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Pentecost
Revival

The Azusa Street Revival

The birth of global Pentecostalism.

1906Los Angeles, California

A revival led by William J. Seymour at a mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles — marked by speaking in tongues and racially integrated worship — became the seedbed of worldwide Pentecostalism.

The Apostolic Faith Mission at 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles — 1906.
Apostolic Faith Mission, Azusa Street, 1906 — Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In 1906, William J. Seymour, the son of former slaves, began leading meetings in a former church building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles. The revival that followed was marked by speaking in tongues, healing, fervent prayer, and worship that crossed the racial lines of its day.

News of the revival spread, and visitors carried what they had seen across the United States and around the world. Within a few decades, Pentecostalism had become one of the fastest-growing movements in the history of Christianity.

Azusa Street is the recognized birthplace of modern Pentecostalism. The movement and the denominations born from it are described on the Theologos Movements pages; here the revival is recorded as the event from which they flowed.