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William J. Seymour

1870–1922 · 52 years Specialist

The one-eyed preacher whose revival crossed the color line

Portrait of William J. Seymour — Unknown author — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

William Seymour was born in Louisiana to Simon and Phyllis Seymour, enslaved until five years before his birth. He grew up in the Gulf Coast sugar parishes, was baptized Catholic, and left the South as a young man, waiting tables in Indianapolis and Cincinnati while drifting from Methodism into the stricter Holiness movement. A bout of smallpox in Cincinnati around 1901 nearly killed him and cost him the sight in his left eye, a disfigurement he carried into every pulpit after. He settled in Houston in 1903, and in January 1906 enrolled in a Bible school the preacher Charles Parham had just opened, which taught that tongues proved a second baptism by the Holy Spirit. Jim Crow rules meant Seymour took the class from a hallway, through a cracked door.

He reached Los Angeles on February 22, 1906, to pastor a small Holiness mission, and the congregation locked him out within days over his tongues doctrine. He kept preaching in a private home instead. On April 9, after days of fasting and prayer, a member spoke in tongues; three days later Seymour did too. The group outgrew the house within a week and moved into a former African Methodist Episcopal church at 312 Azusa Street, where meetings ran morning to midnight, daily, for three years. What made it radical was not only the tongues but who knelt together for them — Black, white, Latino, and Asian worshippers at the same altar, unheard of anywhere else in the country. Seymour's newspaper reached 40,000 readers within a year, and missionaries carried the revival to Mexico, Europe, Africa, and Asia before 1908.

The man he studied under turned on him within the year: Charles Parham visited Azusa Street in October 1906, was appalled by the racial mixing and physical ecstasy, and publicly denounced the revival he had helped ignite. Worse followed from inside. Florence Crawford, one of Seymour's own state directors, broke away in 1907 to found a rival Apostolic Faith Movement in Portland. When Seymour married Jennie Evans Moore in 1908, his secretary Clara Lum resigned in protest and took the newspaper's entire mailing list to Crawford's operation, a loss that killed it. A doctrinal fight with the preacher William Durham turned bitter enough that Jennie had him locked out of the building; Durham died suddenly the next year, still attacking Seymour in print. By 1914 the congregation that had drawn thousands had shrunk to a small, local, Black church.

He died in Los Angeles in 1922 after two heart attacks, in his wife Jennie's arms, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery — a small local pastor by then, long removed from the crowds that once filled Azusa Street. The movement outgrew him anyway. The Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, and other denominations trace their founding energy to the building on Azusa Street, and more than 500 million Pentecostal and charismatic Christians now practice a faith that began with a one-eyed Black preacher and a handful of people praying in a rented house. His own contemporaries mostly credited Parham instead; Seymour's role in the movement he started was largely minimized in his lifetime.

Lifespan

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William J. Seymour's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Azusa Street Revival mission
Continuous interracial worship at 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles, 1906 into 1909 1906
Apostolic Faith Mission company
The Los Angeles congregation built around the revival 1906
The Apostolic Faith (newspaper) other
Circulation reached 40,000 within a year, until a rival took the mailing list in 1908 1906
Global missionary network mission
Commissioned missionaries who reached Mexico, Canada, Western Europe, the Middle East, West Africa, and parts of Asia 1907

Life in brief

with age at each point

May 2, 1870 aged 0 Born in Centerville, Louisiana, to parents who had been enslaved
1901 aged ~31 Loses sight in his left eye to smallpox in Cincinnati
January 1906 aged 35 Enrolls in Charles Parham's Bible school in Houston, segregated to the hallway
February 22, 1906 aged 35 Arrives in Los Angeles to pastor a Holiness mission
April 9, 1906 aged 35 A member of his prayer group speaks in tongues after days of fasting
September 1906 aged 36 Begins publishing The Apostolic Faith newspaper Circulation reached 40,000 within a year.
May 13, 1908 aged 38 Marries Jennie Evans Moore; his secretary resigns and takes the newspaper's mailing list
September 28, 1922 aged 52 Dies in Los Angeles after two heart attacks