The Azusa Street Revival was a historic Pentecostal awakening that erupted in Los Angeles, California, in April 1906. Led by African American holiness preacher William J. Seymour, the multi-year revival emphasized baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and divine healing, rapidly giving birth to modern global Pentecostalism.
Operating out of an unpretentious former African Methodist Episcopal building in downtown Los Angeles, the revival challenged established ecclesiastical traditions and racial conventions of early twentieth-century America. Its continuous meetings, dramatic spiritual manifestations, and international missionary zeal made it one of the most consequential religious events in modern world history.
Roots in the Holiness Movement and William Seymour (18–905)
The origins of the revival were rooted in the late nineteenth-century Holiness movement, which grew out of Wesleyan theology. Holiness advocates stressed Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, as a second work of grace following salvation. Unlike early colonial Puritans whose theocracy was established by the Puritans and Pilgrims in New England, or the revivalists of The First Great Awakening, late nineteenth-century believers increasingly sought a tangible empowerment of the Holy Spirit for end-times world evangelization.
In January 1901, healing evangelist Charles Fox Parham opened Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas. Parham and his students concluded from the Book of Acts that speaking in unknown tongues (glossolalia) was the indispensable initial physical evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Student Agnes Ozman first spoke in tongues on New Year's Day 1901, marking the theological formulation of modern Pentecostal doctrine.
William J. Seymour encountered this teaching in Houston, Texas, in 1905. Born in 1870 in Centerville, Louisiana, to formerly enslaved parents, Seymour was raised in rural poverty, suffered partial blindness from smallpox, and worked across the country before entering Christian ministry. In Houston, Seymour attended Parham's short-term Bible school. Because of strict Jim Crow segregation laws, Seymour was prohibited from sitting inside the classroom and listened to Parham's lectures through an open doorway in the hallway. Convinced that Parham's doctrine was biblical, Seymour embraced the Pentecostal message, even though he had not yet spoken in tongues himself, adopting an attitude of deep humility and steadfast prayer.
The Outpouring on Bonnie Brae and the Azusa Street Revival (1906)
In early 1906, Seymour received an invitation to pastor a small African American Holiness mission in Los Angeles. Upon arriving in California, Seymour preached on baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of tongues based on Acts 2:4. Unsettled by his doctrine, the mission's pastor locked Seymour out of the church building. Left without funds or lodging, Seymour was welcomed into the home of Edward Lee and subsequently held prayer gatherings at the residence of Richard and Ruth Asberry at 214 North Bonnie Brae Street.
For several weeks, the small group fasted and prayed earnestly for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. On the evening of April 9, 1906, Edward Lee spoke in tongues while Seymour prayed with him. When they returned to the Bonnie Brae house that evening, several attendees, including Jennie Moore (who later married Seymour), fell to the floor speaking in tongues and singing extemporaneously. Seymour himself received Spirit baptism three days later on April 12. As word spread, crowds overwhelmed the small residential street, packing the front yard and causing the front porch to collapse under the weight of eager seekers.
Seeking larger quarters, the group rented an abandoned two-story building at 312 Azusa Street in industrial downtown Los Angeles. Originally constructed as Stevens African Methodist Episcopal Church, the dilapidated structure had recently served as a livery stable and tenement storage facility. Seymour and his supporters cleaned the dirt floor, used sawdust for carpeting, and arranged discarded wooden planks atop empty nail kegs to serve as pews. Two wooden packing crates covered with a cotton cloth formed Seymour's preaching pulpit, establishing the Apostolic Faith Mission as a sanctuary open to all people day and night.
Radical Interracial Worship in the Jim Crow Era (190–909)
Beginning in mid-April 1906, meetings at 312 Azusa Street convened three times daily, seven days a week, often lasting from early morning until past midnight without interruption. There was no formal liturgy, musical instruments, choir, or scheduled order of service. Participants sang a cappella, prayed in tongues, wept at the altar, and testified to miraculous physical healings. Worshipers described the atmosphere as saturated with spiritual awe, where traditional human planning gave way to spontaneous prayer and Spirit-directed exhortation.
The most extraordinary feature of the mission was its radical social egalitarianism. At a time when Jim Crow segregation was legally enforced across the South and racial prejudice dominated northern and western cities, Azusa Street brought diverse people together. White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian believers worshiped side by side, kneeling together at the wooden altar. Men and women shared leadership roles, with women preaching, praying, and leading services. Eyewitness evangelist Frank Bartleman famously recorded that at Azusa, the color line was washed away in the blood.
This unprecedented diversity challenged both secular society and traditional church culture. The historic network of the Black church in America had long nurtured African American leadership, but Azusa Street placed a Black pastor at the helm of an integrated international movement. Secular newspapers treated the revival with mockery and contempt. On April 18, 1906, the Los Angeles Times published an article titled Weird Babel of Tongues, deriding Seymour as a one-eyed illiterate and labeling the meetings a shameful demonstration of religious hysteria. Nevertheless, the newspaper attacks provided unintended publicity, drawing thousands of curious seekers from across the nation.
Global Spread and the Birth of Worldwide Pentecostalism (190–915)
From 1906 through 1909, Azusa Street served as a central distribution hub for global Pentecostalism. In September 1906, Seymour began publishing The Apostolic Faith, a monthly newspaper recounting testimonies of Spirit baptism, healing, and foreign mission appointments. Distributed free of charge, the paper reached a global circulation of over fifty thousand subscribers within two years.
Ministers and missionaries traveled to Los Angeles from across North America and Europe, experienced Spirit baptism, and carried the message back to their home regions. Norwegian Methodist minister T.B. Barratt visited the United States in 1906, was baptized in the Holy Spirit, and introduced Pentecostalism to Norway, Sweden, Britain, and Germany. North Carolina evangelist Gaston B. Cashwell visited Azusa Street in late 1906, conquered his racial prejudice toward Black leadership, and returned to preach Pentecostal doctrine across the American South, bringing existing bodies like the Pentecostal Holiness Church and Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) into the movement.
African American holiness leader Charles Harrison Mason journeyed to Azusa in March 1907. After receiving Spirit baptism, Mason returned to Memphis, Tennessee, to lead the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), which grew into the largest African American Pentecostal denomination in the world. As documented in the history of Pentecostalism, these early converts subsequently organized new denominations, including the Assemblies of God in 1914, formalizing modern Pentecostal institutional structures.
The Legacy of Azusa Street in Modern Christianity
By 1910, attendance at Azusa Street began to decline as racial divisions re-emerged and theological controversies, such as the Oneness debate over baptismal formulas, fractured the movement. Former associates founded separate white-led denominations, while Seymour remained at the Azusa mission until his death in 1922. The historic mission building was demolished in 1938, yet the fire sparked within its humble walls continues to circle the globe.
Today, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians number over 644 million worldwide, constituting the fastest-growing segment of Christianity and the second-largest branch of the global faith after Roman Catholicism. Within the broader history of Christianity in America, Azusa Street represents the high point of experiential American revivalism, inheriting the spiritual passion of The Second Great Awakening, the territorial presence of early Spanish missions of the Southwest, and ancient sanctuaries like the oldest churches in America, forever reshaping an evolving national religious landscape.