The Woman Who Carried Revival Before Azusa Street
Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844–1924) was an American revivalist, healing evangelist and one of the pioneering women of the supernatural Christian movement whose ministry flourished decades before the famous Azusa Street Revival of 1906.
She preached in an era when many churches believed women should not stand behind pulpits.
She endured devastating personal loss.
She buried five of her six children.
Her first marriage collapsed.
She faced poverty, ridicule and fierce religious opposition.
Yet when Maria preached, remarkable testimonies followed.
People described falling under the power of God.
Others entered unusual trance-like states and later testified of visions of heaven, judgment and Christ.
The sick came seeking prayer.
Crowds gathered.
Critics accused her of fanaticism, hypnotism and deception.
But Maria kept preaching.
Long before Pentecostalism became an international movement, many of the themes that would later define it were already visible in her ministry:
Salvation.
Divine healing.
Spiritual gifts.
Revival.
Signs and wonders.
And a passionate belief that the Jesus revealed in Scripture was still alive and working through His Church.
This is the story of Maria Woodworth-Etter — revivalist, pioneer and the woman remembered by many as “The Grandmother of Pentecost.”
A CHILDHOOD MARKED BY LOSS
Maria Beulah Underhill was born on 8 July 1844 near Lisbon, Ohio.
She grew up in rural nineteenth-century America, long before modern communications, large ministry organizations or the Pentecostal movement as we know it today.
Her family was poor, and hard physical labour was part of everyday life.
Then tragedy came early.
When Maria was about twelve years old, her father died.
His death placed even greater financial strain on the household.
Maria had to work while still young, doing domestic and agricultural labour for other families.
Her formal education suffered as responsibility replaced childhood.
But another event would soon shape the direction of her life.
“YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN”
At approximately thirteen years old, Maria attended a Methodist meeting where she heard preaching centred on the words:
“Ye must be born again.”
The message deeply affected her.
Maria became conscious of her need for salvation and surrendered her life to Jesus Christ.
She later remembered this as the beginning of a new spiritual life.
But soon another conviction emerged.
She believed God was calling her to preach.
In her own understanding, the message was essentially:
Go work in My vineyard.
For a young woman in nineteenth-century America, that calling presented a serious challenge.
Female preaching remained controversial across much of Christianity.
Women could participate in certain forms of ministry, but public preaching before mixed congregations was rejected by many churches.
Maria herself struggled with the idea.
She doubted her ability.
She feared criticism.
And for years she resisted what she believed God was asking her to do.
FIVE LITTLE GRAVES
In 1861, at around sixteen years old, Maria married Philo H. Woodworth.
They eventually had six children.
But motherhood became one of the greatest sources of suffering in Maria's life.
According to her autobiographical accounts, five of her six children died during infancy or childhood.
Only their daughter Lizzie survived into adulthood.
The scale of that grief is difficult to comprehend.
Five children.
Five deaths.
Repeated bereavement.
For Maria, those losses intensified an old question.
Life was short.
People were dying.
She believed she had been called to proclaim eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Eventually, she stopped running from the call.
In substance, her surrender was simple:
Lord, if You will help me, I will obey.
The woman who believed she could not preach finally began preaching.
WHEN MARIA STARTED PREACHING
Her ministry did not begin with enormous auditoriums.
Maria preached wherever opportunities appeared.
Homes.
Schoolhouses.
Small churches.
Rural communities.
Some people reportedly came because seeing a woman preach was itself unusual.
But curiosity soon gave way to something deeper.
Maria preached repentance.
Salvation.
Eternity.
Jesus Christ.
People wept.
Others cried out in conviction.
Some reportedly fell to the ground during the meetings.
Then even more unusual manifestations began to be reported.
People entered what witnesses described as trances.
THE TRANCES
The trance phenomena became one of the most famous and controversial features of Woodworth-Etter's ministry.
During some meetings, individuals reportedly became motionless or fell to the ground.
Some appeared unable to move for extended periods.
When they emerged from these states, people testified of vivid spiritual experiences.
Some described seeing heaven.
Others spoke of judgment.
Some testified that they had encountered Christ.
Others emerged from the experience deeply convicted of sin and changed their lives.
Maria interpreted these experiences through biblical accounts of visions, trances and supernatural encounters.
Critics offered different explanations.
Some accused her of emotional manipulation.
Others called the phenomena hypnotism or religious fanaticism.
Newspapers became interested.
Reporters attended meetings.
Skeptics came.
Curious observers came.
Some accounts from her ministry literature even describe medical professionals examining people experiencing these manifestations.
Not every supernatural claim surrounding these meetings can be independently verified today.
But historically, the accounts reveal something undeniable:
Maria Woodworth-Etter's ministry was attracting enormous attention.
THE SICK CAME SEEKING PRAYER
Maria's ministry began primarily as evangelistic preaching.
Salvation remained central.
But testimonies of physical healing gradually became another important part of the revival meetings.
Accounts associated with her ministry describe people suffering from problems involving sight, hearing, paralysis, tumours and other serious illnesses who believed they received healing after prayer.
For Maria and those who attended her meetings, these testimonies were understood through the ministry of Jesus Christ recorded in the Gospels.
Jesus saves.
Jesus delivers.
Jesus heals.
The reports spread.
And as the stories travelled, more people came.
Some sought salvation.
Some desperately sought healing.
Others simply wanted to see whether the reports were true.
The growing crowds also brought growing opposition.
“THIS WOMAN MUST BE STOPPED”
Maria's ministry challenged several expectations at once.
She was a woman preaching publicly to men and women.
She prayed for the sick.
Her meetings included extraordinary manifestations.
People reportedly entered trances.
Crowds gathered around her ministry.
For some religious leaders, this was unacceptable.
She was attacked from pulpits.
Newspapers sometimes mocked her.
Opponents accused her of mesmerism, fanaticism and manipulation.
Accounts surrounding her ministry also speak of threats of arrest and efforts by critics to portray her as mentally unstable.
Maria nevertheless continued preaching.
When critics argued that women should not preach, she appealed to Scripture.
She cited the prophecy of Joel concerning sons and daughters prophesying.
She pointed to women whom God used throughout the Bible.
She referred to the daughters of Philip who prophesied.
Her conviction was straightforward:
If the Holy Spirit called and empowered a woman, human opposition could not cancel that calling.
BEFORE AZUSA STREET
Maria Woodworth-Etter's historical importance becomes especially clear when we consider chronology.
The famous Azusa Street Revival began in Los Angeles in 1906 under William J. Seymour.
Azusa would become one of the major catalysts in the worldwide expansion of Pentecostal Christianity.
But Maria had already been conducting revival campaigns for years.
She had already preached divine healing.
She had already described manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
She had already endured controversy over supernatural experiences.
And she had already demonstrated that a woman could become a nationally known revival preacher.
When the Pentecostal movement began expanding in the early twentieth century, Maria recognized much of its spiritual language.
Instead of becoming an outsider to the emerging movement, she increasingly became associated with it.
The woman once regarded as too radical was becoming an elder figure to a new generation of Pentecostal Christians.
This is why she has often been remembered as:
THE GRANDMOTHER OF PENTECOST.
A SECOND MARRIAGE AND A NEW PARTNERSHIP
Maria's personal life remained complicated.
Her first marriage to Philo Woodworth eventually deteriorated and ended.
Then, in 1902, Maria married Samuel Etter.
This marriage became very different from her first.
Samuel supported her ministry.
He helped with practical responsibilities including travel, organization, publishing and finances.
Instead of resisting Maria's calling, he helped make the work possible.
From this marriage she became widely known by the name history remembers:
Maria Woodworth-Etter.
With Samuel supporting the ministry, another significant period of evangelistic activity began.
DALLAS, 1912
By 1912, Maria was approaching seventy years old.
Many people would have been preparing for retirement.
Maria was still conducting revival campaigns.
That year, meetings in Dallas, Texas, became particularly important in accounts of her ministry.
Large crowds attended.
Pentecostal Christians travelled to participate.
Reports circulated concerning conversions, healing and supernatural manifestations.
By this stage, Maria's role as a bridge between nineteenth-century revivalism and twentieth-century Pentecostal Christianity had become increasingly clear.
She was no longer simply a controversial woman preacher.
She had become a veteran of revival.
Younger ministers were watching her.
And some of the most important personalities in the emerging Pentecostal and divine-healing movements belonged to the world in which she now ministered.
INFLUENCE ON A GENERATION OF HEALING MINISTERS
Maria's ministry overlapped with figures who would help shape twentieth-century Pentecostalism and divine-healing evangelism.
Names associated with this wider world include:
F.F. Bosworth.
John G. Lake.
Smith Wigglesworth.
Aimee Semple McPherson.
And other ministers who carried Pentecostal and healing ministry into new cities and nations.
The precise nature of Maria's direct influence differed from person to person, and not every later claim about relationships between famous revivalists can be established with equal historical certainty.
But her broader importance is much clearer.
Maria helped normalize something that would become central to Pentecostal Christianity:
the expectation that the supernatural gifts and power described in the New Testament could still operate through the Church.
She was preaching this message before Pentecostalism possessed the global structures it would later develop.
And that expectation would eventually travel around the world.
THE WOODWORTH-ETTER TABERNACLE
After decades of travelling, Maria eventually established a permanent ministry base in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The Woodworth-Etter Tabernacle became a place where people gathered for preaching, salvation, prayer and healing ministry.
The transformation in her life was extraordinary.
She had begun as a poor farm girl with limited opportunity.
She had struggled with fear about preaching.
She had buried children.
She had survived a broken marriage.
She had endured ridicule.
Now people travelled specifically to hear her minister.
Her preaching and testimonies were also preserved in writing.
Among the works most closely associated with her legacy is Signs and Wonders, which preserved her own accounts of revivals, opposition, healings and supernatural manifestations.
Those writings eventually allowed generations born after her death to encounter her story.
THE PRICE OF BEING A PIONEER
It is easy to celebrate pioneers after the battles they fought have become history.
It is much more difficult to be the person fighting those battles.
Maria preached at a time when female ministry remained heavily contested.
She preached healing before the enormous healing crusades of the twentieth century became familiar.
She described supernatural manifestations before Pentecostal language became internationally recognizable.
She endured criticism that later generations of Pentecostal women would not have to experience in exactly the same way.
But her life was not a story of uninterrupted triumph.
There was deep grief.
There was marital failure.
There was poverty.
There was controversy.
There were accusations.
And there are supernatural claims surrounding her ministry that historians cannot independently verify in every case.
Yet none of that erases her historical importance.
Maria Woodworth-Etter helped create space for something much larger than herself.
HER DEATH IN 1924
On 16 September 1924, Maria Woodworth-Etter died in Indianapolis, Indiana.
She was 80 years old.
The poor farm girl was gone.
The mother who had buried five children was gone.
The woman who once feared preaching was gone.
The revivalist who had spent decades crossing America was gone.
But the movement she had lived long enough to see emerging was only beginning its worldwide expansion.
In the decades after her death, healing evangelism would grow dramatically.
Radio would carry Christian preaching across nations.
Large tents and auditoriums would become synonymous with healing campaigns.
Television would eventually bring miracle services into homes.
Ministers such as Aimee Semple McPherson, F.F. Bosworth, Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman would become known to millions.
But Maria had already walked onto revival platforms in an era when many people believed a woman should never have been there in the first place.
THE LEGACY OF MARIA WOODWORTH-ETTER
Perhaps the deepest lesson of Maria's life is not found in the trances.
It is not simply found in healing testimonies.
It is not found in the size of her crowds.
It is found in obedience.
Maria believed God had called her when society told her she could not go.
Fear delayed her.
Personal tragedy wounded her.
Critics attempted to silence her.
But eventually she obeyed.
And that obedience helped open doors through which later generations of Christian women would walk.
Her story reminds us that people who change history do not always begin with impressive platforms.
Sometimes they begin with pain.
Weakness.
Loss.
Questions.
Fear.
And a conviction that God has spoken.
Maria lived before the vocabulary of modern Pentecostalism was fully formed.
But many of the themes that would later characterize the movement were already visible in her ministry:
Salvation through Jesus Christ.
The power of the Holy Spirit.
Divine healing.
Spiritual gifts.
Revival.
Signs and wonders.
And the expectation that the Christ of Scripture is still alive and active.
More than a century after her death, Maria Woodworth-Etter remains part of the story of supernatural Christianity.
A poor farm girl.
A grieving mother.
A woman who resisted her calling.
A preacher rejected by many.
A healing evangelist.
A revival pioneer.
And a woman remembered by generations as:
THE GRANDMOTHER OF PENTECOST.
This was Maria Woodworth-Etter.
A woman who carried revival before Azusa Street.
A pioneer whose obedience helped prepare the way for another generation.
And truly,