The history of Pentecostalism began in the early twentieth century as an American revival movement seeking to restore the supernatural spiritual gifts described in the New Testament book of Acts. Marked by the baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues, Pentecostalism rapidly expanded from humble urban prayer meetings into a worldwide movement.
Origins of Pentecostalism: Nineteenth-century Holiness roots
The theological origins of Pentecostalism emerged out of the nineteenth-century Wesleyan Holiness movement in the United States and Great Britain. Following the teachings of John Wesley, early Methodist circuit riders preached the doctrine of Christian perfection, often termed "entire sanctification." Wesley held that following justification by faith, a believer could experience a second distinct work of divine grace that cleansed the heart from inward sin and empowered a life of conscious holiness.
During the mid-nineteenth century, revivalist teachers such as Phoebe Palmer popularized "altar theology," urging Christians to place their entire lives upon the altar of Christ to receive instant sanctification by faith. By the late 1800s, this Holiness revival expanded through camp meetings, independent mission societies, and rescue missions across American cities. Believers increasingly prayed for an enduement of divine power to fulfill the Great Commission before the return of Christ.
Simultaneously, a passionate divine healing movement swept through American evangelicalism. Leaders such as Presbyterian physician Charles Cullis, Canadian evangelist A. B. Simpson, and Australian faith healer John Alexander Dowie established healing homes and held public services where thousands testified to physical recovery through prayer. These movements coalesced around a theological formula known as the "fourfold gospel"—proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Soon-Coming King—which directly shaped what we examine today in Pentecostal beliefs and doctrine.
Topeka, Kansas (1901): Charles Parham and the initial evidence
While nineteenth-century Holiness believers frequently spoke of being "baptized in the Holy Ghost," they understood this experience primarily as moral purification and spiritual empowerment for service. The distinctive theological breakthrough that inaugurated modern Pentecostalism occurred in Topeka, Kansas, under the leadership of an independent Holiness evangelist named Charles Fox Parham.
In October 1900, Parham opened Bethel Bible College in a rented mansion known as "Stone's Folly." Operating without tuition or a fixed curriculum, Parham gathered approximately forty students to study the Bible as their sole textbook. Before departing for a brief preaching trip in late December, Parham assigned his students a specific theological question: what was the biblical evidence that accompanied the baptism in the Holy Spirit in the New Testament book of Acts?
Upon his return, the students reported a unanimous conclusion: in every biblical instance where the Holy Spirit fell upon believers, they spoke in unknown tongues (glossolalia). Seeking this biblical experience, the school held a watch-night prayer vigil on New Year's Eve. Just after midnight on January 1, 1901, student Agnes Ozman requested that Parham lay hands upon her head and pray that she might receive the Holy Spirit. According to contemporary accounts, Ozman began speaking in an unknown language and was unable to speak English for three days.
Parham and several other students soon had identical experiences. Parham codified this doctrinal link into what became known as the doctrine of "initial evidence"—the teaching that speaking in tongues is the normative, undeniable physical evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Parham began preaching this "Apostolic Faith" message across Kansas, Missouri, and Texas, establishing small congregations and preparing the way for an even larger awakening.
The Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909): William J. Seymour and the spark
In late 1905, Parham opened a short-term Bible school in Houston, Texas. Because of local segregation laws, an African American Holiness preacher named William Joseph Seymour was permitted to attend lectures only by sitting outside the classroom door in the hallway. Despite these demeaning restrictions, Seymour embraced Parham's doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, even though he had not yet spoken in tongues himself.
In early 1906, Seymour accepted an invitation to pastor a small African American Holiness mission in Los Angeles, California. When Seymour preached on Acts 2:4 during his first Sunday sermon, the church elder padlocked the doors against him for teaching an unscriptural doctrine. Undeterred, Seymour began leading informal prayer meetings in the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry on North Bonnie Brae Street.
On April 9, 1906, after days of intensive fasting and prayer, several participants began speaking in tongues. As news spread, immense crowds gathered, packing the house and overflowing onto the porch and street. Within days, the porch collapsed beneath the weight of the worshippers, forcing Seymour to secure a permanent location. He leased an abandoned two-story wooden building at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles, which had previously served as an African Methodist Episcopal church and more recently as a horse stable and storage warehouse.
The resulting outpouring became known as the historic Azusa Street Revival. For three uninterrupted years, services ran day and night, seven days a week. What distinguished Azusa Street was not merely the manifestation of spiritual gifts, but its extraordinary racial and social integration. In an era dominated by Jim Crow segregation, Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian worshippers prayed side by side at a wooden altar made from overturned packing crates. As eyewitness Frank Bartleman famously wrote, "the color line was washed away in the Blood."
Visitors arrived from every corner of North America and overseas, received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and departed to spread the message worldwide. Within two years, missionaries from Azusa Street had established Pentecostal works across more than fifty nations, including South Africa, India, China, Sweden, and Brazil.
Forming denominations: COGIC, the Assemblies of God, and the Church of God
Early Pentecostal leaders initially believed they were participating in an end-times restoration that would renew existing Christian denominations rather than create new ones. However, as mainline Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist denominations barred Pentecostal preachers from their pulpits and expelled ministers who spoke in tongues, Pentecostals were compelled to establish their own administrative bodies.
The earliest major Pentecostal denomination was the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Founded in 1897 by Charles Harrison Mason and Charles Price Jones as an African American Holiness association in Mississippi, the movement divided in 1907 after Mason attended the Azusa Street Revival and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Mason returned to Memphis, Tennessee, and legally incorporated COGIC as a Pentecostal body. For several years, because COGIC held a valid legal charter, Mason granted ministerial credentials to hundreds of White Pentecostal preachers as well as Black ministers, maintaining an interracial fellowship during a period of intense American racial tension.
In the Appalachian foothills, another stream took root. In 1886, Baptist and Methodist believers in Monroe County, Tennessee, formed the Christian Union to pursue spiritual holiness. Reorganized under A. J. Tomlinson in 1907 as the Church of God (headquartered in Cleveland, Tennessee), the body fully embraced Pentecostal doctrine after Tomlinson met Azusa Street participants, growing into one of the largest classical Pentecostal bodies in North America.
By 1914, many White Pentecostal ministers recognized the need for coordinated foreign missionary sending, legal protection for church property, and standardized doctrinal accountability. In April 1914, more than three hundred delegates gathered in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to organize the General Council of the Assemblies of God. As detailed in our overview of Assemblies of God history and beliefs, the new fellowship adopted a voluntary cooperative polity, drafted a sixteen-point Statement of Fundamental Truths in 1916, and grew to become the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world.
During this same formative decade, a sharp theological debate known as the "Jesus Only" or Oneness controversy erupted. Oneness Pentecostals rejected traditional Trinitarian theology, arguing that God is a single divine person whose name is Jesus, and insisted that baptism must be performed strictly "in the name of Jesus Christ" rather than in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This division led to the establishment of separate Oneness bodies, including the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI) and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (PAW).
Healing revivals and mass evangelism in the 1940s and 1950s
Following World War II, a remarkable second wave of Pentecostal revivalism swept across North America. Often termed the Post-War Healing Revival, this movement was spearheaded by independent evangelists who operated outside traditional denominational headquarters, conducting massive interdenominational campaigns under canvas tents seating up to ten thousand people.
The revival gained national attention through the ministry of William Branham, whose documented healing services in the late 1940s attracted tens of thousands of seekers. In 1948, Gordon Lindsay founded The Voice of Healing magazine in Shreveport, Louisiana, which served as a national bulletin and coordination network for dozens of traveling evangelists, including Jack Coe, A. A. Allen, and W. V. Grant.
The most prominent and enduring figure of this era was Oral Roberts, a Pentecostal Holiness evangelist from Oklahoma. Roberts erected what was then the world's largest mobile tent cathedral, pioneered live television broadcasts of healing services in 1954, and later founded Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. Roberts helped demystify Pentecostalism for mainstream Americans, demonstrating that faith for supernatural healing could coexist with medical science and academic excellence.
Simultaneously, the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International (FGBMFI), founded by dairy farmer Demos Shakarian in 1951, brought the Pentecostal message to affluent businessmen and professionals. Meeting in hotel banquet rooms rather than traditional revival tents, the FGBMFI created an informal environment where middle-class Christians from historic mainline churches could encounter the gifts of the Spirit.
The Charismatic renewal: Crossing mainline and Catholic boundaries (1960s–1970s)
For its first half-century, Pentecostalism had remained largely confined to distinct Pentecostal denominations and working-class subcultures. That boundary shattered on Passion Sunday in April 1960, when Dennis Bennett, rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, announced to his wealthy congregation that he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and had spoken in tongues.
Bennett's announcement triggered nationwide media coverage and sparked what became known as the Charismatic movement. Unlike classical Pentecostals, ministers and laypeople who experienced this renewal chose to remain within their historic traditions—including Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal communions—bringing contemporary worship songs, personal prayer for healing, and spiritual gifts into historic liturgies, as explored in our study of the Charismatic movement across denominations.
In February 1967, the movement crossed into the Roman Catholic Church during a student retreat at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Known as the "Duquesne Weekend," several Catholic professors and undergraduate students experienced baptism in the Holy Spirit while praying before the Blessed Sacrament. Catholic Charismatic Renewal spread swiftly to the University of Notre Dame and throughout Catholic dioceses worldwide, eventually receiving formal recognition and theological approval from the Vatican.
During the early 1970s, the revival collided with youth counterculture along the West Coast, producing the Jesus People movement. Hippies and countercultural youth who converted to Christianity formed innovative fellowship networks—such as Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Christian Fellowship—that merged casual dress, electric guitar worship music, and open-hearted openness to the Holy Spirit, shaping modern non-denominational evangelicalism.
Pentecostal church history and global growth today
From an initial gathering of a few dozen believers in Topeka and Los Angeles, Pentecostal church history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries represents one of the most astonishing demographic developments in the annals of global religion. According to extensive surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2006 and 2011, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians number over 500 million worldwide, making Spirit-empowered Christianity the second-largest bloc in global Christendom after Roman Catholicism.
While the movement originated in the United States, its primary center of gravity has shifted decisively toward the Global South. Massive Pentecostal communities thrive across Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Assemblies of God churches in Latin America and Africa regularly number in the millions of adherents, operating extensive community clinics, schools, and radio stations.
Within the United States, classical Pentecostal denominations continue to experience growth, even as many historic mainline bodies report declining membership. The Assemblies of God USA reported over 3 million adherents across more than 13,000 congregations in recent years, while the Church of God in Christ reports several million members nationwide. As examined in our geographic overview of Pentecostal churches by state, Spirit-filled congregations are particularly dense throughout the American South, the Southwest, and major diverse urban centers.
Visiting a Pentecostal church and finding local congregations
For visitors stepping into a local Pentecostal congregation for the first time, worship services are characterized by warmth, emotional expression, and participatory devotion. Attendees frequently lift their hands during worship, pray aloud simultaneously at the altar, and respond to biblical sermons with heartfelt verbal affirmations.
Readers researching historic classical denominations or exploring modern independent charismatic chapels can consult our national directory of Pentecostal churches, which provides updated listings of local congregations across all fifty states. Consulting our practical guide to what to expect at a Pentecostal church service can help prepare you for your visit, explaining church etiquette, altar calls, and worship practices.