Hispanic Pentecostals: Azusa Street and beyond

Encounter, Winter 2002 by Alvarez, Carmelo E

The Hispanic presence in the history and life of the United States is a complex one. While we all share a common Hispanic culture, as part of the colonial heritage and mixture of our races and traditions, there are many differences. These differences are, with all their colonial and neo-colonial influences, a blessing and a promise. They are affirmations of rich diversity. The interconnection between race and culture as a process of mestizaje (a mixture) is a key to understanding who the Hispanics are as people. We are a people in the diaspora, defending our identities, reclaiming our dignity and our rights, as pilgrims in a strange land or reclaiming acceptance as people of the land, first class citizens. The U.S. is the new locus of our theologizing, transforming our cultural and religious experience, and providing new realities with new components such as language and education in our searching/affirming process as a people.

Hispanic Pentecostals are those who witnessed the revivalistic/charismatic/pentecostal movement that started in Topeka, Kansas and Los Angeles, California at the beginning of the century. They express, live, and sustain their religious experience through the transforming and guiding presence of the Holy Spirit. We could summarize it by saying:

Hispanic indigenous Pentecostalism in a formal and substantive way has been influenced theologically by classical Pentecostalism, as the case has been with most of Pentecostalism worldwide, albeit filtered through the interpretative nuances of Hispanic culture and history.'

AZUSA STREET AND BEYOND

When the revival started in Topeka, Kansas in 1901, Agnes Ozman realized that her experience was just the first of many experiences of poor, simple women like her all over the world. Romanita Carbajal, a Mexican immigrant, was one of those exiled people who also received the blessing. Carbajal came to Los Angeles to escape the turmoil and instability created by the Mexican Revolution. William J. Seymour, an African American preacher, received

the blessing in Azusa Street, Los Angeles, in 1906. Seymour pioneered a movement that had global dimensions: the modern Pentecostal missionary movement was on its way to being the "Third Force" in twentieth century Christianity. From Topeka and Azusa the modern Pentecostal movement spread to Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Many believers from traditional churches made the trip to Los Angeles to know, first hand, of this "explosion of the Spirit."

The Azusa Street meetings quickly became known throughout the world as the focal point of the outpouring of God's Spirit that began to sweep multitudes into the experience of baptism in the Holy Ghost.2

Many were baptized with the Holy Spirit and went back to proclaim and share this "charismatic experience" with others.

Pentecostalism was depicted by the press in those days as a crazy, fanatical movement of "holy rollers," but in just a few years it became an international missionary movement:

Azusa Street became a veritable Pentecostal Mecca to which pilgrims from all over the world came and from which the news of supernatural signs and wonders was broadcast.3

As the revival covered the North American scenario and as experiences erupted in other parts of the world, one important issue became a central focus of attention and concern: the missionary character and the missiological implications of this new "explosion of the Spirit." "The Azusa Street revival resulted in a literal world dissemination of the Pentecostal message." It was an urgent calling to proclaim and share the good news of this unique outpouring of the Holy Ghost, at the beginning of the twentieth century.

One needs to remember that the so-called "Great Century" of the modern missionary movement (1814-1915) made an impact on the Pentecostal movement and provided the necessary conditions for the expansion and growth of this movement in other parts of the world. Out of the revivalistic experiences of the Great Awakenings in the U.S. and the revivals in England came a holiness movement that was the precursor of the Pentecostal revival of the twentieth century. Very often this fact is forgotten in the history of modern missions: the Pentecostal movement is probably the climax of the modern missionary movement. The movement created expectations and many negative reactions among other churches, some of which challenged the authenticity of the movement itself.

In North America, the Pentecostal movement expanded with healing, later rain, and revival movements in every state and also in Canada. From local preachers to renowned national evangelists, the Pentecostal experience covered the whole territory.

The movement tried to accomplish a gigantic task: to proclaim the good news of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and emphasize the urgent call to missionize because the end-time was approaching. The eschatological impulse was definitely present.

According to L. Grant McClung Jr:

The early records of the revival speak of a close and abiding association between the baptism in the Holy Spirit as evidenced by speaking in tongues for an enduement of power in Christian witness, a fervent belief in the premillenial [sic] return of Christ and His command to evangelize to the uttermost parts of the world ... The History of Pentecostalism cannot be properly understood apart from its missionary vision.5