The Touch of the Spirit: The Sensation of Racial Mixing in Early Twentieth-Century Pentecostalism

In October of 1906, Charles Parham traveled to Los Angeles to visit the revivals at Azusa Street that were quickly becoming renowned in Holiness circles across the United States.  The leader of the revival, an African American minister named William Seymour, had been a student of Parham’s in Houston, Texas during the winter of 1905.  The story of Seymour’s phenomenal success in Los Angeles was recorded on the pages of the Los Angeles Times and attracted a number of Christian leaders who traveled to Azusa Street to witness the revivals themselves.  The press, the visiting ministers, and Parham himself frequently commented on one particular aspect of the meetings—the touching between black men and white women in the altar ministry.  During the expansion of Jim Crow across America, the Pentecostals at Azusa Street were defying the standards of white America.  The religious phenomena of Pentecostalism were physical and tangible experiences for participants.  Therefore the tactile interactions between the races were a natural byproduct of the revival services.  This paper will examine the sensory language that was employed to describe and denigrate the practices at Azusa Street, connecting the responses to revival with the wider development of racial segregation in early twentieth-century America.  An analysis of the senses will provide further insights into the visceral and negative reaction to the meetings as well as the reasons for opposition to the Pentecostal movement.