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8 Interpreting American Pentecostal Origins Retrospect and Prospect Randall J. Stephens Pentecostalism is a large, relatively new religious movement that claims hundreds of millions of followers around the globe. Believers speak in unknown tongues, practice healing, and claim a number of gifts of the Spirit.1 Chief denominations include the primarily white Assemblies of God; the largely AfricanAmerican Church of God in Christ; the PentecostalAssemblies of the World; the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee; and the International Pentecostal Holiness Church.Additionally, millions of followers have joined unaffiliated congregations,a clear sign of devotees’fierce independence and nontraditional sympathies.Though contemporary adherents are much like other conservative and moderate evangelicals, one hundred years ago converts distanced themselves from the American mainstream. The earliest outside observers were invariably negative in their appraisals of the new movement. Not long after Pentecostalism first took root in early twentieth-century America, one bitter opponent lamented,“There is not a town of three thousand population in the United States where the movement is not represented.” Stalwarts antagonized mainline Christians,harangued“half-hearted”believers , and claimed that Jesus would swiftly return to wipe out Pentecostalism’s many foes. It is no wonder that another early observer shot back with an acerbic rebuttal. Writing in the scholarly journal Social Forces in 1937, a professor from Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute derided “holy roller” religion as an “escape from reality.” Practitioners warped their minds with hypnotic frenzies and epileptic fits. He concluded: “Psychologically, the communicants of sanctification fall into two general classes: neurotics, and [the] mentally retarded .” Their churches harbored “childminded types.”2 Such cultured despisers predicted that the unconventional,regressive faith would soon disappear. They were completely wrong. The movement grew by leaps and bounds as the century progressed. By 1936 Pentecostalism claimed 174 Randall J. Stephens at least 350,000 followers in the United States. It had become a powerful stream within American and global Protestantism.In 1958 Life magazine took note and published a photo essay on what it called the “third force in Christendom .” Pentecostal and Holiness churches, wrote the main author of the piece, consisted of “‘fringe sects’—those marked, in the extreme, by shouting revivalists, puritanical preachers of doomsday, faith healers, jazzy gospel singers.”Life’s relatively kind treatment contrasted sharply with earlier, caustic critiques. Indeed, the new faith could no longer be dismissed or wished away. Followers came from all walks of life, they hailed from big cities as well as rural areas, and they were now joining the middle class as never before. Life’s wide-eyed reporters announced that in the 1940s and 1950s membership in the third force jumped as much as 600 percent.3 That growth rate continued apace in the succeeding decades. Pentecostalism is now arguably the most important mass religious movement of the modern era. American Pentecostalism claimed at least 11 million adherents by 2000. It is today the second largest subgroup of global Christianity. Of the 81 percent of Americans who call themselves Christians, 14 percent identify themselves as Pentecostals.4 Pentecostalism’s inauspicious beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century make its growth and influence all the more surprising. First-generation followers were anonymous radicals. Now, by contrast, those associated with the faith are known by millions. Music legends like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, B. B. King, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton grew up in the tradition or attended Pentecostal churches. Many of them credited the free-form worship and energetic music of their childhood churches for inspiring later innovations.5 Former attorney general John Ashcroft and Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Interior James G. Watt were long-standing members of the Assemblies of God. Since the 1920s charismatic and Pentecostal preachers and faith healers—including Aimee Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts ,Kathryn Kuhlman,Jimmy Swaggart,Jim Bakker,John Hagee,and Benny Hinn—have profoundly influenced American spirituality. Their use of the latest technology to tell an ancient story made them media trailblazers. Historians have been interested in the institutional growth and the rising profile of Pentecostalism over the century. Yet most scholarly interest in the subject is relatively recent.Roughly forty years ago,few outside the faith knew much about it.Researchers now understand a great deal concerning this once neglected yet important tradition.As with most fields, though, obstacles to a fuller picture remain. First-generation followers cared little about archiving their history. Their unwavering evangelism and apocalyptic outlook tended to push aside such “worldly” concerns. Although some early...

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