Post 1 in a Series on History, Doctrine, Discernment, & Influence
Why This History Matters
For many Christians today, Charismatic beliefs and practices feel almost timeless, like they’ve always been part of the Church, stretching seamlessly back to the book of Acts.
I believed that.
For nearly a decade, I was immersed in Charismatic theology without ever understanding its history. -How it developed, where its core ideas came from, or how dramatically it differs from the beliefs of the historic Church. In my personal experience in the movement, no one ever really taught it or talked about it. No one ever said, “This is how these beliefs started,” or “Here’s why Christians through Church history believed differently.” It all just felt normal. Ancient. Obviously Biblical. And that assumption shaped my faith far more than I realized at the time.
Eventually, I had a sobering discovery: much of what I had learned was actually very modern. Even the people who helped develop it saw it as a restoration of Biblical Christianity, not a continuation of the first century Church. I was astounded. It seemed to follow a pattern of other restorationist movements: claims of new revelations, new authority, and new spiritual experiences presented as lost truths.
That pattern shows up in places many Christians recognize as problematic: Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. Not because they’re identical to this movement, but because the logic is similar: what’s new is framed as ancient, and what’s innovative is framed as recovering the lost. Could this be another form of Gnosticism?
This series isn’t written as an outsider looking in. It’s written as someone who once assumed these teachings were normal, deeply rooted, and unquestionably Biblical… until I learned otherwise.
My first five posts will intentionally be a high-level overview of the major movements in Charismatic history, marking out the major ideas, influential people, and notable events. I’m not trying to address every doctrinal or theological issue. My goal is to trace how Charismatic theology developed over time. To look at how each phase was built on what came before it. And, to help others understand why that history matters for Biblical discernment today.
A Note on the “Wave” Framework
Before getting into the history, I want to clarify some terminology.
When people talk about “waves” of the Charismatic movement, they’re not claiming this framework is inspired by God or even agreed on by the whole broad movement. From what I’ve found, it’s just a helpful way to describe how the theology evolved over time.
The shifts in the theology weren’t abrupt, and later movements rarely rejected the earlier ones outright. Instead, certain claims were adjusted or softened over time; reframed into more acceptable ideas, especially in evangelical groups. (These changes have been widely criticized. One notable documentary is Church of Tares on YouTube, which documents how many of these ideas were gradually normalized.)
What follows isn’t an attack. It’s a map.
Roots Before Pentecostalism
Holiness, Healing and Revivalism (19th Century)
The Charismatic movement didn’t just suddenly appear from Azusa in the early 1900s. That’s something I didn’t know for a long time. Before Pentecostalism had a name, its core ideas were already forming and taking root in the 1700s and 1800s through the Holiness movement, revivalism, and early healing movements.
During this time, the Christian life started to be framed less around salvation as the center and more around what came after it. Believers were encouraged to expect more. More holiness. More power. More experiences with God.
That desire isn’t strange. Most Christians understandably want growth. I still do. But this way of thinking subtly shifted the focus. Spiritual life started to feel measurable, almost trackable through experiences. At first, it felt hopeful and practical. But it proved to be dangerous, burdensome, and cause for despair.
John Wesley and the “Second Blessing”
In the 1730s, John Wesley founded Methodism, which strongly emphasized holiness and sanctification. He popularized the term entire sanctification, also known as Christian perfection. This wasn’t a claim that Christians could become sinless, but that God reordered the heart after a person was born again, given full devotion to God and perfect love for God and others.
Wesley wasn’t Pentecostal. He didn’t believe or teach speaking in tongues as evidence of the Holy Spirit or promote modern Charismatic practices. But he did introduce an idea that later movements expanded far beyond what he meant: the idea that the Christian life involves distinct phases of spiritual growth after salvation, including regeneration, sanctification, and entire sanctification. Later movements focused primarily on entire sanctification, reshaping it in ways Wesley himself did not intend.
From Holiness to Experience
As these ideas spread, people like Phoebe Palmer started to popularize them in the 1830s, placing growing emphasis on personal testimony and spiritual experience as evidence of growth. Around the same time, revivalists like Charles Finney reshaped American Christianity through emotional revival meetings, altar calls, and visible reactions to preaching.
Over time, spiritual fruit came to be evaluated by visible outcomes. That same logic extended beyond conversion into expectations of healing, supernatural experience, and power. Experience became the measuring stick.
Alongside this, early faith-healing movements taught that physical healing could be accessed through sufficient faith. Coincidentally, metaphysical movements like New Thought were also developing, teaching that belief and speech could shape reality. Even though these are not Christian, they came out of the same cultural moment and later influenced Christian language around faith, confession, and spiritual laws.
Together, these movements normalized a few key assumptions that would later become foundational to Charismatic theology:
- Christian life progresses through seen spiritual experiences
- Spiritual power is accessed after salvation
- Experience validates truth
At this point, these ideas weren’t systematized, but the framework was there to stay.
Before Pentecostalism emerged, a few other notable people were setting the stage for supernatural experience. Edward Irving in Scotland (1792-1834) was pushing the ideas of prophetic speech and speaking in tongues, sometimes at the expense of careful study of Scripture, and sparked controversy over frenzied manifestations in his congregations. Simultaneously, A.B. Simpson (1843-1919), founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was promoting the idea of a “higher life” of spiritual fullness that we see perpetuated much later in Charismatic history. Irving and Simpson both advanced the idea of personal spiritual experience becoming central to faith.
During this same timeframe, Frank Sandford (1862-1940) ran a community in Maine called Shiloh. It was, by all modern definitions, a strict, highly controlled Christian cult, where members gave up property and followed all of Sandford’s commands. He encouraged manic experiences, including tongues. His community was filled with neglect and abuse. In 1908, Sandford was arrested for manslaughter related to deaths at Shiloh.
Meanwhile, John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) founded Zion City in Illinois, another high control religious cult. Like Sandford, he demanded obedience from his followers and put emphasis on spiritual experiences like healing and miraculous power. His methods laid the foundation for the early Pentecostals to follow around spiritual authority based on perceived supernatural successes and blessings.
First Wave: Classical Pentecostalism
Early 1900s
The first time all of these ideas really came together was in Classical Pentecostalism in the early 1900s. Rather than rejecting Holiness teaching, Pentecostalism reshaped it. The focus shifted from sanctification to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. A new concept that was said to be evidenced by speaking in tongues.
Overall, early Pentecostals adopted a restorationist mindset, believing God was restoring the practices of the early Church described in Acts. New teachings and experiences were framed as recoveries of something that had been lost.
Charles Fox Parham and Progression (1890s-early 1900s)
Charles Fox Parham, often considered the theological father of Pentecostalism, taught a clear spiritual progression:
- Salvation
- Sanctification
- Baptism of the Holy Spirit, proven by speaking in tongues
This was a major shift that Parham first taught in 1901 at Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas. In January that year, one of Parham’s students, Agnes Ozman, spoke in ‘tongues’ during prayer. Parham interpreted this as confirmation of his teaching, and it became the first major example of tongues as evidence of ‘Spirit baptism’. From that point on, tongues were no longer regarded as just one spiritual gift among many mentioned in Scripture, but the proof that a believer had received the Spirit.
This teaching changed things. It changed how people understood maturity, assurance, and even obedience. Some believers were now seen as having something others didn’t. Parham’s followers eventually became known as Parhamites, and many of them adhered to the model set forth by John Alexander Dowie’s Zion City with authoritarian communal practices.
Parham wasn’t without serious controversy. He was openly racist and supportive of segregation, and later the KKK. He faced numerous arrests, including a charge in 1907 for ‘gross indecency’ involving a young boy, which was later dropped. There are also repeated accusations of murder and violent behavior toward opponents. His personal failings were reflective of the extremes of his teachings and lack of accountability.
Azusa Street and Expansion
The movement spread quickly through the Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909), led by William J. Seymour. Seymour was a black American preacher who had studied under Charles Parham in Houston in 1905. Because Parham was openly racist, Seymour wasn’t officially allowed in the classroom and instead listened from outside the door.
Azusa focused on tongues, healing, emotional worship, and intense spiritual manifestations. Meetings lasted day and night, with spontaneous singing, crying, and falling under the power, (now known as “slain in the Spirit”). Neighbors called the police. Critics mocked the chaos. But the meetings carried on, seeking what they believed were more direct encounters with God, rather than adhering strictly to Scripture. This helped shape Pentecostal theology to value experience alongside, and sometimes above, Scripture.
Healing was quickly becoming a central focus during this time. People like John G. Lake and Smith Wigglesworth helped spread the idea that physical healing was something believers should expect, not simply pray for. Over time, healing shifted from being understood as a sovereign act of God to something derived from faith and spiritual maturity.
Lake (1870-1935) became a major healing revivalist, but many of his claims of healings, miracles, and financial success have been questioned and shown to be exaggerated. His Pentecostal ideas quickly spread, but his legacy is marred with unverified claims and a notable affair.
Smith Wigglesworth (1858-1947) is also worth noting. He’s often quoted in Charismatic circles, even today, being called one of “God’s Generals” of the Faith, alongside many of the early leaders I have listed here. However, his extremely violent methods have caused a lot of controversy. He admitted to hitting people and even throwing a baby against a wall during prayer, claiming that it was Spirit-led. He discouraged people from studying Scripture and pushed for personal revelation instead.
During this period, more Charismatic teachers, like Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944, founder of the Foursquare Church), helped popularize Pentecostal theology through mass gatherings and early media. Healings, spectacle, and public testimony became familiar aspects of American Christianity. McPherson also had her share of scandals and national attention. In 1926, she disappeared, which sparked allegations of kidnapping, however, upon her return it was widely speculated that it was actually due to an affair. Within her ministry, she faced accusations around finances, leadership control, and media manipulation.
Azusa became the launching pad for Pentecostal theology around the world, and for forming denominations, such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God, that formalized many of these beliefs. What had once been framed as growth became expectation. And for many people, the question was no longer if they should experience these things—but why they hadn’t.
Early Pentecostalism also began to include practices of deliverance, though they looked nothing like what we see on YouTube today. Demonic oppression was primarily associated with unbelief, paganism, or occult involvement, and deliverance was most often tied to salvation, missions, or healing ministry.
These practices were not systematized, nor were they a focal point in spiritual identity. Deliverance functioned as a response to perceived spiritual need, not as an ongoing practice for believers.
Why This Matters Now
Something that strikes me about the early Pentecostal movement is how quickly expectations were formed. What began as a sincere hunger for God became a standard others felt pressured to meet. These experiences became markers of faithfulness, maturity, or even salvation itself. This is something I’ve personally observed in the Charismatic churches and groups I’ve taken part in as recently as 2020. And it seems that once experience becomes expectation, it also becomes the means of self-evaluation. Faith begins to feel performative, doubt becomes spiritual failure, and ordinary means of grace start to feel insufficient.
It’s doubtful that any of this was due to bad intentions. In many cases, it grew out of genuine zeal, reverence for God, and a desire to see the book of Acts lived out in current time. But good intentions don’t protect a movement or group from theological drift. When we use experience as a measuring stick for anything in life, but especially for theology, we are questioning objective standards and authority… even if no one is answering audibly.
Not Ancient After All… And What Comes Next
The First Wave of the Charismatic movement wasn’t some timeless continuation of the first century Church after all… in fact, it was a distinctly modern evolution, shaped by the holiness movement, revivalism, and the desire for spiritual experiences. By the end of the First Wave, something important had changed. Scripture was still affirmed. Doctrine was still confessed. But experience had moved closer to the focal point, no longer just confirming belief, but silently reorienting it.
Gaining an understanding of the earliest movements in Charismatic history shines a spotlight on the modern practices we see in Charismatic circles today. The importance placed on expectation for experience is the direct result of a movement set on restoration of things that were never truly lost. However, as of the end of the First Wave, the movement hadn’t yet broken away from all orthodox Christian beliefs. There were no new offices being restored, no prophets claiming overall authority, no sources of new revelation demanding obedience above Scripture. But the soil had been tilled. Expectations were set. And a path had been cut for new power, authority, and experiences to enter.
In the next post, we’ll move into the healing revivals of the mid-twentieth century, where spiritual authority began to settle around personalities rather than structures, and where charisma increasingly outweighed accountability. We’ll see how the beliefs of the First Wave took root in new ways and continued to shape the path for modern Charismatic Christianity through people like William Branham, Kathryn Kuhlman, and eventually Jim Jones.
This is the soil in which the Latter Rain would eventually take root to shape the path for the Charismatic Christianity we see today.
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