Charles Parham

Life

Parham was born on June 4, 1873, in Muscatine, Iowa, and moved with his family to Kansas in 1878. In 1890 he studied theology and medicine at Southwest Kansas College in Winfield, Kansas, but abandoned his studies after a recurrence of rheumatic fever. After obtaining a license to preach in the Methodist Church, he began serving as a supply pastor around the age of twenty. He later clashed with the Methodist leadership, left the denomination, and thereafter ministered independently. He married Sarah Thistlethwaite, who came from a Quaker family. In 1898 he moved to Topeka, Kansas, where he opened Bethel Healing Home and carried on a ministry of divine healing (the healing of sickness through prayer and faith). He died on January 29, 1929, at his home in Baxter Springs, Kansas.

Ministry and Achievements

• Bethel Bible School: On October 15, 1900, Parham founded a Bible school in Topeka. He reportedly directed his students to investigate the meaning of "ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" in Acts 2:38 and whether Scripture offers evidence that one has received the Holy Spirit. The students held an all-night prayer meeting on New Year's Eve. In the early hours of January 1, 1901, a student named Agnes Ozman is said to have spoken in tongues after Parham prayed for her with the laying on of hands. This event is commonly regarded as the starting point of the modern Pentecostal movement. The school closed after little more than a year.
• The "initial evidence" doctrine: Parham was the first to articulate clearly the doctrine that speaking in tongues is the evidence of having received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. This doctrine is credited with enabling Pentecostalism to separate from the Holiness movement and become a distinct movement. He understood tongues to be actual foreign languages and therefore expected them to be a gift that would allow missionaries to preach the gospel without having to learn those languages.
• The Houston Bible school and Seymour: Calling his movement the "Apostolic Faith Movement," Parham extended it through Kansas and Missouri and reached Texas in 1905. From December 1905 through the following spring he conducted a short-term Bible school in Houston, where the African American Holiness preacher William J. Seymour studied. Because the school was racially segregated, Seymour is said to have listened to the lectures from outside the classroom. In 1906 Seymour went to Los Angeles and led the Azusa Street Revival.
• Break with Azusa Street: Visiting Azusa Street in October 1906, Parham sharply criticized the manifestations occurring in the meetings as well as the interracial worship. The Azusa Street leaders rejected him, and his influence steadily declined thereafter.

Influence on the Korean Church

There is no record that Parham ever ministered in Korea. However, the understanding he first advanced—that tongues are the evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit—passed through the Azusa Street Revival into classical Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God in the United States. This line of thought became the theological background for how Korean Pentecostal (Full Gospel) churches, such as the Korea Assemblies of God, understand baptism in the Holy Spirit (see History of the Pentecostal Movement in Korea). Views differ among denominations. Pentecostal denominations have generally regarded baptism in the Holy Spirit as an experience received separately after conversion and have associated it with tongues. Reformed denominations, including Presbyterians, generally hold that baptism in the Holy Spirit is received at conversion and do not regard tongues as a necessary accompanying evidence. This discussion also bears on the debate over cessationism and continuationism.

Assessment

• He is regarded as the figure who laid the theological foundation of the Pentecostal movement and is sometimes called the "father of the modern Pentecostal movement." Others, however, locate the actual catalyst for the movement's worldwide spread in Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival.
• The missionary use of tongues as foreign languages that he anticipated never materialized, and later Pentecostal denominations generally do not limit tongues to foreign languages.
• He has drawn considerable criticism. Parham practiced racial segregation. He also supported British Israelism, the belief that Anglo-Saxons are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and there are records indicating that he was sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
• In July 1907 he was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, on a charge of sexual misconduct, but a few days later prosecutors dropped the charge for lack of evidence. Parham claimed that the affair had been engineered by his rival Wilbur Glenn Voliva of Zion City, Illinois. Recent studies have reexamined the incident on the basis of contemporary newspaper accounts.