AZUSA STREET AND FRANK BARTLEMAN
An Eyewitness to Azusa Street

With An Introduction by Vinson Synan

CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION

• CHARLES PARHAM

• WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR

• FRANK BARTLEMAN

• INTRODUCTION by Vinson Synan
  
  Few events have affected modern church history as greatly as the famous Azusa Street revival of 1900-1909, which ushered into being the worldwide twentieth-century Pentecostal renewal. From this single revival has issued a movement which by 1980 numbers over 50,000,000 classical Pentecostals in uncounted churches and missions in practically every nation of the world. In addition to these Pentecostals, there are untold numbers of charismatics in every denomination who can trace at least part of their spiritual heritage to the Azusa Street meeting.

CHARLES PARHAM

Central to the Azusa event was a teacher, Charles Parham; a preacher, William J. Seymour; a city, Los Angeles; a journalist! Frank Bartleman; and a building, the Azusa Street Mission. On a short two-block street in downtown Los Angeles, 312 Azusa Street is the most famous address in Pentecostal-Charismatic history.

Although he was not present at the beginning of the Azusa Street revival, Parham was in many ways the theological father of the event. A former Methodist minister from Kansas, Parham by 1898 had begun a healing home in Topeka where students were invited to study the Scriptures in a small Bible school community.

The students were not charged tuition, but were required to "live by faith." Parham taught the standard teachings of the holiness movement that were current in his day, i.e., justification by faith sanctification as a second work of grace, divine healing, and the premillennial second coming of Christ. By 1900 he had about forty students in a rambling brick mansion known as "Stone Folly" on the outskirts of Topeka.

In January 1901, one of Parham's students, an eighteen-year- old girl named Agnes Ozman, was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance. This came as a result of an intense study of the Scriptures concerning the "evidence" of receiving the Holy Spirit. From this experience Parham constructed his thesis that glossolalia was the biblical evidence of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

From 1901 to 1905, Parham and his "Apostolic Faith" band preached the pentecostal message in the Midwest, gaining converts wherever he went. In 1905 he moved his school to Houston, Texas, where the same charismatic manifestation occurred. From his Houston school, Parham evangelized through out Texas and the Southwest. From 1901 to 1908 he was able to win some 25,000 followers in a belt of states from Missouri to Texas. His Apostolic Faith missions were loosely held together by little else than their leader's teaching and charisma, since Parham doggedly opposed all forms of ecclesiastical organization.

WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR

It was in Houston that a Southern black holiness preacher by the name of William J. Seymour joined Parham's Bible school. Despite the Jim Crow segregation laws of the South, Seymour joined in the classes taught by Parham. Originally a Baptist, Seymour had entered the ranks of the holiness movement before 1905 and freely accepted Parham's cardinal teachings which now included five points: justification, sanctification, baptism in the Holy Spirit with the "initial evidence" of speaking in other tongues, divine healing and the premillennial second coming of Christ.

Although Seymour accepted Parham's teaching on tongue: (glossolalia), he did not receive the experience in Houston. The mantle of leadership in the fledgling pentecostal movement was soon to be transferred from Parham to Seymour, and the "place of blessing" from Houston to Los Angeles.

In 1906 Seymour received an invitation to preach in a black Nazarene church in Los Angeles pastored by a woman preacher, Reverend Mrs. Huchinson. When he arrived in Los Angeles in the spring of 1906, Seymour found a city of some 228,000 which was growing at a rate of 15 percent a year. Many strange religions and a multiplicity of denominations occupied the religious attentions of the city. Los Angeles was a melting-pot metropolis! with large numbers of Mexicans, Chinese, Russians, Greeks Japanese, Koreans, and Anglo-American inhabitants.

The religious life of the city was dominated by Joseph Smale, whose large First Baptist Church had been transformed into the, "New Testament Church" due to the effects of the Welsh revival which were being felt in Los Angeles at the time. Another important religious influence in the city was Phineas Bresee, who had founded the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene in 1895 in an attempt to preserve the teaching of holiness which he felt was dying out in the Methodist Church, a denomination in which h had served as a leading minister for some thirty years.

Starting his work at the Peniel Mission in the very poorest section of the city, Bresee was repeating Wesley's work of a earlier century in England by ministering to the disinherited of Los Angeles society. His Nazarene followers were rapidly becoming the largest holiness church in America.

In the black community, a rich social and religious life had developed during the last years of the century with numbers of Methodist, Baptist, and holiness churches located in the black community that centered around Bonnie Brae Street.

Without question, William J. Seymour was the central figure of the Azusa street revival and will always be remembered as the vessel chosen of the Lord to spark the worldwide Pentecost revival. Yet, little that he wrote has been preserved for posterity.

This fact is not to be despised, however, when one reflects that neither Socrates nor Jesus left a body of written works for future generations to read. Socrates had his Plato to record his dialogue while Jesus had the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to leave a written record of His teachings. Seymour had his Frank Bartleman.

FRANK BARTLEMAN

It was Bartleman's diary and reports in the holiness press that constituted the most complete and reliable record of what occurred at Azusa Street. In later years, Bartleman gathered together his diary entries and articles written to various periodicals and published them in book form.

In this book, entitled "How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles," one feels the excitement of the events at the old Azusa mission. From the beginning, Bartleman seemed to sense the historic significance of the Los Angeles Pentecost. From the first meeting he attended in April 1906, he felt that a "world wide revival" would be the result.

In many ways, Bartleman's entire life had been spent in preparation for reporting the Azusa Street meeting. It is probable that without his reporting, the Pentecostal movement would not have spread so quickly and so far as it did. His journalism not only informed the world about the Pentecostal movement, but in a large measure also helped to form it.

Born in Rucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1871 to a German-born Roman Catholic father and an English-born Quaker mother, Bartleman grew up on a farm where his first job was that of following a plow. While he feared his stern father, he enjoyed a tender relationship with his mother. From his earliest days, he suffered from frail health. In his own words he was a "life-long semi-invalid" who "always lived with death looking over my shoulder."

His conversion took place in October 1893 in the Baptist Temple in Philadelphia, pastored by the famous preacher Russell Conwell, author of the gospel of wealth classic, "Acres of Diamonds. After Conwell baptized the twenty-two-year-old Bartleman, he offered to pay the young man's way through college. Bartleman refused, explaining that "I made my choice between a popular, paying pulpit and a humble walk of poverty and suffering. . . I choose the streets and slums for my pulpit."

At the time he licensed to preach, by the Temple Baptist Church, he decided to "trust God" for his body. A lifelong devotion to the doctrine of divine healing followed. The desire to preach was overwhelming. "The Gospel was a fire in my bones that roared all the day," wrote the young minister.

In 1897 Bartleman left the Baptist ministry and cast his lot with the holiness movement. Joining the Salvation Army, he spent a short time in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as a captain before disillusionment led him to leave the army. He later traveled to Chicago to attend the Moody Bible Institute.

Bartleman did not study long in Chicago, however. He had wandering feet. Soon he was on a "gospel wagon" making his first tour of the South. Here he befriended the blacks to the consternation of white Southerners. The wandering life occasionally depressed him. On a second tour of the South in 1899 he became so despondent that he once actually contemplated suicide. Later, though, he felt well enough to contemplate matrimony.

In 1900 he married a Miss Ladd, matron of a school for fallen girls in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He also experienced his first spiritual manifestation of "shouting and jumping," although before this he had led a life of a "rather monkish tendency."

Soon after marriage, Bartleman was ordained in Philadelphia "in pentecostal connection," a term which he fails to further explain. This group was probably one of the small holiness groups of the day, who found it popular to use the word "pentecostal" in their name in reference to the second blessing of sanctification through the baptism in the Holy Ghost (without any reference to glossolalia).

Near the time of his marriage he joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church and was assigned a pastorate in Corry, Pennsylvania. This pastorate was an unhappy experience for Bartleman, since he found the church to be "not even spiritual" and, in his judgment, a "backslidden holiness charge."

In this period, Bartleman was subject to several more mystic experiences in addition to his shouting and jumping of a few months earlier. In a camp meeting he felt "electric shocks" to the point that he fell unconscious. Later after his horse was healed in answer to prayer, Satan attacked him in his room at night "to destroy me." The name of Jesus put Satan to flight. Also, after miraculous healing, he was "slain in the Spirit" for one-half hour before a congregation where he had been preaching.

When his father-in-law invited him to join the Methodist Episcopal Conference in New York Bartleman refused. While the Methodist Church was moving away from emotional and expressive holiness religion in this period, Bartleman was moving in the opposite direction. He branded the Methodist Church as being "dead and compromised."

After leaving the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Pennsylvania, Bartleman set his sights on the West. Working at odd jobs, he led his wife and newly born daughter, Esther, on a trip to Colorado, with California as his eventual goal.

In Denver, he went to work with Alma White, head of the Pillar of Fire church, a small holiness group that specialized in the "holy dance." It was here that Bartleman was "cured of ever worshipping a religious zeal or creed."

While in Colorado, Bartleman continued the ministry that became his lifetime mission--work in slum areas among alcoholic and fallen girls. Most of this work was done in the holiness rescue missions that were located in the central areas of the nation's larger cities.

He also felt compelled to print and distribute tracts as part of his ministry. In addition to tracts, Bartleman often painted Scriptures on bridges, rocks beside the highways, or other public places. Because of these activities he occasionally ran afoul of the law. In 1902 he was arrested in Boulder, Colorado, for painting Scriptures on canyon walls near the city. Beyond these activities the indefatigable evangelist felt led to preach in every saloon and house of prostitution in every city he visited. In Denver that included over a hundred saloons.

It was in 1904 that Bartleman finally reached his goal, California, where he exclaimed, "Here we reached paradise." His first stop was in Sacramento, where he was immediately placed in charge of the Peniel Mission, a holiness rescue mission in the heart of the city. His work at Peniel failed "because of incompetent workers" and the aggressive proselyting of the rival Burning Bush and Pillar of Fire missions.

After leaving the Peniel Mission, Bartleman frantically tried to reenter the pastoral ministry. An attempt to gain an appointment in the Wesleyan Methodist Church failed, as did an application to Phineas Bresee for a Nazarene pastorate. "None available" was the word from Bresee.

The desperate Bartleman turned to whatever odd jobs he could obtain-painting, picking apples, cutting wood, etc. Things got so bad that their second baby was born in a rescue home. The leaders of the home refused to let the hapless evangelist stay with his wife and baby. Later his wife was reduced to scrounging for food in garbage cans. They could not afford proper clothing, their feet wearing through the soles of their shoes.
By December 1904, Bartleman left Sacramento for Los Angeles, where he was destined to record some of the most stirring events in the history of the church. "The Spirit had led us to Los Angeles for the 'Latter Rain' outpouring," he later wrote in the end of his autobiographical book, "From Plough to Pulpit--From Maine to California.

In Los Angeles, Bartleman went immediately to the Peniel Mission on South Main Street, which was founded and operated by Mrs. Manie Ferguson, author of the hymn "Blessed Quietness." (P.F. Bresee worked on the Peniel staff before founding the Church of the Nazarene in 1895).

For Bartleman, hardship and tragedy awaited him in Los Angeles. Poverty, sickness, and the death of his oldest child, "Queen Esther," in January, 1905, left the hapless preacher and his wife grief-stricken but more determined than ever to fulfill their ministry in the "city of the angels."

Throughout 1905 Bartleman worked with the various holiness churches and missions in the Los Angeles area. But many of the holiness churches had become rigid and negative to any new winds of revival that might begin to blow. In a warning to them, Bartleman confided in his diary "some holiness churches [foremost at that time are going to be surprised to find God passing them by. He will work in channels where they will yield to Him. They must humble themselves for Him to come."

Indeed the greatest signs of revival in Los Angeles in 1905 were in Methodist and Baptist churches, in particular the Lake Avenue Methodist Church in Pasadena and Los Angeles's First Baptist Church, pastored by Frank Smale.

The revival in Smale's church was sparked by news of the great Welsh revival of 1904-05 led by Evan Roberts. A trip to Wales by Smale and an exchange of letters between Bartleman and Evan Roberts demonstrate a direct spiritual link between the move of God in Wales and the Pentecostal outpouring in Los Angeles in 1906.

At this time also, Bartleman began to write articles for the holiness press. His reports from Los Angeles were printed primarily in the "Way of Faith" in Columbia, South Carolina, and "God's Revivalist" published in Cincinnati, Ohio. From these influential periodicals Bartleman's stories were republished for other holiness papers around the nation. By 1906 Bartleman had built a reputation in holiness circles as a reliable reporter whose articles emphasized the need of spiritual renewal among all Christians, but among holiness partisans in particular. He was thus in a strategic position to describe the spiritual climate of Los Angeles before the Azusa Street revival and to report the historic events after the Azusa Street meeting began in 1906.

The reports of the Azusa Street revival are contained in a book Bartleman published in 1925 entitled "How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles--As It Was in the Beginning." This book was written several years after the events of 1906-1909 and was pieced together from the author's diary and clippings from articles he had written for the holiness press.