The Global Church Era · 1906-1920s · Los Angeles, then global
Azusa Street & Early Pentecostalism
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About This Movement
The revival on Azusa Street in Los Angeles began in April 1906, and it came out of two streams already running — the Holiness movement, and Black church worship. What made it travel was that the mission printed its own newspaper. The Apostolic Faith ran to thirteen issues between 1906 and 1908, went out free from Los Angeles, and was read by people who then started meetings of their own on the strength of it. William J. Seymour led the mission and set down how it was to be ordered in The Doctrines and Discipline of the Azusa Street Apostolic Faith Mission in 1915. The city's press mocked it from the first weeks — the Los Angeles Times ran 'Weird Babel of Tongues' on 18 April 1906 — and participants answered with accounts of their own, Frank Bartleman's among the best known. The mission itself declined after 1909, and Seymour died in 1922. By then what began there was long past its own address.
In Its Own Record
Formed From
- The Holiness Movement — Azusa Street's leaders and vocabulary came directly out of the Holiness movement.
Sources
- The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles, 1906-1908, 13 issues) (primary) — The mission's own newspaper.
- Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street (orig. How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles, 1925); participant recollections (Valdez, Catley) (primary) — Participant memoirs written years after the events, shaped by each author's own perspective.
- William J. Seymour, The Doctrines and Discipline of the Azusa Street Apostolic Faith Mission (1915) (primary) — The Black founder's own church order, including revisions made after 1913 - a document often overlooked in popular accounts of the revival.
- Los Angeles Times, 'Weird Babel of Tongues' (18 Apr 1906) and the hostile press file; early periodical web (Confidence 1908-, Bridegroom's Messenger) (primary) — Hostile press coverage - contemptuous and racially charged - but still valuable evidence for dating events and identifying who took part.
- Cecil M. Robeck Jr., The Azusa Street Mission and Revival (2006); Espinosa, William J. Seymour (Duke, 2014); Wacker, Heaven Below (Harvard, 2001) (secondary)
- Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (CUP, 2004; 2nd ed. 2013/14); CHC vol. 9 (McLeod, 2006) (reference)