page_title: William J. Seymour
section_title: Move to Azusa Street and worldwide influence
hierarchical_section_title: William J. Seymour / Azusa Street Revival / Move to Azusa Street and worldwide influence
caption_attribution_description: English: The AFM on Azusa Street in 1907. Image obtained from http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/azusarevival/particulars.shtml, and is in the public domain.
context_page_description: William Joseph Seymour was an African American, holiness preacher who initiated the Azusa Street Revival, an influential event in the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. He was the second of eight children born to emancipated slaves and was raised in extreme poverty in Louisiana.
  Seymour was a student of early Pentecostal minister Charles Parham, and he adopted Parham's belief that speaking in tongues was the sign of receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In 1906, Seymour moved to Los Angeles, California, where he preached the Pentecostal message and sparked the Azusa Street Revival. The revival drew large crowds of believers as well as media coverage that focused on the controversial religious practices as well as the racially integrated worship services, which violated the racial norms of the time. Seymour's leadership of the revival and publication of The Apostolic Faith newspaper launched him into prominence within the young Pentecostal movement. Seymour broke with Parham in 1906 over theological differences as well as Parham's unhappiness with interracial revival meetings.
context_section_description: Three days later, on April 12, after a long evening spent in prayer, Seymour himself received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. By that time, the group was far too large for the Asberry's house; at one point the weight of the overflowing attendees caused the front porch to collapse, forcing Seymour to look for a new location. The group moved to an old African Methodist Episcopal church building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, and while legally incorporated as the Apostolic Faith Mission, it also became known as the Azusa Street Mission.
  The revival quickly grew. Crowds of up to 1,500 packed into the small mission for the better part of three years. During the peak of the revival, meetings ran from mid-morning to midnight, seven days a week. Well-known names in the early Pentecostal movement like Parham, Lake, F. F. Bosworth, Thomas Hezmalhalch, and many others attended the revival and then took what they had received to the mission fields.
  From the beginning, the movement was racially egalitarian. Blacks and whites worshiped together at the same altar, against the normal segregation of the day. Seymour claimed that the Holy Spirit was bringing people together across all social lines and boundaries to the revival. He not only rejected the existing racial barriers in favor of "unity in Christ", but he also rejected the then almost-universal barriers to women in any form of church leadership. Latinos soon began attending as well, after a Mexican-American worker received the Holy Spirit baptism on April 13, 1906.
  Seymour was clearly the leader of the Azusa revival in the beginning. He delegated authority to twelve overseers, ordained ministers, and commissioned missionaries. He also began publishing a newspaper, The Apostolic Faith, in September 1906. Within one year, the circulation of Seymour's paper reached 40,000 issues. With the notable exception of Parham, who was uncomfortable with the mixing of races at Azusa, many other prominent holiness preachers, like G.B. Cashwell and C.H. Mason, made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles to preach and pray alongside Seymour.
  The resulting movement became widely known as Pentecostalism, likening it to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded as occurring in the first two chapters of the book of Acts, from the day of the Feast of Pentecost onwards. By the end of 1909, the movement had achieved geographical ubiquity. Every region of the United States had a Pentecostal presence, with additional missions planted in 50 nations worldwide.
caption: The Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street
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