{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.024327312937707336, 'fraction_numerical': 0.013269443420567637, 'mean_word_length': 5.112612612612613, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Revisiting Azusa Street: A Centennial Retrospect

April 2006 I April 2006 North American Pentecostals mark the centenary of an event that stands at the core of their myth of origins. It happened in Los Angeles and takes its name from its location—Azusa Street, an unremarkable thoroughfare that became a byword to thousands of devout women and men who mingled with the merely curious between 1906 and 1908 at a modest building known as the Azusa Street Mission. There from mid-April 1906 through at least 1908, revival meetings ran almost continuously. Along with traditional revival rhetoric about sin and salvation, visitors heard exhortations to pursue heart purity and spiritual power. But more compelling than the rhetoric or the hearty singing and agonized prayers that filled the hours were the gifts of the Holy Spirit in action. At Azusa Street one could see and hear the “utterance gifts” listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8–10: tongues, interpretations of tongues, prophecies, and words of knowledge and wisdom. Seekers travailed in prayer for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, an experience they expected would be attested by speaking in tongues. Since they were told it “came only on the sanctified life,” confession of sin and inner conviction of forgiveness also had a prominent place. People who had “broken through” to Spirit baptism interpreted tongues and prophesied; the sick came for healing; the curious and scoffers came, too, drawn by newspaper cartoons or word-of-mouth, or perhaps by the bedlam. Startling claims became commonplace among the faithful: from visions to the ability to converse readily in unknown foreign languages, participants in the Azusa Street revival dealt daily in the miraculous. They concluded that they held center stage in God’s plan for the last days; events at the Azusa Street Mission were nothing less than a “new Pentecost”—a long-awaited “restoration of the faith once delivered to the saints” that would issue in an unprecedented burst of evangelism before the end of time. Their name, Apostolic Faith Movement, captured their conviction that they stood in continuity with New Testament Christian experience; the label “Pentecostal” came a little later and pointed to the centrality of the first Christian Pentecost in their self-understanding.1 Now, a century later, no one knows how many Pentecostal Christians there are. In the United States, Pentecostal denominations boast over 10 million members. If one adds the persons in other Christian churches who embrace Pentecostal-like beliefs and practices, the number more than doubles. In addition, estimates suggest at least 500 million adherents abroad, making Revisiting Azusa Street: A Centennial Retrospect