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All of my Christian life I have read about the Azusa Revival in Los Angeles c.1906, which has become heralded by Pentecostals as the birth of the modern Pentecostal Movement. I have come to believe that we are as much a victim of myth as we are the beneficiaries of history. History is not an exact science, it is the product of its most vocal interpreters, so we only know about Azusa from what we have been told. The best we can do is go back to the primary sources of eyewitnesses, on all sides of the issue, and try to interpret the event for ourselves. And first-hand reports from the period are, at best, mixed.
I am bringing the following post from another thread to open Azusa to discussion by Spirit-filled believers:
I am bringing the following post from another thread to open Azusa to discussion by Spirit-filled believers:
While a lot of good and a wonderful movement arose from Azusa Street, it still may not have been all it is now being reported and promoted as being.
Apparently, some Pentecostal leaders (especially in the AG) seem to want to build a cult devotion to what they consider the watershed event of their movement, the so-called Azusa Revival. For reasons unknown, the revival has been mythologized by its defenders beyond the point of reality and needs another, more objective and certainly more honest appraisal, before Pentecostals rush blindly to its defense.
Eyewitness detractors of Azusa, whose testimonies did not support the revival (who are sternly disregarded by Pentecostals because they do not support the myth of Azusa), are ridiculed by Azusas modern defenders as men who lacked the Spirit of God. Still it is these mens books that line the shelves of Pentecostal preachers (men like C. Campbell Morgan, R. A. Torrey, H. A. Ironside, and Clarence Larkin among them, all of whom found the Azusa meetings less than what they were reported by their promoters to be.)
Some of their eyewitness reports said the meetings were shocking.
Even when I was AG, I did not swallow the Azusa myth as it was promoted by the denomination. Having investigated both sides of the issue (which a true devotee is never supposed to do), I found that some good resulted from the meetings but on the other side, well
\o/
Apparently, some Pentecostal leaders (especially in the AG) seem to want to build a cult devotion to what they consider the watershed event of their movement, the so-called Azusa Revival. For reasons unknown, the revival has been mythologized by its defenders beyond the point of reality and needs another, more objective and certainly more honest appraisal, before Pentecostals rush blindly to its defense.
Eyewitness detractors of Azusa, whose testimonies did not support the revival (who are sternly disregarded by Pentecostals because they do not support the myth of Azusa), are ridiculed by Azusas modern defenders as men who lacked the Spirit of God. Still it is these mens books that line the shelves of Pentecostal preachers (men like C. Campbell Morgan, R. A. Torrey, H. A. Ironside, and Clarence Larkin among them, all of whom found the Azusa meetings less than what they were reported by their promoters to be.)
Some of their eyewitness reports said the meetings were shocking.
- Larkin saying that in the conduct of those possessed [with the Holy Spirit] is more a characteristic of demon possession, than a work of the Holy Spirit.
- W.B. Godbey said the building was filled with jugglers(?), necromancers, enchanters, magicians.
- Ironside was concerned that Azusa was causing a "heavy toll of lunacy and infidelity."
- Torreys eyewitness charge was that the whole thing as founded by a sodomite.
- And Morgan was so turned-off by what he witnessed that he called Azusa the last vomit of Satan.
- Charles Parham, who I thought was too-highly revered by Pentecostal leaders as the father of modern Pentecostalism (although with less enthusiasm than in the past, as news of Parhams character becomes more widely known) and who was a big player at Azusa, was legally charged (but not convicted) of sodomy in Texas, 1907. Parham was also an avowed racist and member of the KKK whose anti-black feelings toward the pastor of the Azusa mission, William Seymour, a black man, may have inspired him to want to take leadership of the meetings away from him.
- Even Parham found the meetings to be a bit too much. According to Pentecostal historian Dr. Vinson Synan, when Parham visited the [Azusa] meetings in October 1906, he was shocked by the confusion of the services. He was dismayed by the "awful fits and spasms" of the "holy rollers and hypnotists." He described the Azusa "tongues" as "chattering, jabbering and sputtering, speaking no language at all. The Azusa Street meetings were so wild that Parham condemned them with the term "sensational Holy Rollers." He testified that the Azusa Street meetings were largely characterized by manifestations of the flesh, spiritualistic controls, and the practice of hypnotism according to Parhams wife, Sarah, in her book The Life of Charles F. Parham, 1930, p. 163). According to Parham, two-thirds of the people professing Pentecostalism in his day "are either hypnotized or spook driven" (p. 164). In his writings about Azusa Street, Parham described men and women falling on one another in a morally compromising manner.
Even when I was AG, I did not swallow the Azusa myth as it was promoted by the denomination. Having investigated both sides of the issue (which a true devotee is never supposed to do), I found that some good resulted from the meetings but on the other side, well
\o/
