INTRODUCTION

The Pentecostal Movement is one of the largest movements within Christianity. Since its
beginning in 1901, it has grown to become one of the largest religious groups in the world.
By the year 2000, the Pentecostal/Charismatic constituency is considered to have accounted
for 8.7 percent of the world’s population, larger than the percentage of all Buddhists, and
made up 26.7 percent of all Christendom.1 This movement has also been called as the “Third
Force” and the harbinger of “a revolution comparable in importance with the establishment of
the original church and with the Protestant Reformation.”
Surprisingly not, this movement was looked at as heretic and fanatical in its incipient period.
For instance, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1906:
Breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane
mortal could understand, the newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles.
Meetings are held in a tumbledown shack on Azusa Street, near San Pedro Street, and
the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest
theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal.2
However, as Edward Caldwell Moore noted “The heresy of one generation is the orthodoxy
of the next,” 3
Over the last hundred years Pentecostalism has grown from just a few persons to over 500
million worldwide by the year 2000. R. G. Tiedmann states that the inspiration and formation
of this movement finds their genesis in the development of extreme evangelical undercurrents
during the second half of the nineteenth century. According to Tiedmann, these radical
evangelical movements had different eschatological expectation and missionary methods
which challenge mainstream Protestantism in Europe and North America. These challenges
gave rise to the Pentecostal movement. It is worth noting that the Pentecostal movement is
not a monolithic group because already by 1915 three movements within Pentecostalism
emerged:
Holiness, Reformed or Finished Work, and Oneness Pentecostals. R. G. Robins states that
these were further subdivided according to “regional, racial, cultural, doctrinal, and liturgical
lines.”4

1
James Robinson, Pentecostal Origins (UK: Paternoster, 2005), p.xxi.
2
L. Grant McClung, Jr., Azusa Street and Beyond (NJ: Bridge Publishing, Inc., 1986), p. 3.
3
Edward Caldwell Moore, An Ou line of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912) 21.
4
Tiedemann, R.G. "The Origins and Organizational Developments of the Pentecostal Missionary
Enterprise in China." Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 14, no. 1 (January 1, 2011), 108-146.
ORIGINS OF PENTECOSTALISM
Many date the beginning of Pentecostalism to 1901 or 1906 but its roots go further
back. Pentecostalism grew out of the holiness movement within evangelicalism. Jay Case
observes that in the late nineteenth century, a new movement emerged within evangelicalism
that emphasized a particular kind of conversion experience. Adherents yearned to experience
a “deeper spiritual life to follow their initial conversion experience, insisted on the necessity
of a second conversion like experience: the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” These first
generation Pentecostals believed that they had “access to the power of the Holy Spirit in ways
that fellow evangelicals had not discovered.” In 1906 Pentecostals broke away from the rest
of holiness movement and insisted that the baptism of the Spirit was evidenced by speaking
in tongues. Harold Hunter suggests that there may not have been a century when tongues
among Christians did not take place. He states:
“In light of this, it is not surprising to find tongues-speech being practiced in the nineteenth
century. Futher, Pentecostal terminology became more prominent after the Reformation,
snowballed in the nineteenth century and exploded in the twentieth century.5
” L. Grant McClung, Jr. enumerates one feature of the Pentecostal Movement as being
“Leaderless leadership,” 6 which refers to the fact that “no main personality can be said to be
the originator of the movement .” He quotes Donald Gee: one highly significant feature of the
Movement that distinguished it in a striking way from most of those that have gone before.
The Pentecostal Movement does not owe its origin to any outstanding personality or religious
leader, but was a spontaneous revival appearing almost simultaneously in various parts of the
world. We instinctively connect the Reformation with Luther, the Quakers with George Fox,
Methodism with Wesley, the Plymouth Brethren with Darby and Graves, the Salvation Army
with William Booth, and so on. But the outstanding leaders of the Pentecostal Movement are
themselves the product of the Movement. They did not make it; it made them.7
Roberts Liardon, however, in his book God’s Generals, calls Charles Fox Parham
“The Father of Pentecost.”8 During the Watch Night Service of December 31, 1900, one of
the students, Agnes Ozman, at his Bible school in Topeka approached Parham and asked him
to lay his hands on her so she would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Earlier on,
Parham had given an assignment to his students requiring them to study the Biblical evidence
of the baptism in the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. The students had turned in with the
general conclusion that “Every recipient baptized by the Holy Spirit spoke in other tongues.”
So, when Agnes Ozman approached him, Parham hesitated at first telling her that he himself

5
Hunter, Harold D. "Spirit-baptism and the 1896 Revival in Cherokee County, North
Carolina."Pneuma 5, no. 2 (September 1, 1983): 1-17
6
Earle E. Cairns, Christianity through the Centuries, 3 rd end, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing
House, 1996),4
7
Ibid
8
Roberts Liardon, God’s Generals (Tulsa: Albury Publishing, 1996), p.109
didn’t speak in other tongues; but, when she persisted, he humbly laid his hands on her head
and she immediately was filled with the Spirit and began to speak in the Chinese language.
Parham reported that she “was unable to speak English for three days.” 9
Later on, Parham
himself received the blessing and began preaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit with
the evidence of speaking in tongues. It was through the preaching ministry of Parham, his
Bible schools, and his books that
Pentecostalism began to find its theological basis. Liardon observes that “though some spoke
in tongues long before Topeka, Kansas, it was Parham who pioneered the truth of tongues as
the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”
The Pentecostal fire from Topeka spread to various places before it blazed into explosive
radiance at Azusa Street. The Apostolic Faith magazine of September 1906, published from
the Azusa Street Mission by William J. Seymour, the leader of the famous Azusa Street
Revival, and Florence L. Crawford, reported:
This work began about five years ago last January, when a company of people under
the leadership of Charles Parham who were studying God’s word, tarried for
Pentecost in Topeka , Kansa.
Now after five years something like 13,000 people have received this gospel.
The meetings in Los Angeles started in a cottage meeting, and the Pentecost fell there
three nights. The people had nothing to do but wait on the Lord and praise Him, and
they commenced speaking in tongues, as they did at Pentecost, and the Spirit sang
songs through them. The meeting was then transferred to Azusa Street, and since then
multitudes have been coming. The meetings begin about ten o’clock in the morning
and can hardly stop before ten or twelve at night, and sometimes two or three in the
morning, because so many are seeking, and some are slain under the power of God.
We cannot tell how many people have been saved, and sanctified, and baptized with
the Holy Ghost, and healed of all manner of sicknesses. Many are speaking in new
tongues, and some are on their way to the foreign fields, with the gift of the
language.10
From these early experiences, Pentecostalism caught momentum and rapidly spread
enveloping the whole world in its fire in the next few decades.
McClymond states that modern Pentecostalism had its beginnings in a small Bible college in
Topeka, Kansas where a female student first spoke in tongues on January 1, 1901. 11 Douglas
Petersen and Chas. H. Barfoot date the beginning of this movement to 1906 at the Azusa
Street Mission revival. Cecil Robeck states that some scholars credit Charles F. Parham 2 and
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with the glossolalia utterance at Topeka, Kansas in January
9
Liardon, 1996, p. 119.
10
L. Grant McClung, Jr. (ed.), Azusa Street and Beyond, p. 24.
11
McClymond, Michael J. "We're not in Kansas Anymore: The Roots and Routes of World
Pentecostalism." Religious Studies Review 31, (July 1, 2005), 3-4
1901 while others have given priority of William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street revival In
April 1906. Robeck states that the emergence of Pentecostalism cannot be linked to any
specific place or person.12 The rise of Pentecostalism was not solely an American
phenomenon. Robeck cites Walter Hollenweger as having written that several revivals; in
Wales in 1904-5, Azusa Street, 1906-9, the Korean "Pentecost" of 1907, the Mukti revival in
India, 1905-7, the Hebden revival in Toronto, 1906-7, and the emergence of Pentecostalism
out of the Methodist Church in Chile, 1910, have all produced centers of Pentecostal activity
around that same time period. Robeck argues that still others see a connection between
Edward Irving’s work, (he formed the Catholic Apostolic Church in 1832), and the modern
Pentecostal Movement. Other scholars hold that a revival that occurred at the Shearer
Schoolhouse in Tennessee in 1886 is the real start of the Pentecostal movement. Whatever
may be one’s view as to the start of the Pentecostal movement, it seems clear that the forces
that gave birth to this movement, gave it momentum that is still felt today. Pentecostal has
infiltrated the mainline churches with its spirituality in ways that only a few decades earlier
could not have been imagined.
THE CONCEPT OF NEO-PENTECOSTALISM
What is Neo-Pentecostalism? Neo-Pentecostalism encompasses charismatic movements and
neo-charismatic churches. “Neo-Pentecostalism is a movement that has crossed
denominational boundaries, and can be found in Protestantism and Roman Catholicism
alike.”13 Neo-Pentecostal movements are “characterized by the manifestations in non-
Pentecostal churches of what have been traditionally categorized as Pentecostal experiences.”
While some sees Neo-Pentecostals as a new movements erupting from AIC and mainline
churches, this research use the term to refer to the category of churches that holds and teaches
about the gifts of the Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, spiritual warfare,
prosperity and Power evangelism. The emphasis of charismatic movements on spiritual gifts,
healing, speaking in tongues, power effects and prayer informs their name in Africa as Neo-
Pentecostal charismatics. Scholars of Neo-Pentecostalism and the New Religious Movements
in Nigeria such as Matthews Ojo and Enoch Gbadegesin have mentioned the affinity of the
Pentecostal movement with the ATR, especially in the quest for power, protection, and
blessings.14 In his work, The Pentecostal
Discovery of the New Testament Theme of God’s Power and Its Relevance to the African
Context, P. J. Grabb asserts, “within the African context the emphasis on the miraculous

12
Robeck, Cecil M, Jr. "Pentecostalism and mission: from Azusa Street to the ends of the Earth."
Missiology 35, no. 1 (January 1, 2007): 75-92
13
Jacob Oladipupo “The Influence of Pentecostal and Charismatics Movements on the Nigeria n
Baptist Convention” (Paper presented at the class MISSN 7714 - Historical and Theological Issues in 21 st
Century World Christianity of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX, May 1, 2015.
14
Matthews A. Ojo, “American Pentecostalism and the Growth of Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements
in Nigeria,” in Freedom’s Distant Shores: American Protestants and the Post- Colonial Alliances with America,
ed. R. Drew Smith (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), 155-167.
power of God (the Spirit), delivering from evil and healing the sick is important.” 15 Matthews
A. Ojo affirms this factor in the fruitful Pentecostalization of Christianity in Nigeria. Ojo
asserts that the Pentecostal adherents‟ “obsession with power and its manifestation in every
spheres of personal life reflects a deep-rooted connection to a Traditional African
worldview.”
IMPACT OF PENTECOSTALISM ON CHURCHES
According to P. D. Hocken: “In Nigeria below the Islamic north, all the denominations are
experiencing renewal. Prayer and fasting and signs and wonders of healing and deliverance
are common.”16 This observation indicates the impact of Pentecostalism on the mainline
churches in Nigeria. The explosion of Pentecostalism introduced into Nigeria a spirituality
that was not fostered by the initial western missionaries. It inaugurated an approach to faith
and ecclesial polity that is glaringly different from the initial practices of the mainline
churches. Pentecostalism has awakened a tremendous yearning for a primal spirituality in the
country. The pentecostal spirituality was highly welcomed among the poor of our society,
hence by the majority, since most Nigerian Christians then, were poor economically. This
impetus finds support and tremendous enthusiasm among Christians of various
denominations and ecclesial affinity, since it addresses the raw spiritual desire of man. 17 The
explosion of Pentecostalism in the mainline churches is an invitation to churches to
reconsider their Christian testimony and proclamation of Jesus Christ as the Saviour and
Redeemer of all people.18
The vital issue in this context is the historical fidelity of the Church to her apostolic origin.
Can the community of the Apostles be made evident in the present Church? Is there anything
like an “experiential Christianity”? A proper understanding and honest desire to clarify these
questions will offer us historical and theological parameters for understanding the impact of
Pentecostalism on the mainline churches as “the promise and the power of old were believed
to be closed at hand.”19 The charismatic renewal in various churches and general quest for an
effective spirituality among Christians of all denominations are the effects of Pentecostalism.
The penetration of Pentecostal spirituality into the mainline churches constitutes a theological
and ecclesiological obstacle for many theologians. Nevertheless, it is undisputable that
Pentecostal experience and spirituality have come to stay in most churches in Nigeria today.
The presence and the realness of the divine power is intrinsic to African worldview. The

15
G. M. SundklerBengt, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 39-
54
16
P.D. HOCKEN, «Charismatic Movement», in the New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and
Charismatic Movements, 510-511.
17
C. O. EBEBE, The Impact of Pentecostalism on the Catholic Church, Let a talk, (Port Harcourt,
2004), 10.
18
O. A. ONWUBIKO, The Church in Mission: In the Light of Ecclesia in Africa, (Paulines
Publications Africa, Nairobi, 2001), 431.
19
C. BORLASE, William Seympour: A Biography, Charisma House, (Lake Mary. Florida, 2006)50
question of the cessation of charisma and miracles, the divine that will not intervene in the
living situation and in everydayness of the people was only a bitter theological pills that
many Africans were advised to swallow but only to hang at their throats. The outburst of
charismatic experience in the historic churches of the West and its diffusion to Africa was
seen as the divine way of proofing the western theology of mechanistic world, where God is a
hidden and silent observer, to be an existential unbelief of some western missionaries.
Therefore, charismatic experiences in the mainlines churches in Nigeria as “manifestation of
spiritual gifts and evident power of the Holy Spirit are being lived and seen as normal
Christian life and not as the expression of particular movement.20
CONCLUSION
The modern Pentecostal movement has experienced rapid growth, particularly in the Third
World. What will the next one hundred years look like for the Pentecostal movement?
Pentecostalism is conceived as a “spirituality,” according to Kimberly Alexander. Alexander
argues that to say that Pentecostalism is primarily a spirituality does not mean there were no
doctrinal distinctions that spread through missionary activity, “but the Pentecostal outpouring
preceded the arrival of Pentecostal missionaries.” If Pentecostalism is to continue to grow it
must remain a spirituality. Alexander states: “Pentecostal spirituality defies the restrictions of
space and time, while taking on the sights, sounds, and sensations of the cultural contexts in
which it flourishes.” But can Pentecostalism survive on its being a spirituality alone? Is there
some other factors that will continue to give life to this movement?
In large measure Pentecostal scholarship will help to define what the essence of
Pentecostalism is in the future, thus keeping it relevant and forward-looking. Kimberly
Alexander observes: “It seems to me that the best expression of a truly Pentecostal approach
to scholarship is an interdisciplinary one, where there is cross-pollination of practical
theology, biblical studies, theological studies, historical studies, missiological studies, and so
forth.” If Pentecostalism is to continue its growth and increase its worldwide reach, there
must be a steady influx of young, energetic, and imaginative members.
Pentecostalism must continue to focus on its missionary outreach at home and abroad. Its
missionary efforts must however, be conducted with full appreciation of the context of the
post-colonial realities. Partnerships must be forged between missionaries from the countries
of the former colonial masters, and the indigenous peoples that they hope to reach. Given that
the most rapid growth of Pentecostalism seems to be in the Third world, thinkers and leaders
of the Pentecostal movement would do well to ensure that the movement’s missionary
philosophy is one of equality and mutual respect and benefit. There is no reason to believe
that if this is done, that with instant communication, and rapid transportation, that the next
one hundred years would not be as exciting as the previous hundred years were.

20
P.D. HOCKEN, 501
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