The Theology of William Seymour

Thesis Statement

William Seymour had very strong beliefs of Pentecostalism.



Discussion

Of all the spectacular very dark American religious leaders in the twentieth century, one of the smallest identified is William Seymour, the unsung pastor of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles and catalyst of the worldwide Pentecostal movement. Only in the last couple of decades have scholars become cognizant of his significance, starting possibly with Yale University historian Sidney Ahlstrom, who said Seymour personified a very dark piety "which used its utmost direct leverage on American religious history"—placing Seymour's influence before numbers like W. E. B. Dubois and Martin Luther monarch, Jr.

William Joseph Seymour was born in Centerville, Louisiana, on May 2, 1870 to previous slaves Simon and Phyllis Seymour. Raised as a Baptist, Seymour was granted to aspirations and visions as a youth. At age 25, he moved to Indianapolis, where he worked as a train's porter and then remained on benches in a trendy restaurant. Around this time, he bound smallpox and went unseeing in his left eye. (Nelson 12)

In 1900 he relocated to Cincinnati, where he connected the "reformation" Church of God (headquartered in Anderson, Indiana), furthermore renowned as "the Evening Light Saints." Here he became steeped in fundamental Holiness theology, which educated second good thing whole sanctification (i.e., sanctification is a post-conversion know-how that outcomes in entire holiness), divine healing, premillennialism, and the promise of a worldwide Holy Spirit renewal before the rapture.

In 1903 Seymour moved to Houston, Texas, in seek of his family. There he connected a little Holiness church pastored by a very dark woman, Lucy Farrow, who shortly put him feel with Charles Fox Parham. Parham was a Holiness educator under whose ministry a scholar had voiced in tongues (glossolalia) two years earlier. For Parham, this was the "Bible evidence" of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. When he established a Bible school to train disciples in his "Apostolic Faith" in Houston, Farrow advised Seymour to attend. (Hollenweger 45)

Since Texas regulation forbade blacks to sit in school rooms with whites, Parham boosted Seymour to stay in a hallway and hear to his lectures through the doorway. Here Seymour acknowledged Parham's premise of a "third blessing" baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by talking in tongues. Though Seymour had not yet in person skilled tongues, he occasionally preached this note with Parham in Houston churches.

In early 1906, Seymour was asked for to assist Julia Hutchins pastor a Holiness church in Los Angeles. With Parham's support, Seymour journeyed to California, where he preached the new Pentecostal doctrine utilizing Acts 2:4 as his text. Hutchins, although, turned down Seymour's educating on tongues and padlocked the doorway to him and his message. (Synan 32)

Seymour was then asked for to stay in the dwelling of Richard Asberry at 214 Bonnie Brae Street, where on April 9, after a month of strong prayer and fasting, Seymour and some others talked in tongues. Word disperses rapidly about the odd happenings on Bonnie Brae Street and drew so ...