The Pentecostal Divide

In the wake of the narrow confirmation of former Sen. John Ashcroft, a noted conservative Pentecostalist, for U.S. Attorney General, some Christians consider Ashcroft's political rise a divinely strategic "coincidence." Why? Because whether you are sitting around a television or surfing the Internet, you witness media moguls, politicians, and average citizens alike discussing topics that are normally forbidden--politics, race, and religion.

Often this sort of controversy is the catalyst for transformation. I remain hopeful that when the dust settles, we will recognize an ongoing religious revolution: the breaking down of racial barriers among Christians.

Pentecostalism was one of the early racial pioneers, though for several decades, racism stopped interracial worship in Pentecostal gatherings. However, this is changing today, and it is worth noting.

It all began during a 1901 New Year's Eve prayer vigil in the Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, where Charles Fox Parham and several of his Bible students documented a supernatural happening. A woman named Agnes Ozman began to speak in "tongues" (formerly called "glossolalia"). This event sparked a movement that two years later spread to another school begun by Parham, this one in Houston, where a young black evangelist named William J. Seymour became thirsty for the spirit of God. In fact, even when he was asked to sit outside and listen through a cracked door, he did so in complete humility.

Seymour soon took that candle of enlightenment to spread revival in a small home prayer group. One day, in the midst of a 10-day fast, Seymour and the others were dramatically baptized in the Holy Ghost. This great meeting, and its results, soon spread to an abandoned building in Los Angeles at 312 Azusa Street.

The interracial aspects of the "Pentecostalism movement" (as it was later called) were a striking exception to the racism and segregation during those times. The phenomenon of blacks and whites worshipping together under a black pastor seemed incredible to observers. Frank Bartleman, a licensed Baptist minister, captured the ethos of the meeting when he wrote in the Apostolic Faith News in 1906, "the color line was washed away in the blood." Bartleman called Azusa Street the "American Jerusalem" and many of the people who hungered for God's touch went on a trek to the supplanted Holy Land.

One of those people was Charles Fox Parham--but his appearance on the scene began a great divide, a spiritual chasm, which many of God's chosen elect will still not brave to cross. At the Azusa Street Mission, Parham became deeply offended by people openly demonstrating their charismatic gifts. Moreover, Parham was an admirer of the Ku Klux Klan, which objected to racial mixing in church. This admiration was further stirred by his belief in false doctrines, such as the notion that Noah was chosen to survive the flood because of his "pedigree" (Genesis 6:9). The first schism in the Pentecostal Movement began when Parham denounced what he could not practice.

Americans were only one generation removed from slavery. This wave of "Azusa pilgrims" journeyed throughout the nation. In 1907, William H. Durham journeyed to Azusa from Chicago and received the "tongues experience." Upon returning home, he led thousands into the Pentecostal movement, which led to the formation of the Assemblies of God denomination in 1914. Since many white pastors had formerly been a part of Mason's church, this was the beginning of racial separation in the Pentecostal movement.

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