Today pentecostalism claims nearly 500 million followers
worldwide. An early stronghold was the American South, where
believers spoke in unknown tongues, worshipped in free-form
churches, and broke down social barriers that had long divided
traditional Protestants. Thriving denominations made their
headquarters in the region and gathered white and black converts
from the Texas plains to the Carolina low country.
Pentecostalism was, in fact, a religious import. It came to the
South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a
northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious
empowerment. Adherents formed new churches in the Jim Crow South
and held unconventional beliefs about authority, power, race, and
gender. Such views set them at odds with other Christians in the
region. By 1900 nearly all southern holiness folk abandoned
mainline churches and adopted a pessimistic, apocalyptic theology.
Signs of the last days, they thought, were all around them.
The faith first took root among anonymous religious zealots. It
later claimed southern celebrities and innovators like
televangelists Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, T. D. Jakes, and John
Hagee; rock-and-roll icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and
Little Richard; and, more recently, conservative political leaders
such as John Ashcroft.
With the growth of southern pentecostal denominations and the
rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement moved cautiously
into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical
faith looked entirely different. Many still watched and waited for
spectacular signs of the end. Yet a growing number did so as active
political conservatives.
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