Pentecostal & Charismatic

Pentecostalism traces to a 1901 Bible school prayer meeting in Topeka, Kansas, and especially to the Azusa Street Revival, an interracial, multi-year outpouring in Los Angeles beginning in 1906 led by African American preacher William J. Seymour. Participants reported speaking in tongues, healing, and ecstatic worship, understood as a restoration of the New Testament gifts of the Spirit described in the Book of Acts. The revival spread rapidly through traveling evangelists, producing new denominations. A later Charismatic Renewal beginning in the 1960s brought similar Spirit-focused practices into existing Catholic, Anglican, and mainline Protestant churches without requiring separate denominations.

Key figures: Charles Parham, William J. Seymour, Aimee Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts.

Pentecostals and Charismatics share the conviction that the spiritual gifts described in the New Testament, tongues, prophecy, healing, and miracles, remain active for believers today rather than having ceased with the apostolic era. Central is baptism in the Holy Spirit, a distinct empowering experience subsequent to conversion, which many classical Pentecostal groups teach is normally evidenced by speaking in tongues, or glossolalia. This experience is understood as equipping believers for bold witness and ministry, mirroring the Spirit's descent on the apostles at Pentecost in Acts 2.

Worship is expected to be an encounter with a present, active God rather than a purely intellectual or ceremonial exercise, and prayer for physical healing is common and expected, not exceptional. Pentecostals generally hold to standard evangelical convictions, biblical authority, salvation through faith in Christ, and the necessity of personal conversion, while adding this distinctive emphasis on ongoing, experiential encounter with the Holy Spirit's power in everyday life.

• Baptism in the Holy Spirit as a distinct experience
• Speaking in tongues (glossolalia) as a spiritual gift
• Emphasis on divine healing and present-day miracles
• Expressive, spontaneous worship
• Belief that spiritual gifts remain active today
• Charismatic Renewal spread the practices into Catholic and mainline churches

Pentecostal and Charismatic worship is typically expressive and spontaneous: extended musical worship, raised hands, spoken or sung prayer in tongues, and openness to prophetic words or spontaneous testimony during the service. Preaching is energetic and often calls for an immediate response, prayer for healing, rededication, or Spirit baptism. Services can run longer than in more liturgical traditions, with less fixed structure and more perceived room for the Holy Spirit to redirect the gathering.

Governance varies widely. Classical Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God have formal structures with regional and national leadership, while many Pentecostal congregations are independent, led by a strong founding pastor with minimal outside oversight. Charismatic Christians remain within their home traditions, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and others, so their governance follows whatever polity their parent denomination already has.

Pentecostalism's defining distinction from other Protestant traditions is its teaching that the miraculous sign gifts of the apostolic era, tongues, healing, prophecy, continue actively today, a view many other Christians, sometimes called cessationists, consider to have ended with the apostles. Unlike liturgical traditions with fixed prayers and sacraments as the worship center, Pentecostal services center on spontaneous, Spirit-led experience. Charismatic Christians differ from classical Pentecostals mainly in that they retain their original denomination's structure and sacraments rather than forming separate Pentecostal churches.

Compare it with the full family of traditions on the Christian denominations overview, take the denomination quiz to see which fits you, or look up any unfamiliar term in the Christian glossary.

Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity together represent roughly 640 million to over 700 million people worldwide, making it one of Christianity's fastest-growing streams, especially across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and including large charismatic movements within the Catholic Church.