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77
The
Origins
of American Pentecostalism
Augustus Cerillo,
Jr.*
A Review
Essay
of James R.
Goff, Jr.,
Fields White Unto Harvest:
and the
Missionary Origins of
Pentecostalism
of Arkansas
Charles F. Parham
(Fayetteville:
The
University $12.00
paper.
historian Klaude Kendrick
Press, 1988).
263
pp.
to the
As best I can
remember,
I first heard about Charles F. Parham and his role in the
beginnings
of American Pentecostalism sometime
during the school
year
1959-60 when
listening
to a lecture on Parham
given by
(then
Dean of
Evangel College) history
club at
Evangel,
of which I was
president
and
responsible
for the
program.
At that time I did not realize that Marie
Burgess Brown, my
home church
pastor,
whom I had listened to
preach
countless
times, had
begun
her Pentecostal
ministry
under this same
Parham; although
I recalled “Sister Brown”
referring
to her Wisconsin
roots, Moody
Bible
experiences,
name,
nor did his name ever
appear
in the
Institute,
and
early
Pentecostal ever
mentioning
Parham’s biographical
sketches in Glad
“evangelist,”
I did not remember her
Tidings
Tabernacle’s
anniversary
origins
as I
though my
Northwestern
booklets. In one such account reference was made to an unnamed
whom I later discovered was none other than Parham.
I did not think much about Parham and Pentecostal
pursued my
own
graduate
studies in
history
in the
early 1960s,
even
University
focused on the Gilded
Age
and
Progressive
emerged
in the United States.
Only
in the
very
late
Pentecostalism 1960s and Pentecostalism
early
1970s,
when
doctoral dissertation research
Era,
the
very
time when
searching
for
information on
the Pentecostal movement. scholarly
works on Pentecostalism addition to Kendrick’s
pioneering
to
prepare
lectures on the
subject
for Adult
Sunday School classes and then for a college course, did I think
seriously
about the
origins
of
my
own
religious
tradition and the
pioneers
who created
I
quickly
Pentecostal
discovered the number of by
historians was rather limited. In
The Promised
Fulfilled (1961),
The Pentecostals
which I believe initiated the modem American
professional study
of
history,
there was John T. Nichols’
(1971, originally, Pentecostalism, 1966),
William Menzies’ Anointed to Serve: The
Story of
the Assemblies
Synan’s
The
Holiness-Pentecostal
of
God
(1971),
and Vinson Movemerzt in the United States
*Augustus Cerillo, Jr.,
is Professor of
History
at California State
University, Long
Beach.
1
78
(1971). Interestingly, tovarying degrees Pentecostalism.
described
all were
begun
as doctoral
dissertations,
Parham’s
field of Pentecostal
catalyzed
and
shaped,
Such
developments
place
in the
and all history
of
larger group
and other academicians
Since the
mid-1970s,
as readers of Pneuma no doubt are
aware,
the
studies has almost become a boom
industry,
I
believe, by
several
mutually reinforcing developments.
include the sheer
growth
in numbers and
rising
social
prominence
of
Pentecostals;
the
emergence
of a much
of
University-
and
Seminary-trained
interested
creation of the
Society
for Pentecostal
journal, Pneuma;
the
organization specializes
in the
publication growing
historical consciousness and their establishment
Pentecostal
aids.
of books on Pentecostal
Blumhofer, Wayne Nienkirchen, Goff have
brought to the
study of the
Warner,
publication
Pentecostal scholars
in
studying Pentecostalism;
the
Studies and
publication
of its of Hendrickson
Publishers,
which
subjects;
a among
Pentecostal church
leaders,
the
Mickey
Crews,
Charles
Perhaps
the culmination of this
phase
was the
and
and other scholars have
emerge during
the first decade
causes.
of Moreover,
of denominational archives to
preserve
heritage;
and the
publication
of numerous
bibliographical
Pentecostal historical
scholarship,
as one
part
of this
larger
field of Pentecostal
studies,
has matured
conceptually
even as it has
grown quantitatively.
Scholars such as Robert
Anderson,
Grant
Wacker,
Edith
Mel
Robeck,
Gary McGee,
James
Tinney,
Leonard
Lovett,
and James
new
questions, insights, methodologies
and research
of Pentecostal
history, thereby enriching
our
understanding
innumerable
events, personalities
and details that
comprise
the internal
history
of Pentecostalism.
in the
development
of
professional
Pentecostal
historiography
in 1988 of the
indispensable Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic
Movements,
edited
by Stanley
M.
Burgess
and
Gary
B. McGee.
In one
way
or another these historians
wrestled with the broader and more fundamental
question
of
origins: how, why
and where did Pentecostalism
of the twentieth
century?
And on this issue
they
have
given
a diverse
usually
constructed around some combination
racial and
providential
path(s)
these historians have taken to
origins, they all,
either
implicitly
or
explicitly, have had to deal with four
underlying questions. First,
what
larger
and
religious setting
or context must be
fully
the
timing, early theological
shape
and
staying power
of the Pentecostal revival?
Second,
how
and discontinuities
century
holiness and
evangelical revivals,
movements and theological
innovations be
assessed,
and inform an analysis of
origins?
set of answers
sociological, ideological, whatever
general interpretative explain
Pentecostalism’s
socio-economic, political explored
to understand
should the continuities nineteenth
and social
of Pentecostalism with
2
79
Third,
what is the relative
significance
for an
understanding
of Pentecostal
beginnings
of those elements of Pentecostal beliefs and practices
that
provided
a measure of
unity
and cohesion to Pentecostalism,
and the undeniable
theological,
social and organizational diversity
that characterized
primitive
Pentecostalism? In other
words,
should the Pentecostal movement be viewed as a whole or in terms of its
parts?
Is the historian faced with a
single
Pentecostal movement or with Pentecostal
movements,
and what are the implications
of these
questions
for a
study
of
origins? Fourth,
what were the social sources of Pentecostalism? How does
knowing something
about who became
Pentecostal, including
leaders and followers,
and
why help
us understand
why
Pentecostalism arose and developed
as it did? What
light might
this
information
shed on the previous
three
questions?
Fields White Unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the
Missionary Origins of
Pentecostalism
nicely
illustrates the
professional coming-of-age
of Pentecostal
scholarship.
James
Goff,
a historian trained at the
University
of Arkansas where the book
began
as a doctoral
dissertation,
has
given
us one of the few
scholarly biographies of
any early
Pentecostal leader and the
only
definitive
study
of Parham. It is well-written,
clearly organized,
and
exhaustively
researched both in the
primary
sources and
pertinent secondary
literature.
Throughout
the book and in the
many
content notes at the end of the
volume,
Goff displays
a sure
grasp
of the
many interpretive issues, including
what other historians have written,
surrounding
Parham’s role in Pentecostalism’s
beginnings.
Thus this fine account of Parham’s
life, thought
and career is of value to scholars as well as the
general reader, and,
as I have found
personally,
is well-suited for
college
courses on Pentecostalism.
Golfs
analysis
of Parham’s
place
in Pentecostal
history
combines the contributions of traditional Pentecostal historians who
give primacy
to the
theological
roots of Pentecostalism with the
insights
of
scholars, most
notably
Robert
Mapes
Anderson
(Vision of the
Disinherited: The Making of
American
Pentecostalism, 1979),
who stress the sociological
sources of the Pentecostal revival. Not
only
was Parham the founder of the Pentecostal movement because he first formulated the new
religion’s defining theological tenet, tongues
as the initial evidence of
Holy Spirit baptism, argues Goff,
but also because he first preached
a Pentecostal full
gospel message,
which included the themes of
conversion, sanctification, Holy Spirit baptism,
divine
healing
from all sickness and the
premillennial rapture
of the
saints,
that
appealed
to the social and
spiritual
needs of
intellectually alienated, socially dislocated, physically
and
psychologically hurting, politically powerless and
economically struggling poor
and
working-class people.
“The
3
80
How well
throughout story
of Parham’s ideological
connecting
mix,”
writes
Goff,
“fell
significance” (p.16).
earliest converts in this
theological-sociological
under the
ministry
of Charles F. Parham”
(p. 13); indeed,
he was the father of “a revolution
of socioreligious
his book does Goff
develop
his view that the
life and
ministry
“reveals the
sociological
and
roots of Pentecostalism”
(p.16)?
I believe he is more successful
charting
Parham’s
theological journey
and contributions to an
emerging
Pentecostal movement than he is in
showing precise
links between Parham’s
religious message
and the
larger social and economic forces that were
transforming
America around the turn of the
century.
To be
sure,
Goff writes
appreciatively
about the Pentecostal ethos and its
spiritual benefits,
in contrast to Anderson’s
and makes
many plausible
Pentecostal beliefs and who the Pentecostals
sociologically.
he fails
sufficiently
assertion to demonstrate in some
historically
concrete
ways just
how Pentecostal
religion
functioned to
help
its adherents structure their own
create humane home and work environments
negative critique, functional fit between were
However,
lives,
problems.
glimpses
socially
appraisal of pre-1920
Religious fair,
as
2) study
Goff’s
of the
assertions
about the
to
go beyond
and
just generally Moreover, might
the
intriguing sometimes
anti-capitalistic
and
_
between
Populism
and problems suggested
above.
harshness,
general
social
cope
with life’s
everyday
Goff
provides
into Parham’s
radical rhetoric be
suggestive
of a more
politically significant
Pentecostal social criticism than he
suggests
or has
yet
been
attempted (on
this
possibility
see R. Laurence
Moore,
Outsiders and the
Making of America, 1986,
ch.
5).
To be
Fields White Unto Harvest’s deficiencies on this
point
are due in part
to at least three different
problems: 1) the limitations imposed by the
genre
of
biography
as the basis for a
study
of such a broad and complex
social
phenomenon
the rise of this new
religious movement;
the
drawing
of conclusions about the rank and file members from a
of
leadership;
and
3)
the
paucity
of other
published
studies that do address the theme of Pentecostals in society.
handling relationship
Pentecostalism illustrates the
interpretative
In
chapter one,
“The Perils of
Youth,”
he sketches the first 20
years
of
life,
from his birth in Iowa in 1873 to his
entry
into the
ministry
in Kansas in
1893, against
the
background
of
and
bust,
environmental
and
agrarian
dissent associated with life on the Kansas plains
in the late nineteenth
century. Picking up
on a theme
suggested
over 20
years ago (The
Holiness-Pentecostal Movement
pp. 52-53)
Goff asserts that
“religion
sometimes offered a
and consolation to
Populists
who
their
attempt
to control life
thwarted;”
became a tremendous source of
power
for
(pp. 22-23). Goff goes
on to
suggest
that Parham “drew
Parham’s Methodist economic boom uncertainty
by
Vinson
Synan
unique
vehicle for
self-expression discovered
“psychologically, religion the
powerless”
even
more,
4
81
–
his formative
thoughts”
from this insecure
agrarian world;
and “it was among
others like
him,”
Goff
states,
that Parham’s
“ministry,
and the message
of the Pentecostal
movement,
found an enthusiastic
following” (p. 22).
Goff seems to
suggest
a
chronological pattern:
rural dwellers and farmers turned to
Populism
as an answer to their economic and social
problems;
when the
Populist party failed,
at least some turned to religion
in the form of the holiness movement and the new Pentecostalism.
Perhaps many
did.
Otther than
naming Joseph
D.
Botkin,
a Parham
family
friend with earlier
Populist political
connections
(see p. 182,
note
10),
Goff provides
little direct evidence of the links between
Parham,
his
recruits, and other
Pentecostals,
and
Populism.
More
recently
historian
Mickey Crews found that in the
Appalachian region, despite
the
many commonalities between
Populists
and Church of God
folk,
the Populists’
offered an
alternative, competing ideology.
The Church of God,
he
found,
was “not
directly
related to
Populism”:
the character and
purpose
of the two movements were different, and few Church of God adherents became members of the
Populist party.
The Church of God was
“clearly
a parallel movement”
(see
his 7he Church
of God:
A Social
History, 1990). Regional
and other factors
may explain
the different connections between
Populists
and Pentecostals in Kansas and Appalachia.
Whatever the
explanation,
both Goff’s and Crew’s works suggest
the need for a
major study
that
specifically
focuses on the relationship
between the Holiness and Pentecostal movements and Populism (and
for that matter
socialism, labor,
and other late-nineteenth
century utopian
and radical social
movements).
Did Populists
become
Pentecostals,
and if so, where,
why
and how
many?
Populism’s heyday,
it also must be
remembered,
was in the
1890s, yet
Pentecostalism arose and
grew during
the
economically
better and politically
innovative
Progressive
era. Were most Pentecostals so economically disinherited,
so out on the
fringes
of society, as
suggested by
historian
Anderson,
that
they
were
people
whose lives the
concept of
Progressivism
fails to embrace or
capture? Interestingly,
as Goff makes
clear,
Parham himself came from a rather
economically
and socially
secure
home,
studied for three
years
at Southwest Kansas College,
was a talented
speaker
and
obviously
had
leadership
abilities. Although
his intellectual and
spiritual
orientations
may
have
put
him at odds with the
prevailing religious
and academic orthodoxies in late-nineteenth
century America,
at least
socially
and
economically
the young
Parham
hardly
fits the mold of the
marginalized. My point
here is simply this: how and where to locate Pentecostalism and Pentecostals within the
larger
Gilded
Age
and
Progressive
era
settings
is
still,
I believe,
an issue that needs further
scholarly exploration.
The
portrait
of Parham that
emerges
from the first two
chapters
is that of a
sickly, intelligent,
restless and
religiously inquisitive young
5
82
man. Goff
masterfully
shows how
Parham, during
the decade of the nineties,
drew from a variety of sources the
theological building
blocks upon
which he would construct his
historically significant
Pentecostal doctrinal formulation. From his
mother,
to whom he was
especially close–“a mama’s
boy”
is how Goff describes the
relationship–and
who died when Parham was
only
12 years
old,
Parham received his earliest understanding
of
religious
commitment and
personal piety.
From his string
of illnesses and several dramatic
healings
came a sense that God had called him into the
ministry, given
him a message of divine
healing for
others,
and the
personal
faith to
give up
all
medicines, drugs
and life insurance. From the holiness
preachers,
he
accepted
the doctrine of sanctification as a second work of grace. From his
Quaker
friend David Baker,
whose
granddaughter
he would later
marry,
Parham added the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked to his
theology.
From the evangelical
and
higher
life leaders and movements he became acquainted
with or had confirmed such beliefs as
healing
in the atonement, dispensational premilennialism, baptism
in the
Holy Spirit for
power
to serve the Lord and live a
godly life;
and he witnessed in their ministries the
practice
of
praying
for the
sick,
the establishment of Bible
schools, healing homes, religious periodicals,
and
inner-city
social works.
(Here
is the one
place
in the
chapter
where Goff’s
description
of the
timing
and relative
impact
of these
evangelical
influences is imprecise
and thus
unclear.)
From radical holiness leader
Benjamin Hardin
Irwin,
the
impressionable young preacher picked up
the notion of
Spirit baptism
as a third and distinct
religious experience beyond conversion and the second work of sanctification. And at Frank Sandford’s Shiloh
ministry
in
Maine,
Parham
accepted
the view that consecrated believers could be
empowered
for world
evangelization
in the last
days by
a
special Baptism
in the
Holy Spirit;
and most significantly,
at Shiloh he
personally
observed
among
the students
modem
tongues speaking. By 1900,
it
seems,
Parham’s eclectic
bag
of beliefs reveals the
evangelist very
much a
product
of the
religious milieu that characterized the
Age
of the
Spirit
in late nineteenth
century America. In the
person
of
Parham, Goff,
so to
speak, puts
a real face on what Donald
Dayton
in an earlier book called the
theological
roots of Pentecostalism.
Chapter three,
“The
Gospel
of the Latter
Rain,”
is the
conceptual heart of the book. Here Goff moves from
describing
the derivative nature of Parham’s
thought,
the
continuity
of his
religious journey
with nineteenth
century
holiness and
evangelical trends,
to reveal to us Parham the 27
year
old
theological innovator,
a man who in 1900 still was uncomfortable with his
times,
unsatisfied in his
longings
for religious experience
and
finality
of belief about
Holy Spirit baptism. Goff,
as
historian-detective, carefully
and
painstakingly
reconstructs how
Parham,
in the
span
of six months, from October 1900 to
April
6
83
1901, “pieced
the
theological puzzle
of Pentecostalism
together”
when he linked
tongues–actual existing languages
or
xenoglossa,
he believed–as initial evidence with the
Baptism
in the
Holy Spirit.
Such “missionary tongues,”
Parham
taught,
were
given
to
baptized
believers to
expedite
world
evangelization
in the last
days
before the Second Coming
of
Christ; additionally, tongues-speaking
Christians were
being recruited as Christ’s elite “Bride” to rule with Him in the millennial kingdom.
“This
decision,
in
effect,
created the Pentecostal movement” (p. 164),
declares
Goff,
who
gives primacy
to the
theological explanation
of Pentecostalism’s
beginnings.
“Since
tongues
as initial evidence defined the movement as a distinct element
apart
from the overall
emphasis
on the
Holy Spirit,
that doctrine
provided
later Pentecostals their
ideological
birth announcement”
(p. 72). Only Parham, then,
Goff
logically concludes,
“can
chronologically
be labeled founder” of the Pentecostal movement
(p. 15).
His book’s “dual thesis,”
he writes “is that Charles Parham founded the Pentecostal movement in
Topeka, Kansas, early
in 1901 and that the essential character of this new faith revolved around an intense millenarian-missions
emphasis” (p.15).
At this
point
I would add that the reader of Goi?’s book will
appreciate
the author’s
very helpful introductory essay
in which he
provides
a brief but excellent historiographical
overview and
critique
of the
major theological, sociological
and racial
interpretations
of the
origins
of Pentecostalism, and
places
his
interpretation
of the
centrality
of Parham’s
thought
and ministry
for
understanding
the
ideological
and
sociological
roots of Pentecostalism in the context of this
historiographical
debate.
When
making
his case on behalf of Parham as the
theological
founder of
Pentecostalism,
Goff
explains
how Parham had come to his
concept of
missionary tongues
as
early
as 1899 when he received a
report published
in a holiness
periodical indicating
that a
young lady
named Jennie
Glassey,
associated with Sanford’s Shiloh
community,
had spoken
in an African dialect after
receiving
a
missionary
call to Africa.
Such
missionary tongues,
Parham informed his
followers, duplicated the
apostles experience
recorded in Acts 2. Gof? also debunks as flawed both Parham’s and
Agnes
Ozman’s later
conflicting
accounts of the origins
of the
“Topeka Pentecost,” especially
Parham’s
story
of how the students at his
recently opened (October 1900)
Bethel Bible College independently
concluded after
studying
the biblical book of Acts that
tongues
was the initial evidence of the
Baptism
in the
Holy Spirit.
The historical
evidence,
Goff
maintains,
makes it clear that Parham himself
through
his Bible
teaching
at Bethel motivated his students to conclude that missions
tongues
was the New Testament evidence
of Holy Spirit Baptism,
which
they
did on
January 1, 1901, not the watch
night
eve of December
31,
1900.
7
84
formulated his affirming
Anderson’s
Parham
Testament truth However,
those scholars theological
circular, asserting
implicitly
at least
challenges Pentecostalism or a Pentecostal
not defined and recruited on the
Curiously,
when
believers,
character of
early who believed he was
might
in the
shape
it
assumed,
by
the
newly baptized
GofP solution to the
puzzle
of
precisely
how and
why
Parham
Pentecostal doctrine seems
irrefutable,
as does his
stress on the millenarian
Pentecostalism. Of course, this focus on Parham,
on a mission from
God,
does not
necessarily preclude
the Lord
through the
Holy Spirit guiding
in his
re-discovery
of this New
of Holy Spirit baptism for humankind in a new
century.
who
reject
or
place
less
emphasis
on a
definition of Pentecostalism view Goff’s
reasoning about the
primacy
of the
theological origins
of Pentecostalism as
what needs to be
proved.
But Parham’s
biographer
such critics to make the case that
movement,
would have
emerged
at all in the
early
twentieth
century
had Parham
initial evidence doctrine.
evaluating
the claims of those–hearers and speakers–reporting
real
languages spoken
Goff ventures
unnecessarily
onto
speculative
terrain. Armed only
with the information that the areas in Kansas and elsewhere where claims
of xenoglossa
surfaced had
large contingents
of the
foreign bom, he
suggests
that to whatever extent actual
foreign
words were included in
tongues speech by Pentecostals,
it must have been a form of
that
is, the recipients
of the
baptism
had been
exposed
to
and
unknowingly
stored them in their memory, only
to have them
unconsciously
of the
baptism experience.
Such
conjecture,
and rather
dogmatically
out of character with the
carefully documented and reasoned tone of much of the volume. For Goff to
go out on such a
speculative
limb is even more
surprising given
that he makes no
attempt
to
explain
in social scientific or other naturalistic terms the
larger phenomenon
of
tongues itself,
whatever the nature of
that
matter,
the claims
by
Pentecostal believers of
being
filled
by
God’s
Holy Spirit
or
divinely
healed of
cryptomnesia;
such
foreign
words in their
past
interpretations mentioned, historical
narrative,
seems
the
verbalized phrases,
or for
verbalized
during
the stress
with no alternative
interjected
into the
and five
(“The Goff traces Parham and his
1906 to
spread
the new
physical
ailments.
In
chapters
four
(“The Projector
co-workers’
attempts Pentecostal
movement.
The author
deftly Parham’s
bouts
Latter Rain
Spreads”)
of Pentecost: The
Promise”)
from 1902
through
message
and build what Parham called The
Apostolic
Faith
weaves
together
information about
personal
and
family life, including
the
evangelist’s continuing
with
illness,
the social and economic conditions of the towns in Kansas,
Missouri and Texas in which Parham ministered, the various themes on which the talented and
entertaining
Parham
preached,
the
extent of the new movement’s
numerical
growth
and
geographic
8
Pentecost’s” impressed God’s
work,
Apostolic
Faith
85
of
ministry.
preaching, prayer periodicals,
short recruits
among recent
trends, gospel.
diffusion and the
general
activities associated with “The
Projector
I could not
help
but be
with these Pentecostal
pioneer’s
selfless dedication to
doing
whatever the costs in
personal
sacrifice and however difficult the
circumstances,
and their creative utilization of
popular cultural outlets–town streets for
meetings
and
parades,
colorful
for the
sick, camp meetings, printed
leaflets and
term Bible schools–to
spread
the
message
and
gain
the common
folk, including
minorities. In contrast to
women had a
large part
in
spreading
the Pentecostal
More
negatively,
I could not
help
but note that Pentecostal leaders were
excessively individualistic,
and slowed the
_
prophetic discourses,
drawn crowds but
hardly provided for the
fledgling
movement. Pentecostal
reprehensible
prevailing
racist attitudes
millenarian inclinations,
strengths
The focus
suspicious
of
organization
and
Perhaps
due to their
empowerment. Pentecostalism,
Many
of the obviously,
prone
to
compete
with each other for
power
and
place,
all contributing to an institutional and
regional fragmentation
that
probably
weakened
new movement’s national
impact.
Parham’s
penchant for
preaching
sensational sermons
mixing
biblical
texts, speculative
current events and
pseudo-science may
have
a
sturdy theological underpinning
Parham’s
belief,
shared
by
other
preachers,
in the racial
inferiority
of black
people
was
for a
religious leader,
even if understandable
given
the
of American
society,
and contributed to the racially segregated development
of Pentecostalism.
few
Pentecostals,
it
seems, fully comprehended the
larger
social
implications
of Pentecostal
and weaknesses of
contemporary
have their
genesis
in the movement’s formative
years.
in these
chapters
on Parham’s
Kansas,
Texas and northern Illinois
refreshingly places
famous west coast Azusa Street revival
in,
what seems to
me,
perspective. many
historical
treat the
Topeka beginnings
and Parham’s and others’ ministries before 1906 as some sort of minor event or
preface (“early raindrops”
is how Leonard Lovett described it several
years ago)
to the
revival
(the heavy
down
pour
or Latter
Rain)
J.
Seymour’s leadership, which,
it is
realistic Pentecostalism
Too
spectacular
Azusa Street in Los
Angeles,
under William declared, successfully catapulted
ministry
in
Missouri,
the
justly
more
a more surveys
of the rise of
Pentecostalism into a national and
that in the Fall of 1906
and dimensions of
Parham
probably
underrated Seymour’s
Los
Angeles revival, how at that time
yet, Seymour’s
global
movement. Goff does
acknowledge
the
significance
but also
importantly proceeds
to show
work was
very
much
linked–by
Parham’s
considerably larger
theology, organization
and
personnel–to
movement,
which itself was
giving
birth to other missions
such as the
young
Marie
Burgess,
who
midwestem
and new Pentecostal
preachers, took the
message
across the nation.
9
86
were derived from
Parham, Pentecostalism.
the relative
significance
interpretation
Pentecostals
gone beyond urban,
Pentecostalism’s birth
branches of the Pentecostal
1950s,
of Parham and
Seymour
to
as the father of
of
history
and to flawed Parham? Gofl’s
or the two
combined,
were The
forthcoming study
of Azusa
disciple, Seymour
that
greatly
altered Parham’s Pentecostal
Pentecost:
On the issue of the relative
importance
the rise of
Pentecostalism,
Goff is clear in his view
that,
at least until 1909,
the Pentecostal essentials
preached
and
practiced
at Azusa Street
giving
him
priority
I have often wondered how much our
understanding
of Azusa Street and Parham’s midwestern work stems from Frank Bartleman’s influential but at times
self-serving
of the Los
Angeles
revival?
Furthermore,
have we
the historical record to create out of the
multi-cultural and -racial Azusa Street revival a
story
of
and
early spread
that
partly
at least serves our present
needs in a multi-cultural world? Have we white academics elevated William J.
Seymour,
the
genuinely
humble and
godly
black American
pastor
of Azusa Street to Pentecostal folk hero status to atone for the racist dimensions in white Pentecostal
cover our embarrassment over the
morally
account moreover makes clear that neither the west coast nor mid-west
revival,
growing rapidly enough
to
greatly
dent the national consciousness. whole nation was not
taking
notice of the Pentecostals nor were the major newspapers headlining
the new movement. At least until the
American Pentecostalism was a
fringe
Protestant tradition within American
Christianity,
even considered
by
some Christians to be a cult. Just how
big
was the Pentecostal
explosion emanating
from “The American Jerusalem-Azusa Street”
(to
borrow a
phrase
from Vinson
Synan)? Hopefully
Mel Robeck’s
Street will
clarify
numerous issues associated with that
great
revival and its
place
in Pentecostal and national
history.
Goff
provides
full and
judicious appraisals
of Parham’s
split
with his
in
1906,
and
alleged
homosexual
act,
the two events
ministry
history.
In the first
part
of
chapter
the
Fall”)
he relates the
by
now
failed
attempt
in 1906 to wrest from
Seymour
Azusa Street revival so as to
shape
with his midwestern brand of Pentecostalism. Goff
perceptively
in
dispute
the two
wings
of the
For Parham the Azusa Street crowd’s
worship style
was too
emotional,
its racial
comradery disgusting,
and its tongues speech glossolalia,
and not
xenoglossa.
I think Goff is correct to
place these
specific
differences between Parham’s and
Seymour’s
visions of a proper
Pentecostal
expression
within the
larger
context of the different
of Parham’s
based
ministry
and
Seymour’s metropolitan
revival. Goff also notes how Parham’s racist attitudes seemed to have
pinpoints
the issues Pentecostal movement.
cultural and social realities
and
subsequent place
in .
6
(“The Projector
of
familiar
story
of Parham’s
the
leadership
of the its cultural
expression
in accord
between
largely
Kansas-Missouri-Texas
Los
Angeles
centered
10
87
hardened and become more
regressive
after his disastrous encounter with
Seymour
and the Azusa Street mission.
Goff is less
convincing
when he
suggests
that had Parham succeeded in getting control of the Azusa Street revival in October
1906,
it would have
greatly
“altered the future of the Pentecostal movement”
(p. 133). Nationwide the Pentecostal movement rather
quickly fragmented along leadership, doctrinal, cultural,
racial and at times ethnic lines.
Early
on most
baptized
believers in fact did not claim to
speak
in real
languages, and
worship styles among
the
growing
Pentecostal missions and churches varied
greatly.
Thus it is hard to
imagine
what Parham
might have done in Los
Angeles
that would have
significantly
altered this history.
Here is where
viewing
Pentecostalism as a diffuse
group
of movements,
however connected
by
a doctrinal commitment or
single religious experience, might prove insightful.
In the second
part
of
chapter
6 Goff
sensitively
discusses the rumors of
homosexuality against
Parham that circulated in late 1906 and
1907, and the
felony charge
of
sodomy brought against
the
evangelist
in San Antonio, Texas, which,
in
fact,
was
eventually
dismissed without a
formal indictment. After
thoroughly examining
the extant evidence in the
case,
Goff concludes about Parham: “There is neither
enough
hard evidence to condemn him nor
enough
doubt to
sufficiently explain
the preponderance
of rumor which circulated.
during
his lifetime.”
Guilty
or not,
and
despite
some continued success as a Pentecostal
preacher
and leader of a small
group
of faithful
Apostolic
Faith followers and churches until his death in
January,
1929
(all
detailed in
chapter 7, “Perseverance and
Obscurity”),
Pentecostalism’s
founder,
the
subject of the “first
genuine
scandal in Pentecostal
history” (p.136)–and certainly
not the last–became an embarrassment to most of his
peers, better
ignored
and
forgotten
than lauded for his
pioneering
role. Such historical
revisionism,
as Goff
notes,
fit well the Pentecostal claim that their
religious movement,
a
product
of God’s endtime
pouring
out of His
Spirit–the
Latter Rain–indeed had no need of a human
founder, and
certainly
not one flawed as was Parham.
Despite
the
attempts
of
early Pentecostals,
in historian Grant Wacker’s
words,
to sanitize their own
history,
Charles F. Parham’s legacy,
as Goff reiterates in his
conclusion,
cannot be denied. Parham’s formulation of the initial evidence doctrine “created the Pentecostal movement”;
and
tongues
served Pentecostals as their
“identifying badge”
within the
larger
Christian world.
Additionally,
he “infused the movement with a zeal for missions” which accounts for Pentecostalism’s
spectacular growth throughout
the world. And the essence of Parham’s
message,
with its
appeal
to
working people’s social and
religious needs,
“mirrors the
complex origins
of Pentecostal growth.”
These enormous
accomplishments notwithstanding,
Goff admits that Parham’s direct institutional
legacy
is
meager.
Other
11
88
Pentecostal leaders–some who
rejected
the
sexually
soiled
founder, some who did not share all of his
beliefs,
and some who never knew him–were more instrumental in
translating
Parham’s initial evidence doctrine into a Pentecostal movement and culture. Here denominational histories can take us further in understanding the institutionalization of early
Pentecostalism. What is needed, in my judgment, are studies that focus on the nuts and bolts of how and
why supposedly powerless
and largely working
class
people
in countless communities across the nation engaged
in Pentecostal movement
building
and cultural formation. Around what issues did
they
form local
fellowships?
What was the specific
role of
doctrine,
as
compared
to other
religious
and/or social needs,
in the creation of local
fellowships?
Did Pentecostal leaders use the rhetoric of social criticism and forms of mass culture to mobilize followers and resources to create Pentecostal communities and a national
movement(s)?
How should we even define “movement” in early
Pentecostalism? Gofi:’s
biography
tells us much about how one man formulated the initial evidence
doctrine;
what it can not tell us–given
Parham’s
ideological
and
personal
limitations–is how the movement he had such a central role in starting slowly became a group of denominations, churches, ministries and subculture in American life.
Scholars will
quarrel
with Goff’s
emphases
or
interpretations
of Parham’s
ideas,
ministerial activities and their
impact,
and as indicated throughout
this
essay,
with the author’s
handling
of broader interpretative
issues related to the
origins
and
meaning
of Pentecostalism. But I believe the main
story
of Parham’s life and career will not need
re-telling
for a
long
while. Therein lies Gofl’s
signal achievement and contribution to Pentecostal
history.
No one
working in the field of Pentecostal
history
can
ignore
this excellent book.
12
