Pentecostalism
evangelical Christian movement
Pentecostalism, also known as classical Pentecostalism, is a movement within the evangelical wing of Protestant Christianity that emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, an event that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1–31).
Like other forms of evangelical Protestantism, Pentecostalism adheres to the inerrancy of the Bible and the necessity of being born again: an individual repenting of their sin and "accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior". It is distinguished by belief in both the "baptism in the Holy Spirit" and baptism by water, that enables a Christian to "live a Spirit-filled and empowered life".
Holiness Pentecostalism emerged in the early 20th century among a number of adherents of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, who were energized by Christian revivalism and expectation of the Second Coming of Christ. In 1900, Charles Parham, an American evangelist and faith healer, began teaching that speaking in tongues was the Biblical evidence of Spirit baptism. Along with William J. Seymour, a Wesleyan-Holiness preacher, he taught that this was the third work of grace. The three-year-long Azusa Street Revival, founded and led by Seymour in Los Angeles, California, resulted in the growth of Pentecostalism throughout the world. Visitors carried the Pentecostal experience back to their home churches or felt called to the mission field. While virtually all Pentecostal denominations trace their origins to Azusa Street, the movement has three major categories.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pentecostalism” is evangelical Christian movement. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pentecostalism, evangelical and Christian, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “evangelical Christian movement” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q483978. The Library of Congress control number is sh85099639. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Pentecostalism”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Pentecostalism primary sources, Pentecostalism archive and Pentecostalism research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Pentecostalism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.