upon her that she might receive the gift of the Holy Ghost [and she] spake with other tongues. “33 What should be noticed here is that in the 1901 account Parham stated that Ozman sought the gift of the Holy Ghost, but he did not say that she knew beforehand what the gift would be. At least three . additional bits of information corroborate this earlier document. First, in October 1906, Seymour wirote in his newspaper that when the twelve students had started to speak in tongues on January 3rd, 1901 (two days after Ozman had done so), Parham entered the room and as’ked, ” `O, God, what does this mean?”‘ The second bit . of information comes from Charles Shumway, who interviewed Parham presumably in 1913 or 1914. When Parham entered the room that fateful night, Shumway reported, Parham asked: ” ‘What did it mean?’ Unobserved, he slipped in and knelt down to pray and ask for the explanation.” Finally, and most importantly, Ozman herself wrote in 1912 that she had spoken “three words in another tongue” in December 1900. Even so, after the experience of January lost, 1901, she wrote, “there was a searching of the Word for light on the “gift of tongues,’ and as I remember … I was greatly surprised to find so much written on the subject.” In a 1922 letter recently discovered in the Pentecostal Evangel files, Ozman was even more explicit. “Before receiving the Comforter,” she recalled, “I did not know that I would speak in tongues when I received the Holy Ghost for I did not know it was Bible…. I will put in print and say I did not know then that any one else would speak in tongues. For I did not know how the Holy GHOST would be manifested to others.”3a – 16 97 The 1930 description of those events represents a ritualization of the earlier descriptions. That is because the former suggests that the normativeness of speaking in tongues was self-evident to anyone who read Acts 2 with an open mind and honest heart. As J. Roswell Flower put it in 1950 in a typescript history of the Assemblies of God, “these students had deduced from God’s Word that in to be the apostolic times, the speaking in tongues was considered initial physical evidence of a person’s having received the baptism in the Holy Spirit…. It was this decision which has made the Pentecostal Movement of the Twentieth Century.” Flower’s last sentence is revealing. From the beginning the traditional pente- costal denominations have distinguished themselves from other evangelicals, and especially from their holiness rivals, by their insistence upon the necessity of speaking in tongues. Yet that doctrine perennially has been disputed, not only by outsiders, but also by a , vocal minority from within the movement. Thus institutiorial needs have determined that a particular version-a ritualization-of the events that took place in Topeka in 1901 would prevail.35 In sum, the golden oldies are not satisfactory for all purposes. By definition, they are simplified. They celebrate that which is celebratable. “Those who probe more deeply,” as Bitton wrote, “are bound to discover that men of the past were not one dimensional and, more essentially, that the past was not that simple. Historians have a duty to criticize and correct inaccurate, inadequate, or oversimplified versions of the past.” Yet it is equally important to remember that arguments about one’s true history are usually struggles between forms of legitimacy, not between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Students of pentecostal history need to learn, in short, how to take the golden oldies in stride, use them for what they are worth, respect them for what they stood for, and remember that ‘ we all see through a glass darkly.36 *Grant Wacker is associate professor of religion at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored (St. Louis: Gospel Publishing House, 1916). Frank Bartleman, How “Pentecost” Came to Los Angeles-How It Was in the Beginning (Los Angeles: printed by author, 1925). All quotations in this essay are taken from an unabridged reprint: Bartleman, Azusa Street (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1980). The “Pillar of Fire” quip is on p. 67. Ethel E. Goss, The Winds of God: The Story of the Early Pentecostal Days (1901-1914) in the Life of 17 98 Howard A. Goss, as Told by Ethel E. Goss (New York: Comet Press Books, 1958). Frank J. Ewart, The Phenomenon of Pentecost: (a history of “The Latter Rain’) (Houston: Herald Publishing House, 1947). 2Alma White, The Story of My Life and the Pillar of Fire NJ: Pillar of (Zarephath, Fire, 1935), 5 vols. C.W. Shumway, “A Study of the ‘Gift of Tongues,’ ” A.B. thesis, University of Southern California, 1914. 3Bartleman, Azusa Street, 9, 19, 49, 90. See also Bartleman, “The Earthquake,” Way of Faith, (November 1907). 4Bartleman, Azusa Street, 75, 153. See also William J. Seymour, Apostolic Faith [CA], (October 1906), 1 ; Homer A. Tomlinson (editor’s remarks) in Homer A. Tomlinson, ed., Diary of A.J. Tomlinson NY: The Church of God World (Queens Village, Headquarters, 1949), 1 :11. For a similar expression by the premier historian and theologian of the second generation, see Donald Gee, The Pentecostal Movement: Including the Story of the War Years ( 1940-1947) (London: Elim rev. ed. Publishing Company, 1949 [ 1941 ]), 16-19. 5See my “Another Time, Another World: The Primitivist American Impulse in Pentecostalism,” in Richard T. Hughes, ed., Primitivism in American Culture, (Urbai8a: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming). 6Lawrence, Apostolic Faith, 12. ‘See for “The example Ewart, Phenomenon, 34, and (author anonymous) Wonderful History of the Latter Rain,” Faithful Standard (June 1922), 6. 81 owe this point to William W. Menzies of California Theological Seminary, personal correspondence, December 1986. 9Bartleman, Azusa Street, 5. Ewart, Phenomenon, 53. Goss, Winds, 85. Parham, Apostolic Faith [KS], (July 1912), cited in Edith L. Waldvogel [Blumhofer], “The `Overcoming Life’: A Study in the Reformed Evangelical Origins of Pentecostalism,” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1977), 188. loseymour, Apostolic Faith, [CA] (October 1906), 4. Faithful Standard, “History of Pentecost” (November 1922), 8. Elizabeth V. Baker, Chronicles oja Faith Life (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984, [1924]), 134. Baker’s reference was to the 1904-1905 Wales revival, but she drew no distinction between that and “pentecostal” stirrings in the United States. Carl Brumback, Suddenly From Heaven: A History of the Assemblies of God (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1961). I owe the “sacred meteor” metaphor to Russell P. Spittler, “Scripture and the Theological Enterprise,” in Robert K. Johnston, ed., The Use of the Bible in Theology: Evangelical Options (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 63. “”Wonderful History,” Faithful Standard (June 1922), 7. Gee, Pente- costal Movement, 3. See also Frodsham, Signs Following, 42, and Lawrence, Apostolic Faith, 45. ‘2Bartleman, Azusa Street, passim. Goss, Winds, 147, 154. “History of Pentecost,” Faithful Standard, (July, 1922), 6. ‘3Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, forthcoming), chap. 1. ‘4Goss, Winds, 129. J.G. Campbell, “History of the Apostolic Faith Movement,” Apostolic Faith, [Goose Creek, TX], 2-3. Parham, Apostolic Faith[KS], ([January/New Year edition] 1912) 7; (August 1912), 6. 18 99 “History of Pentecost,” Faithful Standard (October 1922),15. H. Tomlinson, Diary 1:179. Baker, Chronicles, 141. A.J. Tomlinson, Diary, 3:56, 38. 15See for example Bartleman, Azusa Street, 89, and Phineas Bresee, “The Gift of Tongues,” Nazarene Messenger, 13 (December 1906), 6, reprinted in Bartleman, Azusa Street, 182-184. See also Sandra Sizer Frankiel, The Spirit of California: Evangelicals, Liberals, and Mystics 1850-1915, chapter 7, forthcoming. ‘6A.A. Boddy, “At Los Angeles, California,” Confidence, (October 1912), 232-233. Shumway, “Study,” 69, 164, 171, 179. 17San Antonio [TX] Light (19 July 1907), 1, and (24 July 1907), 2. ‘8Henry G. Tuthill, extended letter to editor, extracted in “History of Pentecost,” Faithful Standard, (July 1922), 12, 23. Lawrence, Apostolic Faith, 52-55; see also the extract from Goss, on 67. Frodsham, Signs Following, chaps. 1-2. ?9Parham, Apostolic Faith [KS] (June 1912), 7-8; (December 1912), 5. z?Shumway, “Study,” 158, 165. William C. Hiss, “Shiloh: Frank W. Sandford and the Kingdom: 1893-1948,” (Ph.D. diss., Tufts University, 1978), 107, l 18, 174, 197, 290-297. 2’Seymour, Apostolic Faith (January 1907), 1. Seymour also seems to have claimed that [CA], the revival should be dated from the time the Azusa Mission was organized. K. Brower, “Origin of the Apostolic Faith Movement on the Pacific Coast,” 9 August 1909, in Apostolic Faith [Goose Creek, TX] (May 1921), 6-7. It should be said, however, that Seymour had been more generous about the Faith patrimony of the revival before his rupture with Parham. Apostolic [CA] (October 1906), 1. Bartleman, Azusa Street, 69. A.J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, (NewYork:GarlandPublishing, 1985[1913]), 136-139. Homer Tomlinson, Diary, 1:25, 76, 178-179, 196, 239. 22Bartleman, Azusa Street, 84. Mother Cotton, “Inside Story of the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Azusa Street, April 1906,” Message of the Apostolic Faith (April 1939), n.p. 23Seymour, Apostolic Faith [CA], (November 1906), 1. Goss, Winds, 80. L.C. Hall, Living Waters, extracted in Ewart, Phenomenon, 96. Orwig quoted in Frodsham, Signs Following, 31. Frodsham, Signs Following, 83-84. 24Seymour, Apostolic Faith [CA], (January 1907), 1. Bartleman, “Earthquake,” last paragraph. Parham, Apostolic Faith [KS], (October 1913), 19. Tomlinson (and Lillie Duggar), Answering the Call of God, (Cleveland, TN: White Wing Publishing House, 1913, 1933), l 1-12, 28. “History of the Latter Rain,” Faithful Standard, (June 1922), 7. The term cosmocentric is taken from C. Eric Lincoln, “Cultism in the Local Church,”paper given to the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Cleveland, TN, November, 1983. 25Baker, Chronicles, 142. Tomlinson, Diary, 3:31. Ewart, Phenomenon, 87, 1 1. 26Ewart, Phenomenon, 74. Parham, Apostolic Faith [KS], (November 1913), 6. Faithful Standard, (November 1922), 8; (October 1922) 9. Frodsham, Signs Following, 35. 27Frodsham, Signs Following, 149. ‘ 28The quotation is from Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New . ‘ . 19 100 Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1985), 107. 29Davis Bitton, “The Ritualization of Mormon History,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 43 ( 1975), 83. 30The parallels between many of the myths and rituals of the religions of West Africa, which persisted in Afro-American folk religion, and primitive pentecostalism, were too pervasive to have been coincidental. See for example Catherine L. Albanese, American: Religions and Religion (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1981), 23, 114-117. 3’Goss, Winds, 35. Cotton, “Inside Story,” Workers,” “Apostolic Faith Movement ‘In Texas’ ” n.p. “One of the Gospel of the Kingdom, (December 1909), reprinted in Apostlic Faith, [Goose Creek, of the TX], (May 1921), _5-6._K. Brower, “Origin Apostolic Faith,” 6. “Parham, in [Sarah E. Parham, compiler] The Life of Charles F. Parham: Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement (Baxter Springs, KS: Apostolic Faith Bible College, 1977 reprint [1930]) 51-52. 33parham, “Baptism of the Holy Ghost…. First Sermon on Pentecost preached … 21 days after First Outpouring,” reprinted in Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Baxter Springs, KS: Apostolic Faith Bible College, undated reprint of 2nd edition, 1910 [1902]) 32-33. 34Seymour, Apostolic Faith 166. Agnes N. Ozman, “A Witness to First [CA], (October 1906), 1. Shumway, “Study,” Scenes,” Apostolic Faith 4. The letter, which is typed [KS], (December 1912-January 1913), and dated January 1,1922, is titled: “HISTORY OF THE PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT FROM JAN. 1, 1901.” The letter bears no salutation, but presumably it was written to Stanley Frodsham, who was then collecting such letters for use in his book, Signs Following. 35J. Roswell Flower, “Course in Church Orientation,” 10, quoted in Brumback, Suddenly, 23. 36Bitton, “Ritualization,” 83. The penultimate sentence of the a paragraph paraphrases sentence in Shipps, Mormonism, 105. Chapter 5 of Shipp’s book, aptly called “Getting the Story Straight,” provided the impetus for this essay. I am especially indebted to her for helping me appreciate the functions of ritualized history in a religious movement. 20