WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR
The Rejected Preacher Behind the Azusa Street Revival
William Joseph Seymour (1870–1922) was an African-American Holiness preacher whose leadership at the Azusa Street Revival helped ignite one of the most influential movements in modern Christian history.
He was born to parents who had themselves been born into slavery.
He received little formal education.
Smallpox left him blind in one eye.
Racial segregation followed him even into religious education.
And when he finally travelled to Los Angeles to preach about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church that invited him quickly closed its doors to him.
Yet rejection did not end his ministry.
It drove him into prayer.
A small prayer gathering at 214 North Bonnie Brae Street grew rapidly after people began speaking in tongues in April 1906.
The crowds became too large for the house.
They moved into an unimpressive former church building at:
312 AZUSA STREET.
From that building came reports of salvation, divine healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, intense prayer and extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
Black and white Christians worshipped together in an America defined by racial segregation.
Women ministered alongside men.
Missionaries arrived and left for other nations.
And a small newspaper carried reports of the revival around the world.
At the centre was a preacher who often appeared determined not to become the centre.
His name was William J. Seymour.
And Azusa Street became one of the great catalytic centres in the emergence of global Pentecostal Christianity.
BORN TO FORMERLY ENSLAVED PARENTS
William Joseph Seymour was born on 2 May 1870 in Centerville, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.
His parents were Simon and Phyllis Seymour.
Both had been born into slavery.
The American Civil War had brought legal emancipation, but freedom did not mean equality.
The Seymour family lived through the difficult aftermath of slavery as racial discrimination developed into the system later known as Jim Crow segregation.
Opportunities for Black families were severely restricted.
Poverty was widespread.
Education was limited.
Young William received very little formal schooling and entered manual labour early.
Nothing about those beginnings suggested that people across the world would one day study the movement associated with his name.
Like many Black Americans seeking opportunities outside the South, Seymour eventually left Louisiana.
His journey carried him through cities including Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
He worked in low-paying occupations.
As a waiter.
A dishwasher.
A labourer.
But while his outward life appeared ordinary, something deeper was developing.
A hunger for God.
HOLINESS AND A DEEPER CHRISTIAN LIFE
Seymour's spiritual development took place within Methodist and Holiness Christianity.
While living in Cincinnati, he became associated with Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, a Black Methodist congregation.
The Holiness movement emphasized that salvation was not simply about belonging to a church.
Christianity should produce:
holiness,
sanctification,
and a life surrendered to God.
These ideas profoundly shaped Seymour.
He began seeking a deeper experience of God.
Then came a major physical crisis.
SMALLPOX
Around the mid-1890s, Seymour contracted a severe case of smallpox.
He survived.
But the disease permanently scarred him and destroyed the sight in his left eye.
For the rest of his life, Seymour carried visible evidence of that suffering.
Yet the illness did not drive him away from God.
His consecration deepened.
The labourer with limited education and sight in only one eye increasingly believed his life belonged completely to Christ.
Eventually that search would take him to Houston, Texas.
And into the classroom of one of early Pentecostalism's most controversial figures.
Charles Fox Parham.
LISTENING FROM THE MARGINS
By late 1905, Seymour was in Houston.
There he encountered the teaching of Charles Parham, an important figure in the developing Pentecostal movement.
Parham taught that Christians could experience a baptism in the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues.
Seymour became deeply interested.
But America was segregated.
And Seymour was Black.
Accounts traditionally associated with this period describe him receiving Parham's teaching while separated from white students, listening from the doorway or another segregated position and taking notes.
The image is difficult to miss.
A Black preacher learning about the promise that God's Spirit would be poured out upon all flesh while racial prejudice prevented him from participating as an equal.
Yet Seymour listened.
He studied.
And he became convinced.
The marginalized student would eventually carry the message far beyond the classroom in which he had been treated as an outsider.
CHARLES PARHAM AND THE PAINFUL IRONY
The relationship between Seymour and Parham later developed a painful irony.
Parham eventually travelled to Los Angeles and visited the Azusa revival.
Instead of celebrating what had emerged through his former student, he became one of its harsh critics.
He objected to aspects of the manifestations and strongly criticized the interracial nature and style of the meetings.
The teacher rejected much of what had emerged through the student.
But there was another person in Seymour's development whose role deserves equal attention.
A Black woman who had herself been born into slavery:
LUCY FARROW.
THE WOMAN WHO HELPED PREPARE THE WAY
Lucy Farrow was born into slavery in Virginia around 1851.
After emancipation, she became a Holiness preacher and later pastored a congregation in Houston.
She also worked in connection with Charles Parham.
Farrow became important within early Pentecostal history because she was among those associated with experiencing and ministering the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues.
She became an important spiritual influence in Seymour's journey.
Her presence also reminds us that the Azusa story cannot be told only through famous men.
Women were central.
Lucy Farrow.
Neely Terry.
Julia Hutchins.
Ruth Asberry.
Jennie Evans Moore.
Florence Crawford.
Clara Lum.
One of those women would help bring Seymour to California.
Her name was Neely Terry.
Terry heard Seymour preach while visiting Houston and believed he should come to Los Angeles.
Seymour accepted the invitation.
He travelled west carrying his message about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
What awaited him was not immediate success.
It was rejection.
THE CHURCH DOOR CLOSED
In early 1906, Seymour arrived in Los Angeles.
He began preaching at a small Holiness mission associated with Julia Hutchins.
His message created controversy.
Seymour taught that Christians could receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and associated this experience with speaking in tongues.
But there was a remarkable complication.
Seymour himself had not yet spoken in tongues.
He was preaching what he believed Scripture taught before personally experiencing it.
His message produced conflict.
After his early sermons, Seymour found himself excluded from the congregation.
The opportunity that had carried him across America disappeared almost immediately.
For many ministers, that could have ended the story.
Seymour had little money.
No established congregation.
No impressive organization.
And now no pulpit.
But some people had heard enough to become spiritually hungry.
They opened their home.
The address became:
214 NORTH BONNIE BRAE STREET.
And they began to pray.
BONNIE BRAE — THE HOUSE OF PRAYER
Richard and Ruth Asberry opened their home to Seymour and the growing group.
They prayed.
They fasted.
They searched Scripture.
They waited upon God.
Then came 9 April 1906.
According to accounts preserved from the revival, Edward S. Lee was among the first within the group to experience what they understood as baptism in the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues.
That evening, others experienced the same thing.
Among them was Jennie Evans Moore.
News travelled quickly.
People began arriving at Bonnie Brae.
The house filled.
Then the yard filled.
Crowds became so large that the property struggled to contain them.
A famous story later claimed that the porch collapsed beneath the weight of the crowd, although the precise historical basis for a literal collapse is less certain.
What is clear is that the gathering had outgrown the house.
And soon Seymour himself received the Pentecostal experience he had been preaching about.
They needed a larger location.
They found one at:
312 AZUSA STREET.
THE OLD BUILDING THAT BECAME A REVIVAL CENTRE
The building at 312 Azusa Street had previously served as an African Methodist Episcopal church.
By the time Seymour's group obtained it, however, the building had been used for other purposes and was in poor condition.
It had served as storage space.
Accounts even describe use connected with animals or a stable.
The congregation cleaned it.
Simple benches were arranged.
There was no expensive stage.
No magnificent pulpit.
No cathedral architecture.
The preaching platform reportedly involved simple wooden packing boxes.
Everything about the building looked ordinary.
Yet people were not travelling there to admire architecture.
They came because reports were spreading that:
God was moving.
And soon people were travelling to Azusa not simply from Los Angeles, but from across America and eventually other nations.
WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT TOOK CENTRE STAGE
Azusa Street services looked very different from carefully programmed modern church meetings.
There was often no rigid order of service.
Prayer continued for long periods.
People knelt.
Others lay prostrate.
There was spontaneous singing.
Testimony.
Preaching.
Speaking in tongues.
Interpretation.
Reports of prophecy.
Repentance.
Conversion.
And divine healing.
Meetings sometimes continued for hours.
At the centre was Seymour.
Yet witnesses remembered him behaving unlike a religious celebrity.
He frequently prayed behind or near the crude wooden pulpit.
Sometimes his head was bowed inside or behind the simple structure.
He waited.
He prayed.
He allowed other believers to participate.
Seymour's leadership communicated something profound:
The preacher was not supposed to become the attraction.
The Holy Spirit was.
THE COLOR LINE
Perhaps one of the most remarkable dimensions of Azusa Street was not simply speaking in tongues or reports of healing.
It was what happened between people.
This was 1906 America.
Jim Crow segregation was deeply entrenched.
Black Americans lived under discrimination, racial humiliation and violence.
Churches themselves were often divided along racial lines.
But at Azusa:
Black and white believers worshipped together.
People from different ethnic backgrounds prayed together.
Women ministered alongside men.
Immigrants worshipped beside Americans.
Poor believers stood alongside those from more privileged backgrounds.
For a society built upon separation, this was extraordinary.
Revival participant and chronicler Frank Bartleman famously summarized the experience:
“The color line was washed away in the blood.”
Azusa did not permanently solve America's racial divisions.
Later Pentecostal denominations themselves often became segregated.
But for an extraordinary period in Los Angeles, a Black preacher whose own life had been wounded by racism presided over a Christian community that challenged the racial hierarchy surrounding it.
THE NEWSPAPERS MOCK THE REVIVAL
Not everyone celebrated.
Secular newspapers frequently ridiculed the meetings.
Speaking in tongues became an easy target.
The unusual worship was described as fanaticism.
The interracial nature of the congregation also disturbed observers shaped by the racial prejudices of the era.
Religious criticism came as well.
Some Holiness leaders rejected Seymour's Pentecostal message.
Others considered the manifestations disorderly.
Then Charles Parham arrived.
Instead of affirming the revival connected with his former student, Parham attacked aspects of what he observed.
Their relationship fractured.
But criticism could not prevent people from coming.
In some ways, opposition helped publicize Azusa.
People who came simply to investigate sometimes left convinced that something spiritual had happened.
And some went home carrying the Pentecostal message with them.
THE FIRE LEAVES LOS ANGELES
This is where the story becomes larger than William Seymour.
People travelled to Azusa from across America and other countries.
They participated in the revival.
Then they left.
Some returned to churches.
Some founded missions.
Others travelled overseas.
Pentecostal ideas spread through:
personal testimony,
letters,
missionaries,
preaching,
and eventually print.
One influential figure was G.B. Cashwell, who helped spread Pentecostal experience through parts of the southeastern United States.
Other visitors carried the message into different regions and nations.
Azusa itself was not a denomination.
It operated almost like an ignition point.
People came.
They experienced the revival.
Then they went.
And Seymour did not attempt to personally control everything that resulted.
THE APOSTOLIC FAITH
In September 1906, the Azusa mission began publishing a newspaper titled:
THE APOSTOLIC FAITH.
The publication carried:
sermons,
testimonies,
reports of healing,
missionary news,
and accounts of what participants believed the Holy Spirit was doing.
Copies were distributed without charge and supported through voluntary offerings.
Its circulation reached tens of thousands.
This transformed the revival.
People who could never travel to Los Angeles could now read about Azusa.
The newspaper travelled across:
America,
Europe,
India,
and importantly for the history of Generals of Impact:
Africa.
A poor mission occupying an unimpressive building in Los Angeles now possessed a way to speak internationally.
FROM AZUSA STREET TO AFRICA
This connection makes Seymour particularly important within the story of African Pentecostalism.
The international Pentecostal wave associated with Azusa became part of the spiritual networks that reached South Africa.
Two significant names within that story were:
John G. Lake
and
Thomas Hezmalhalch.
They arrived in South Africa in 1908 during the rapid international expansion of Pentecostal Christianity.
Their ministry in Johannesburg and surrounding areas contributed to the emergence of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa.
The development of South African Pentecostal Christianity cannot simply be described as an American import.
African leaders, indigenous Christian traditions, local revivals and South Africa's own racial and cultural realities deeply shaped what followed.
Nevertheless, Azusa Street became one important part of the international network through which early Pentecostal ideas travelled.
This creates a remarkable historical connection.
The son of parents born into American slavery helped lead a revival whose influence became part of a movement that eventually took deep root across the African continent.
THE WOMEN WHO CARRIED AZUSA
Women were not spectators at Azusa Street.
They were:
preachers,
missionaries,
musicians,
administrators,
and spiritual workers.
Lucy Farrow played an important role in the early Pentecostal experiences surrounding Seymour.
Florence Crawford became an influential leader.
Clara Lum helped with correspondence and publication.
And Jennie Evans Moore became especially important in Seymour's life.
Jennie participated in the Bonnie Brae meetings and was associated with the early Pentecostal outpouring.
Accounts also remember unusual experiences surrounding her music and worship.
On 13 May 1908, William Seymour and Jennie Evans Moore married.
Jennie would become both his wife and ministry partner.
But by then, internal conflicts were beginning to threaten the movement.
WHEN REVIVAL FRACTURES
Azusa's global influence did not mean the movement remained internally united.
Leadership tensions developed.
Relationships deteriorated.
Disputes over administration emerged.
Florence Crawford and Clara Lum eventually departed.
Control of the mailing network became part of the conflict.
Then theological disagreement arrived.
William H. Durham promoted what became known as the Finished Work understanding of sanctification.
This challenged the Wesleyan framework associated with Seymour, which understood sanctification as a distinct work before Spirit baptism.
The disagreement divided early Pentecostals.
Then racial division returned.
The interracial fellowship of early Azusa had challenged American racism.
But as Pentecostalism became institutionalized, many Pentecostal bodies once again divided along racial lines.
It remains one of the great contradictions of early Pentecostal history:
Revival brought people together.
Institutions often separated them again.
WHEN THE CROWDS DISAPPEARED
By the following decade, Azusa Street was no longer the international centre it had once been.
New Pentecostal ministries had emerged.
Denominations were forming.
Leaders who had visited Azusa were building their own movements elsewhere.
Attention shifted.
The crowds declined.
And William Seymour returned to something quieter:
pastoring.
He remained with Jennie and continued serving the congregation.
This part of Seymour's story may be one of the most important.
He had watched people travel enormous distances to attend his meetings.
He had watched newspapers attack him.
Missionaries had left for other countries.
He had watched colleagues depart.
He had watched Pentecostalism grow far beyond his own influence.
Then he watched the crowds disappear.
But he stayed.
Seymour demonstrated that his obedience was not dependent upon remaining famous.
The platform became smaller.
The calling remained.
THE DEATH OF WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR
On 28 September 1922, William J. Seymour died following a heart attack.
He was 52 years old.
Jennie continued trying to preserve the mission.
But Azusa's great revival era had passed.
Eventually, the property was lost.
The original building at 312 Azusa Street was later demolished.
Today there is no original wooden mission where visitors can stand behind Seymour's crude packing-box pulpit.
The building disappeared.
But the movement it helped catalyse did not.
THE BUILDING DISAPPEARED — THE FIRE DIDN'T
Pentecostal Christianity continued spreading throughout the twentieth century.
New denominations emerged.
Missionaries crossed continents.
Indigenous Pentecostal churches developed throughout Africa.
Latin America experienced extraordinary Pentecostal growth.
Asian Pentecostalism expanded.
And later the Charismatic Renewal carried Pentecostal experiences into older Protestant, Anglican, Catholic and other Christian traditions.
Today, Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity encompasses hundreds of millions of believers worldwide.
It would be historically inaccurate to claim that all Pentecostalism came from Azusa Street.
There were multiple streams.
The Welsh Revival had already occurred.
Charles Parham's movement preceded Azusa.
Holiness Christianity had prepared theological ground.
Other revivals developed independently.
But Azusa became one of the great catalytic centres in the international spread of Pentecostal Christianity.
And standing at its centre was one of the most unlikely leaders imaginable.
A poor Black preacher from Louisiana.
The son of formerly enslaved parents.
A man with little education.
A preacher blind in one eye.
A minister rejected by the church that originally invited him to Los Angeles.
William J. Seymour.
THE LEGACY OF WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR
William Seymour's life is filled with extraordinary contrasts.
His parents had been born enslaved.
Yet their son helped lead a revival whose influence crossed nations.
He possessed little formal education.
Yet generations of scholars would study the movement associated with his ministry.
He lost sight in one eye.
Yet his spiritual vision reached far beyond the places he personally travelled.
Racism pushed him toward the margins.
Yet Black and white believers worshipped together under his leadership.
Segregation kept him separated from white Bible students.
Yet future students of Pentecostal history would study him.
He travelled to Los Angeles to preach.
The door closed.
But the closed church door led to an open home.
The home led to Bonnie Brae.
Bonnie Brae led to Azusa Street.
Azusa Street sent men and women into the nations.
And those people carried the message farther than Seymour himself ever travelled.
Perhaps one of the deepest lessons from his story is:
Rejection does not necessarily mean God has rejected the assignment.
Sometimes the door that closes redirects a person toward the place where their true impact will begin.
Seymour did not have a cathedral.
He had an old building.
He did not possess modern television or radio.
He had a newspaper.
He did not build his ministry around celebrity.
Witnesses remembered him praying behind a crude wooden pulpit.
And around that ministry came testimonies of:
Salvation.
Sanctification.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Speaking in tongues.
Divine healing.
Prophecy.
Missionary sending.
And a radical fellowship that temporarily challenged America's racial divisions.
The building disappeared.
The original congregation disappeared.
Seymour himself died more than a century ago.
But around the world, Christians continue worshipping within a Pentecostal and charismatic tradition that Azusa Street helped shape.
Behind that history stands the humble son of Simon and Phyllis Seymour.
A labourer.
A man blind in one eye.
A rejected preacher.
A servant who prayed.
A revival leader who resisted making himself the centre.
A pioneer of global Pentecostalism.
WILLIAM JOSEPH SEYMOUR
The Rejected Preacher Behind the Azusa Street Revival
And truly,