The phenomenal growth of Pentecostal movements within African American communities has been one of the most significant developments in Christianity in the United States. It is safe to say that the history of African American Christianity can be divided into three phases of denominational influence: the Methodists in the nineteenth century, the Baptists in the twentieth century, and Pentecostal groups in the twenty-first century.

The nineteenth century was undoubtedly the century when various Methodist bodies held the most influence. The most dominant of them were the African Methodist Episcopal Church founded in Philadelphia in 1816, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded in New York City in 1822, and the Christian (formerly    Colored)    Methodist    Episcopal    Church founded in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1870. The vast majority of black leaders during the nineteenth century—including Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Daniel Payne, Henry McNeil Turner, James Varick, and Sojourner Truth—came from one of these Methodist bodies.

The twentieth century saw the emergence of sever- al black Baptist movements that eventually dwarfed their Methodist counterparts both in sheer membership numbers and in the influence they enjoyed on the national stage. The National Baptist Convention, which now has in excess of 5 million members in its affiliated congregations, was founded in 1895. The National Baptist Convention of America with an additional 2 million members was formed in 1915, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention was formed in 1961, accounting for another 1.5 million members.

However, a new trend has been under way within black communities across America: a steady rise in both the numbers and influence of Pentecostal churches and their leaders. Pentecostalism entered the black community from two sources. One was the so-called Holiness Movement or the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification. Two men were most responsible for the growth of the Holiness Movement among black Christians: Charles Harrison Mason and Charles Price Jones. Both of these men had been Baptist preachers, but they became convinced that justification (the forgiveness of sins) had to be followed by sanctification (the living of a holy life made possible only by being filled with the Holy Spirit). Together these two men formed the Church of God in Christ as a Holiness Movement in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1897.

The other contributing factor to the rise of Pentecostalism within African American communities was the Azusa Street Revival that took place under the leadership of an African American preacher named William Joseph Seymour in Los Angeles between 1906 and 1908. Charles Harrison Mason attended this revival in April of 1907, and while there had what he described as a Pentecostal experience. He subsequently came to believe in the central doctrine being taught by Seymour and Charles Parham before him, which was the need for Christian conversion to go beyond both justification and sanctification to experience the “third act of grace,” which was being baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, or the act of glossolalia as the ulti- mate evidence of one’s salvation.

By 1909 Mason and Jones (who had not attended the Azusa Street Revival) had parted company over the doctrine of Pentecostalism, and more particularly over the claim that being baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues was an essential part of the salvation process. Mason was allowed to continue using the name Church of God in Christ, and he eventually transformed that Holiness Movement into the single largest Pentecostal movement in the African American community. He also continued to be the Presiding Bishop of that movement until his death in 1961.

It is interesting to consider how different U.S. history could have been if the work and vision of Mason and the Pentecostal movement he founded in 1909 had been able to take root. Upon his return to Memphis from the Azusa Street Revival, Mason was the only Pentecostal leader in the United States with a legally incorporated church denomination that allowed him to ordain others as clergy in the Pentecostal movement. Thus from 1909 to 1914, Mason was the leader of an interracial religious body headquartered in Memphis, and he exercised over- sight and authority over the more than 300 white Pentecostal preachers who had been ordained into the ministry through the Church of God in Christ.

Like the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 to 1908 that had a tremendous interracial following, Mason and his largely African American Pentecostal movement were breaking down the walls of racial division through the power of the Holy Spirit, just as happened after Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2: 5-11. However, the prevailing racial policies of the United States at that time seemed to take precedence over the work that the Holy Spirit was attempting to accomplish. That was, after all, the zenith of the influence of the K.K.K., which was then centered in the state of Tennessee. That was also the period when African Americans were being lynched at a rate of one or two per day throughout the Deep South.

Everything that the Holy Spirit seemed to have set in motion through the emergence of the Pentecostal movement among African Americans was now being threatened. Unable to accept the authority and over- sight of an African American bishop, all of the white members of the Church of God in Christ, both clergy and laity, withdrew from that body in 1914. They joined with other smaller white Pentecostal groups to form a new and almost entirely white Pentecostal group now known as the Assemblies of God which was then head- quartered in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The interracial fellowship that formed at the height of the Jim Crow era in U. S. history would have been a great opportunity for the united witness that the Christian community in the United States could have offered to a racially divided society. There is a verse in the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” that says, “black and white together.” When those words were sung in the 1950s and 1960s, it seemed to speak of that partnership as some kind of future possibility. What most Americans do not know is that we had that opportunity within our grasp nearly a century ago when black and white Pentecostals came together around the ministry of Charles Harrison Mason and the Church of God in Christ. Sadly, rampant, vicious racial prejudice caused that spirit-filled opportunity to slip away.

Despite the division within the Pentecostal move- ment, the growth of that movement within African American communities is nothing short of phenomenal; and most of that growth has occurred within the last 20 to 30 years. The membership of the Church of God in Christ now exceeds 5 million, making it at least as large as the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc., which is the largest of the African American Baptist conventions. However, while the total membership of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., has remained static for the last 30 years, the Church of God in Christ has been the single fastest growing religious group among African Americans.

One other group bears mention in any discussion of African Americans and the Pentecostal movement, and that is the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship under the leadership of Paul Morton, Sr. This fusion of the Baptist Church with the Pentecostal movement seemed almost inevitable. Paul Morton’s grandfather was among the founders and early leaders of the Church of God in Christ. In 1975 Morton became the pastor of Greater St. Stephen’s Baptist Church in New Orleans. Over the years Morton oversaw the transition- ing of a traditional Baptist Church into a new community that was marked by casting out demons, laying hands on the sick, and speaking in heavenly languages.

By 1994 Paul Morton saw his blending of Baptist doctrine with Pentecostal fervor grow from a single congregation in New Orleans to a national fellowship that annually has over 50,000 delegates from member churches gathering in the New Orleans Super Dome for a Holy Convocation. The combination of the Church of God in Christ, the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, along with the United Pentecostal Churches of Christ, and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World clearly rank Pentecostalism as the largest and still fastest growing Christian movement in the African American community. As in Acts 2:47, the Lord has been adding daily to their churches those who are being saved.