Address Presidential

In the Sanctified Holiness Pentecostal Charismatic Movement

Sherry Sherrod DuPree

Sanctified Holiness from the Revolutionary Era to 1900

The African Methodist Church was bom in 1878 as a protest against the Methodist Episcopal Church's compromise with slavery. Several African-American church members, including Bishop Richard Allen and Absolom Jones, left the St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia because of the church's racist poli- cies. African Americans had to worship in the balcony and take com- munion in the evening while the Anglo-Americans took communion in the morning service. The departing worshippers then formed the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. One important part of the church's doctrine was Sanctification, under the influence of John Wesley and the Methodist Church.2 Holiness churches were known among African-Americans as Sanctified Churches. African Methodist Episcopal churches were formal and dignified, not noisy. Worshippers in these Sanctified Churches praised God by singing and dancing in the Spirit. These church worshippers were known as Holy Rollers. Yet these lively churches were of great pride to the poor African-American citizens.

I James Henrietta, Richard Allen and African-American Identity, america.com/review/spring97/allen.htm 1/online, (February 18, 2001 ). 2 Charles Edwin Jones, Black Holiness: A Guide to the Study of Black Participation in Wesleyian Perfectionism and Glossolalic Pentecostal Movements (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1987).

97 To know that they were special in the eyes of their church was very important to them. They could relate to the suffering of Jesus with their own suffering. They could speak in the spirit without nonchris- tians understanding their messages. verses were used to express various needs. To express their desire for God, these African- Americans often referred to Hannah's praying to God for a son. For the most part, these lively churches were called Holiness Churches among Anglo-Americans. The recently-freed slaves were desperately in search of better economic conditions and a connection with God. African-Americans embraced the tenets of the , including entire sanctification, baptism of fire and divine healing. These experiences were added to the standards of convic- tion, repentance, conversion, justification, water baptism, and the Lord's Supper.

The Historical Waves of Pentecostal Salvation

By the turn of the century, Holiness leaders were developing a unique worship to connect with God. Their mission was actually to integrate various aspects of American religious culture. One of the Holiness leaders was Charles Fox Parham (1873- 1929), a white man influenced by Congregational and Methodist/Episcopal denominations. He opened the Bethel Bible School in Topeka, in 1900.3 Out of a powerful three-day revival at this school came Agnes Ozman (1870-1937) with a new, powerful physical evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit: the evi- dence of speaking in unknown languages, or tongues. Ozman once allegedly spoke in Chinese. ' Parham's Bethel Bible School was so successful that he opened a second school, the Bible Training School in Houston. William Joseph Seymour (1897-1922), an African-American who attended the Houston school, learned there of the initial evidence of receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit.4 After his experience in Houston, Seymour moved to Los

3 Kansas City Journal (January 22, 1901), 10. 4 Sherry Dupree, African-American Holiness Pentecostal Movement: An Annotated Bibliography (Religious Information Systems, New York: Garland, 1996), 4:20. 98