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The International
Significance
of Azusa Street
1
It is a well-established fact that the Pentecostal Movement is one
accepted
promulgate theology
of the fastest
growing
renewal movements to make its
appearance within the Church of the twentieth
century.
It is also
widely
that the little
Apostolic
Faith Mission at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los
Angeles played
a
significant
role in
helping
to
both the distinctive
experience
and the
developing
of that movement. The
story
of what was
taking place
on Azusa Street was first
passed along by word
of mouth
through
the scores of personal testimonies of those who had found their
way
to the Mission.
Later,
The
Apostolic Faith,
a
four-page
occasional
the Mission
beginning
in
September,
carried the
message
not
only
across the United
States,
but around the world.
newspaper published by 1906,
Indeed, monies.
spoken
Living
Truths
‘
In an article titled “The Seal of
My Pentecost,”
6:12 (December,
1906), pp. 735-738, esp. 736,
Thomas Ball Barratt stated that the news of the revival “at Los
Angeles,
in India and elsewhere” had all contributed to his
personal quest
for a Pente- costal
experience.
Barratt
ultimately
received his
experience
in New
York,
then returned to Scandinavia with the
message.
He was not alone in
having
been touched
by
the stories of Azusa Street.
there are
many
others one could cite with similar testi-
Yet to date there has been no
published
volume whose task it has been to
clarify
what the real
impact
of Azusa Street was on the international scene.
What was the real
impact
of the Azusa Street revival? Where did the
sovereignty
of the
Spirit
of God come into
play?
Hadn’t
people
in
tongues prior
to 1906? Was the
significance
of Azusa Street
merely
a clear articulation of a doctrine of “bapiism in the Holy Spirit?”
Was it more? What other revivals and movements contributed to the climate and
provided
the context which made
the Pentecostal renewal? Can we identify a leading
figure
as Charles Parham or William J.
Seymour
as a “parent” of the
Was Azusa Street
really
the
wellspring
of what took
around the world in 1906 and thereafter? Is the twentieth century
Pentecostal Movement
solely
or even
largely
indebted to that ancient
predominantly
black
which
experienced,
unique experience
with the
Holy Spirit,
or were there other factors that are
equally significant?
Not all historians of the Pentecostal
Street as the focal
point
of Pentecostal
With
Signs Following (Springfield,
possible such movement? place
congregation
Frodsham,
though racially integrated popularized,
and advertized a
Movement have seen Azusa
origins. Stanley
Howard
Gospel Publishing
1
2
.
House,
the
Spirit
of God fell upon
interpreted
the
beginnings their
origin
grace
occurred
simultaneously One
incidents,
Evangel
wrote that “One remarkable in the
early days
was the
way
of isolated
yet
simultaneous
at Mukti in mind when he
by
Frodsham
stand
the
1941), p. 53,
for
instance,
feature of the Latter-Rain
outpouring
one and another in different
parts
of the
world who had never come in contact with
anyone
who had
received the Pentecostal
experience.”
In
short,
Frodsham
of modern
Pentecostalism
as
having
in the
sovereign
work of God. Manifestations of His
in various
places
around the world.
of those was at the Azusa Mission. There was no
apparent
thread to connect them.
It is clear that based
upon
Barratt’s claim that he had heard of
such
happenings
from Los
Angeles, India,
and
elsewhere,
one
could draw the conclusion that Frodsham seems to have drawn.
But were these
actually reports
or were the incidents to which Barratt referred
depen-
dent in any
way upon
a common source. Did
they,
in fact, share a
common
thread,
and if so, what was it? Did
Barratt,
for
instance,
have the work of Pandida Ramabai
spoke
of India, or was it a revival in Calcutta? Do we know for sure
how these
things began,
or must we wait until 1908 and 1909 for
published
accounts carried in Word and Work or The Latter Rain
to
get
even
part
of the
story?
In contrast to the
position
taken
assertions made
by such revisionists as James
S. Tinney who wrote
in his article “Doctrinal Differences Between Black and White
Spirit
1:1 1 [ 1977], p. 37 not that the movement was
in various
places,
but that such
interpre-
other than Azusa Street are
thinly-
veiled
attempts
to write
history along
the lines of racial bias.
is this the case for those who
question
the
.
importance
of Azusa Street
by seeking
to
emphasize
the role of Charles F.
Parham whose
Apostolic
Faith Movement
attempted
to blanket
and Texas
prior
to 1906. A similar
approach
has
been taken in
Douglas
J. Nelson’s 1981 Ph.D. dissertation For
Such A Time As This: William J.
Seymour
and the Azusa Street
Pentecostals,”
spontaneously erupting tations which
emphasize origins
Particularly
Kansas, Missouri,
exploited
Roots.
Writing Nelson has
heavily
Revival: A Search
for Pentecostal/Charismatic
under the
mentorship
of Walter J.
Hollenweger,
the role which racial tension
played
in the discussion.
Lest
Tinney
and Nelson be charged with revisionism
apart
from the
data,
it must be said that from the
perspective
of those at the Mission in early 1907 they were
clearly
at the center of things as far as the international scene was concerned.
They
could write in The Apostolic
Faith 1:6 (February-March, 1907), p.
1,
“The Pentecost has crossed the water on both sides to the Hawaiian Islands on the
2
3
west,
and
England, Norway, Sweden,
and India on the east.” Such a comment
clearly
had a centrifugal
perspective
to
it,
and it is just as obvious that
people
came from around the world to hear the message
at Azusa.
It now seems
apparent
that such differences of
interpretation have led Richard
Quebedeaux
to shift his
emphases
on the
origins of Pentecostalism and the relative
significance
of
Seymour
and Azusa Street. In his 1976 work The New
Charismatics, (Doubleday),
he
appears
to have
championed
Parham and his movement in the mid-South. In his 1983
revision,
The New Charismatics II
(Harper
&
Row),
he
champions Seymour
and Azusa Street. Yet the
questions
still remain.
Why
did he change his mind? Where do the facts take us? Do we have sufficient data
upon which to base these claims? Have we dealt
sufficiently
with extant original
sources to be able to
give
a clearly substantial
suggestion which does not draw
selectively
from the data which is available?
In this issue of Pneuma we cannot
provide
all the answers to such questions.
What we do
have, however,
are three articles which look at the data
regarding
the
coming
of Pentecostalism to
Canada, Britain,
and
Belgium.
Thomas Wm.
Miller,
who has
previously authored
Ripe for
Revival: The Churches at the Crossroads
of Renewal or Decline
(Burlington,
Ont.: Welch
Publishing Company, Inc., 1984),
192 pp., an historical
survey
of the
subject has now focussed our attention on what he sees as the earliest Pentecostal work in Canada, the Hebden Mission in Toronto. His research has uncovered a number of links with other strands of Pentecostalism,
notably
in Chicago and Los
Angeles.
Edith
Waldvogel
Blumhofer whose Harvard
University
disser- tation The
“Overcoming Life”:
A
Study
in the
Reformed Evangelical Origins of
Pentecostalism searched for
non-Wesleyan emphases
in
early
American Pentecostalism has turned her attention to the scene in Britain.
Concentrating
on Britain’s earliest Pentecostal leader Alexander A.
Boddy,
an
Anglican Vicar,
she has also
brought clarity
in a new
way
to the British
place
in the ongoing
stream of Pentecostal
history.
David D.
Bundy
who has
already
contributed an article to Pneuma
[see
7:1
(Spring, 1985), 19-40]
on Roumanian Pente- costalism has now written on the
origin
and
development
of the Movement(s)
in
Belgium.
Each of these writers has made use of
original
source material adding
new
light
on the
subject.
Much more remains to be done. The 1986
meeting
of the
Society
for Pentecostal Studies will convene November 13-16 on the
campus
of Southern California College
in Costa Mesa. It will
among
other
things, focus
our
.
3
4
attention on the role of Azusa Street
during
the
year
of its eightieth anniversary.
The role of this
Mission,
the
spread
of the Pentecostal message
across the United
States,
and the
appearance
of it around the world need better to be understood. I would call for a renewed effort in
locating
and
studying
the
early documents, especially newspapers
and
periodicals
which will
help
more
clearly
to articulate the international
significance
of Azusa Street. Not to do so
may
leave us
helplessly open
to the
development
of a “new mythology”
rather than a clearer
perspective
on reality from which to learn.
Cecil M.
Robeck,
Jr. Editor
4
