The Ark

100 years ago an old building on Azusa Street in Los Angeles held religious meetings that started with people 'breathing strange utterances'. It was the beginning of the modern Pentecostal movement.

Transcript

Rachael Kohn: Which Christian church was at the forefront of racial integration and feminism 100 years ago?

Hello, this is The Ark on ABC Radio National. I'm Rachael Kohn.

The church that disregarded the Jim Crow laws in America separating African-Americans from the rest was Pentecostalism. Surprised? Well, don't be. It also saw the greatest number of women preachers, some of them internationally renowned, like Aimee Semple McPherson , who came to Australia.

Modern Pentecostalism had a few places of origin, but the one that's become symbolic of the whole movement is Azusa Street, in Los Angeles, where the unusual meetings made the newspapers.

Historian Mark Hutchinson sets the scene.

Mark Hutchinson: You had the emergence of quite a remarkable sense of millenarian fervour throughout the city, through many of the churches in the years prior to this, and then something which was actually quite minor, which was a series of personal experiences of encounter with God occurred in a mixed congregation which in itself was to some degree remarkable, racially mixed, which was quite unusual.

The great question of the day for Americans of course, and I think to some degree still is for American churches, is the race line which divided the churches. So when we look at the significance of Pentecostalism, we come to understand that for those who were there at the time, the significance of a mixed congregation was actually much more important than it is perhaps for modern-day Australians who are used to a multicultural setting.

Rachael Kohn: But what was happening in the prayer meeting that merited reporting?

Mark Hutchinson: People who had been praying for revival to break out had gathered in a private house, first at the house of the Lee family, and then at the house of the Asbery family at Bonnie Brae Street, and during that prayer meeting one of the members, Edward Lee, came in and reported that he'd had a vision, that the Lord had shown him two of the apostles who then demonstrated to him in that vision how to speak in tongues, and how to restore the power of the early church as reported in the 2nd chapter of Acts.

Shortly after that, the leader of the prayer meetings, William J. Seymour, laid hands upon him, which is a Biblical, liturgical function indicating in a sense, anointing, and shortly thereafter Edward Lee spoke in tongues, which was a remarkable outpouring of experience and of engagement with God in a way which many churches had been seeking up to that point.

Rachael Kohn: Now you've mentioned Bonnie Brae Street, but it's Azusa Street which is most associated with this early Revival. When did this phenomenon move to Azusa Street?

Mark Hutchinson: Quite shortly thereafter. Within a month, the prayer meeting outgrew the house, and so they began to look around for an alternative building and they found one in a previously burnt out African-American Methodist church in Azusa Street.

Rachael Kohn: William J. Seymour, who was a preacher who you say laid hands on this individual, who experienced the gifts of the spirit, he was a black American, wasn't he?

Mark Hutchinson: He was indeed, yes, and came from a strong tradition of preaching, and experiential religion amongst recently-freed slaves in the South. Both his parents were slaves. He grew up in Louisiana actually came from a Catholic background, then went to Indianapolis to work as a waiter, in order to support his family, his father dying early in life, I think in his mid-50s. He was sending money back to the family while working as a waiter, and it was in a sense the first signs of that drift from the south which the post Civil War Reconstruction encouraged amongst black populations in the South. While there, he ran into Methodist Holiness people, started attending Methodist Holiness church.

Rachael Kohn: Holiness. Holiness is a particular movement within the Methodist church, isn't it?

Mark Hutchinson: Well interdenominationally as a matter of fact, it emerges from John Wesley's thought on Christian perfection. The idea that there is a distinct experience of sanctification in the Christian life whereby the holy spirit fills the believer and eradicates the necessity for sin, not necessarily the occurrence of sin, but the necessity for sin, that people can make choices about holiness which are real choices. And that movement emerges very, very strongly with the emergence of Methodism as basically the dominant form of American life, but it wasn't restricted to that. Presbyterians, and many of the revivalists were not in fact Methodists, they came from other traditions but they imbibed the Methodist experientialism and emphasis on experiential encounters with God, and that was very, very common, one of the most famous of which was the Keen Ridge meeting of 1802.

Rachael Kohn: So the Azusa Street revival was very much in train with that whole movement of experiencing the gifts of the Holy Spirit?

Mark Hutchinson: There's a sense in which it's not particularly inordinate, or even unexpected. Speaking in tongues had been evinced in Cherokee County in North Carolina in 1893, also in 1901 amongst Charles Parham's healing and holiness group in Topeka, and then later on in Houston which is where Seymour runs into this teaching, and experience in fact. What happens at Azusa Street is the coming together of all these things in a sort of synergy which is also linked to a very powerful form of, in a sense, religious globalisation.

Rachael Kohn: I guess it helped the Azusa Street group that one of its key members, Frank Bartleman, was not only an enthusiast, but also a journalist?

Mark Hutchinson: Absolutely. Bloomhaufer talks about Pentecostalism as global evangelicalism and she's done remarkable study on how Pentecostalism in fact spreads not necessarily by personal contact, but by the new technologies of printing and mass media, particularly journals, and Bartleman's early accounts, and his continuous stream of published accounts in journals and his tracts, dozens of them, do a lot to actually spread Pentecostals well beyond the personal contacts of Azusa Street.

Rachael Kohn: Well Bartleman was not a black American. Where did he get his passion for revivalism?

Mark Hutchinson: The great expectation on which Azusa Street was built, was the Welsh Revival of 1904, which was led by a young evangelist by the name of Evan Roberts. Being both from a Welsh background and also having the availability of ready transport, people like Bartleman, but also many others in Los Angeles at the time, had been to Wales to witness the Welsh Revival and carried it back to California as a wave of expectation, and it's really on the wave of that expectation that the Azusa Street revival begins to break out.

Rachael Kohn: Why is revivalism so attractive at this time?

Mark Hutchinson: I think there's a general feeling in the church that the churches have encountered and been swallowed by the expanding Western state, and that they're relatively powerless, so revivalism creates a spiritual missions network which emphasises holiness, personal conversion, experiential religion and a certain historical understanding which is linked to millenarianism.

Rachael Kohn: Millenarianism meaning the expectation -

Mark Hutchinson: Of the soon return of Christ. Certainly towards the end of the 19th century, many churches are feeling in a sense pushed aside by the rise of the secular state, against the rise of Bible prophecy conferences, emphasising the soon return of Christ, and there was an expectation amongst Holiness people that the return of Christ would be presaged by a large final days outbreak, which was called the Latter Rain, and in fact many groups which came out of Azusa Street, in fact referred to themselves as the Latter Rain.

Rachael Kohn: What do you mean by the Latter Rain? Are you talking about the stuff from the skies?

Mark Hutchinson: Indeed. In the Old Testament there is a prophecy which refers to both the former and the Latter Rain, and that was interpreted by many people to be indicative of a final period of outpouring whereby God would become manifest in power on the earth before the End Times and when Azusa Street broke out, it's really that sense of where they are in history which brings it all together for people. It was very, very much in the air at the time.

Rachael Kohn: Was the term 'Pentecostalism' in the air too, or is that a later inscription?

Mark Hutchinson: No, it's very much - of course later they came to have a movement and denominational meaning, but it is a very strong theme in the writings which emerge amongst Holiness script from the 1880s. In fact there are groups like the Pentecostal Five Baptized churches and others which use that phrase, but don't in fact have the Azusa Street type manifestations in their setting.

Rachael Kohn: Let's talk about those manifestations, because they could get a bit unruly if you had a collection of people who were jumping up and experiencing the gifts of the Lord in different ways.

Mark Hutchinson: Falling down and rolling around and experiencing the gifts of the Lord in various ways.

Rachael Kohn: That must have created some concern amongst those in the movement.

Mark Hutchinson: The tension in the churches was really this idea of Victorian respectability - would be familiar to most of your listeners - that the church wouldn't do anything unexpected or unseemly, and the trade-off for that was that the church was given a place in public life. By the end of the 19th century the place of the church in public life was beginning to slide, and people really didn't feel that the tradeoff was worth it, and so they were then seeking for a new affirmation of the presence of God amongst them, not simply in the prosperity of the church, or the power of the church, but in the immediate presence of God.

Rachael Kohn: Well there must have been two things that aroused the suspicions of the more Victorian and staid churches, and that is, as we've already mentioned, the presence of black preachers and black followers in amongst the whites, but also women.

Mark Hutchinson: It's quite remarkable really. Even in Australia if you look at the founding of the first Pentecostal churches in Australia 13 out of the 18 first churches found in Australia were founded by women, and in fact many of the leaders of the early movements were women. It was a woman who invited W.J. Seymour to go to Los Angeles, Neely Terry, and then Julia Hutchins, and really, women have a critical place in the whole Azusa Street movement. So in fact the product of the revival was not simply manifestations, but it was a washing away of the colour bar, and an elevation of all people to a sense of equality in ministry.

Rachael Kohn: Well how did the Azusa Street church spread the word? How did it become such a significant phenomenon?

Mark Hutchinson: Through modern technology. They were very adapted, using papers and journals. The actual core group of Azusa Street actually only varied between 50 to 200 people, depending upon which estimates you read, but thousands of people, in fact by the end of 1913 when the revival begins to peter out, tens of thousands of people had been through or been touched by or contacted by people who'd come to Azusa Street in a sense to share in the empowering. And people like William Durham went back to Chicago, and out of the Chicago work emerged one of the first Italian Pentecostal churches which then sent people back to Italy and South America. There are millions of people in those works today, and it was typical that people, having an encounter with God and an experience of the spirit would then jump on a boat and want to go and do God's work which was to preach the Gospel to the four corners of the earth. And so it spread very, very rapidly.

Rachael Kohn: In the 1970s we saw the charismatic renewal. What's the connection between that phenomenon and this early emergence of the Pentecostal movement?

Mark Hutchinson: One of the things that comes out of Azusa Street this idea of the Latter Rain, which is the restoration of the pure and powerful church of God as seen amongst the apostles, becomes a little stilled amongst the actual mainline Pentecostal churches as they emerged from 1914 through to the 1930s.

Rachael Kohn: As you said, the revival petered out.

Mark Hutchinson: The revival peters out and becomes more organised, and that actually creates a reflex need to actually revive revival.

In 1948 there was another revival which broke out in North Battlefield Saskatchewan called the Latter Rain movement amongst whom the key speakers were people like Oral Roberts and Branham and people like this had a very powerful influence on churches who were beginning to see their constituencies slide and people were looking for ways of achieving personal renewal and also organisation renewal. David Martin, the sociologist talks about them as being downward mobilisations. When the church in a sense organises and becomes respectable and rises up in society, there's always a tendency to drive back towards fundamental primitive spirituality, and direct encounter with God which is not catered for.

Rachael Kohn: Well tell me, when did the Azusa Street revival have its impact here in Australia?

Mark Hutchinson: The actual connection, physical connection actually doesn't occur really until 1922 when you get Aimee Semple McPherson coming over with the really powerful impact of course is when A.C. Valdez comes in 1926 and sparks the Sunshine Revival in Melbourne. And so the early Pentecostal churches in Australia are in fact largely indigenous and the English Pentecostal influence is much more important than Azusa Street is. Azusa Street comes to be in a sense a living symbol of Pentecostalism, but it isn't in fact genealogically related to Australian Pentecostalism in its earliest phase.

Rachael Kohn: The radical roots of Pentecostalism, as told there by historian and Dean of the graduate school of Southern Cross College in Sydney, Mark Hutchinson.

Next week, another remarkable movement of the 19th century, Spirit Photography!

That's on The Ark, with me, Rachael Kohn.

THEME

Guests

Associate Professor Mark Hutchinson
is Dean of the Graduate School at Southern Cross College in Sydney.

Further Information

Southern Cross College
SCC is the official ministry training college of the Assemblies of God in Australia.

Presenter

Rachael Kohn

Producer

Geoff Wood and Rachael Kohn