Pentecostals hail their centennial

LOS ANGELES — It was 1906 when William Seymour, the son of slaves, traveled to a small church to preach that speaking in tongues was the ultimate path to salvation. The congregation rejected his message and promptly kicked him out.

But that wasn't the end of the story.

Committed to his belief, Seymour started his own prayer group — first at a friend's house and then at an abandoned church in northeast Los Angeles. Within weeks, people of all races were streaming to the City of Angels to see the services where worshippers fell to the ground and uttered strange, unintelligible sounds.

The boisterous, three-year revival that followed made international headlines and is widely credited as the birth of modern-day Pentecostalism. The movement, once relegated to the theological fringe, now claims up to 600 million followers worldwide and remains one of the fastest-growing sectors of Christianity, according to Vinson Synan, dean of Regent University's School of Divinity and an ordained minister of the Pentecostal Holiness Church.

Starting this weekend, up to 60,000 followers will descend on Los Angeles to mark the movement's 100th birthday, a celebration that begins with a visit to the street corner where the revival church once stood. The Azusa Street location, now in the heart of Little Tokyo, bears a commemorative plaque.

"We see the centennial as a homecoming for the movement, a wonderful memory of what God did 100 years ago," said the Rev. Billy Wilson, executive director of the Center for Spiritual Renewal, the celebration's sponsor. "We want to show the world that Pentecostals are about more than just feeling good and speaking in tongues."

Pentecostals believe in a personalized commitment to Christ and a second experience known as "baptism in the Holy Spirit." That baptism is most commonly accompanied by speaking in tongues, though other "gifts" from the Holy Spirit can include faith healing, the casting out of demons and modern-day prophecies. Followers base the practice on Acts 2:1-4, in which Jesus' apostles were "filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."

Mainline Christians had rejected speaking in tongues for more than a thousand years, believing that the Holy Spirit's gift stopped with the apostles. But when Seymour came to Los Angeles in 1906, conditions were ripe for the long-forgotten message.

The rough-edged town of 240,000 residents had doubled its population in just six years, and the city sprouted so many new churches that modern-day experts have called it an "American Jerusalem."