Los Angeles has many legacies: Hollywood, Rodeo Drive, and a culture of good-looking, over-tanned people who talk on cell phones all day and eat too much sushi. But there’s something that started here that many people wouldn’t expect in this city: Pentecostalism. So much of modern evangelical American Christianity is owed to the revival that took place here a century ago, and, on first glance, all there is to show for it is a tiny sign in front of an abandoned building:
This small building doesn’t look like a location that can spawn a movement, but it did, and Pentecostalism is often considered to be the fastest-growing faith movement worldwide. (Some say it’s Mormonism, and some say Islam, but it depends on whether you’re looking at percentage growth, raw numbers, who’s reporting the numbers, etc. Needless to say, Pentecostalism is growing fast.)
More than a hundred years ago, in 1905, an African American named William J. Seymour, a son of former slaves, was preaching in Houston, Texas that baptism in the Holy Spirit was accompanied by speaking in tongues, even though he had not experienced this personally. Enraptured with his message, a woman from Los Angeles invited him to come visit, and he began preaching at a church here. But in his second week, he found the church padlocked and strong condemnation of his new message.
Seymour started preaching in houses and assembling a group of devotees. Eventually, a group found and rented an available building at 312 Azusa Street, which had originally been constructed as an African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was then a black ghetto part of town. (Now, it’s Little Tokyo, and is mostly commercial and affluent, with a very poor underbelly.) The building had served as a wholesale house, a warehouse, a lumberyard, stockyards, a tombstone shop, and had most recently been used as a stable. Discarded lumber and plaster littered the large, barn-like room on the ground floor, but it was secured and cleaned in preparation for services, and their first meeting was held on April 14, 1906.
By mid-May, anywhere from 300 to 1500 people would try to fit into the building, from all backgrounds – black, white, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, illiterate, and educated – a mark that stays with Pentecostalism to this day. The revival lasted for about five years, covered in all of the papers, and derided by many Christian detractors. It was a blockbuster in a time of Jim Crown and suffragism, and a strange occurrence in the city, which was little more than a backwater at the time.
In the lively, loud meetings, full of speaking in tongues and convulsing from the spirit, Pentecostalism took form, and some of its core beliefs, many of which were radical to mainstream American Protestantism, took form:
First, that speaking in tongues is evidence of the Holy Spirit, and signifies a second baptism after the water baptism, and can be used to convey messages from God.
Second, that salvation is by faith alone, and not by works.
Third, that faith healing is an important outlet of God’s grace, which is why a lot of healing rooms are based on Pentecostal theology.
Fourth, that believers could be sanctified, or made holy through a personal connection to Jesus.
And fifth, and this is a big one, that Jesus was coming back soon, and souls needed to be saved ASAP.
These tenets made Christianity easy and appealing to the masses, because they didn’t involve the hierarchy or the rote boredom that many associated with mainstream churches. Also, it has remained popular throughout the century in America because it allowed for personalization with out going New Age. But I won’t go on forever about dogma.
I decided to go the the church closest to where the Azusa revival took place. As I rode my bicycle from Santa Monica to Los Angeles, it was amazing how many Pentecostal churches I passed. There were Apostolic Pentecostals, Latino Pentecostals, Gospel Pentecostals, Pentecostal this and Pentecostal that. A mark of many Pentecostal churches is that they are often storefront establishments, ground-up movements that are not reliant on larger denominations and cannot afford, or haven’t had time to build, traditional church buildings. And the closer I got to downtown Los Angeles, the more I saw.
I found the church I was going to – The Azusa Lighthouse Mission Church – through Google, but I had no idea what time the service was, or what the church was like, as it had no website. But when I arrived, I was just in time.
Tucked off of a large parking lot in a warehouse on a busting street, the highly amplified guitar chords were audible from a one-block radius. I was just in time, end everyone was there. There were quite a few homeless people, who had their pull-carts full of their possessions in the aisles, there were African-American ladies in wide-brimmed hats, and even a white family with a young child. Everyone was singing to the simple hymns with easy verses that could be learned without a hymnal.
“Dance, children, dance,
The Lord has come to set his people free.”
A man named Mike was on the stage, playing his guitar in front of a simple screen adorned with Korean Christian banners. The amps were tuned up so loud, and all around was corrugated steel, so it was deafening, and a little hard to deal with. The crowd was unruly, sometimes arguing amongst themselves and yelling out words. But most of the times, the words they yelled out were amens, even if they were at inopportune times.
In between songs, Mike would tell some of his story as a former drug dealer. “We live in a society where people want to know if he’s a living god,” he said. “You have an opportunity here. I used to pride myself on the drugs that I was selling, because I wanted my customers to have the very best. But I was dealing poison. Here is salvation, and it’s so much better. You can have as much as you want and you won’t O.D. on it. And it’s free!”
As he set the stage for the preacher, he wanted to make sure that everyone knew they were welcome, that these messages were meant for them, no matter what they had thought of Christianity before.
“Jesus knows what it’s like to be homeless. Foxes have their dens, birds have their nests, but the Son of God didn’t even have a place to lay his hear. And Jesus knows what is is to be rejected. The Bible says that Jesus kept to his own because his own kept him out. How many of you know what it’s like to be rejected? Jesus understands. And he can make it better. He’ll give your life back to you. He’ll give your family back to you.” There was tons of clapping at this last line, and the lady in front of me wiped her face.
And then the preacher came. A well-dressed man with an easy smile, Edwin Jovel began to speak of the Bible in a way that everyone can understand, with a story everyone knew, that of David and Goliath. He told of an army that was smited, a giant that was fallen, all because a small young man had faith in God and God guided his slingshot.
“You don’t have to open up another beer bottle, roll up another joint,” he cried. “God will supply all your needs. A lot of you have shame, but Jesus says come as you are.” He compared the threat of Goliath to the difficulty of the addictions he felt his audience faced. “Many of you have been carrying these Goliaths all these years. How many of you trust God?” he asked.
Only about half the hands were meekly raised, and he shook his head. With the music gone, he was losing some of their attention, and they were getting restless.
“You’re bringing a curse on yourselves,” he scolded. “God didn’t create you to curse you. If you think your situation is too big for you and God can’t help you, I’m here to tell you there is a living God who is there for you and won’t leave you naked and destitute. His name is Jesus. You think you’re nobody. But you’re somebody in Jesus.”
A that, he called people up to the altar to pray for them. Keep in mind, at this point, the service had been going on for over an hour and a half, and people were edging towards the doors. The smell of a free meal was wafting in the air, and some wanted to get out to the tent set up outside to partake. But Mike stopped them, and Edwin prayed earnestly with the dozen or so people who sought him.
After the service, I saw all the church had to offer these people. There was not only a free meal, but a table set up heaping over with clothes that they could take as they needed to prepare for the winter months. There were quite a few people to talk to for more help. And all of this was offered every week. This, above all else, is often a mark of Pentecostal churches. They are in the inner cities helping people that other denominations often don’t touch. It’s not true in all cities and all instances, but I’ve seen plenty of Pentecostals go above and beyond anyone else.
As people began to drift away, I got to speak with Edwin and learn a bit more about this church. It’s only been around for about a decade, and Edwin is not it’s main preacher, as duties are shared by a larger church which oversees this one, the Harvest Tabernacle a few blocks away. This mission was started by a local, a woman called Sister Amy, a large elderly Asian shopkeeper whose heart was opened by Pentecostals sharing their testimonies.
And Edwin certainly shared his testimony with me. He told me of overcoming sexual abuse committed against him by his brother, his son being cured of cancer, and how this was all due to God’s grace. He said that the other homeless services helped the symptoms, but offered no cure, and how his life was devoted to helping them overcome their struggle. “God can fix it all for them, if only they could see it,” he pleaded, grasping my hand in his.
