A Pentacostal Revival
Excerpts with highlighting by
Jeff Todd Titon `Some Recent Pentacostal Revivals: A Report in Words and Photographs' Georgia Review 32 (1978), 579-590.
The photographs that
follow were taken at two Pentecostal revivals, one in a midwestern
state and the other in a southeastern state, … during
the spring and summer of 1977. They show people singing, preaching, praying,
and, in a final sequence, receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the
initial evidence of which, Pentecostals believe, is glossolalia,
or speaking in tongues. A guest at these and other revivals, I had
explained that my purpose was documentation and study; I was told that so long
as my intentions were honorable I would not be interfering with the presence of
the Holy Ghost, and with that vote of confidence I received permission to
tape-record and photograph the services and to interview the participants.
Since photographs of these activities present an obvious and immediate
difficulty - they are not self-evident - I have decided to report the sequence
of events in a typical revival service, to print verbatim some transcriptions from my field tapes, including
a prophecy in tongues and its interpretation, and to say something about the
underlying Pentecostal belief system.
The direct antecedents of Pentecostalism in
the
Figure 1. U.
S. Membership in Selected Protestant Denominations and the Pentecostal Movement,
1960-1975 (in millions):*
Figures are taken from Edwin Scott Gaustad,
Historical Atlas of Religion in
America, Rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); Frank S.
Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States, 6th ed. (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1975); Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 1977, ed. Constant
H. Jacquet, Jr. (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1977).
** Includes
Figure 2. 1970-1975% Growth vs. Decline of
The governing metaphor in Pentecostal belief
is the word. The world was created by God's incantatory
words, "Let there be...... The Bible is the infallible word of God. Christ
is the Word, the incarnate expression of the divine. The power of the word when
preached "blesses" the Christian but, like evidence in a law court,
compels the sinner to feel the guilt of his "conviction" and the
misery of his condemnation. Yet God's grace is open to all who "confess
with their mouth"-i.e., in an audible voice, their
sins, their sincere repentance, and their acceptance of Jesus as savior. In these steps toward conversion, Pentecostal beliefs
are essentially those of fundamentalist, evangelical Protestantism. Peculiar
to Pentecostalism is the belief that subsequent to conversion one must pray
for, and can attain, a state of sanctification, perfect and sinless, and that
when it has first been achieved, the Holy Ghost will enter the believer,
"fill" the "clean vessel," and he or she will immediately
speak in tongues, thereby giving audible evidence of salvation. In this manner
the cycle of the word is completed.
Song, prayer, testimony, preaching, and
healing are the verbal essentials of the Pentecostal worship service. The
revival - a succession of nightly services usually lasting for a week -
contains all of these activities, but it aims further at the creation of an
intensely Spirit-filled atmosphere in which the prayers of the converted, for
sanctification and tongues, will be answered. The invitation at the sermon's
close is offered to those who would publicly seek tongues at the altar (or in a
special room set aside for the purpose). Exhorters, members of the congregation
who have already had tongues - cluster around the seekers and help "pray
them through." Usually the exhorters find seekers of the same sex and
about the same age. The seekers pray themselves into trance and hope that
tongues will follow.
Typically, a Pentecostal revival is held not in a tent or auditorium, but in the sanctuary of a Pentecostal church, after an evangelist has accepted the invitation of the local pastor to come and preach. The pastor and his flock provide the nucleus of saints ready to assist the seekers. Often a seeker is a friend or relative of one or more of the saints, but, as revivals are advertised in the community, strangers appear and are welcomed. Let us imagine that it is just past suppertime on the fifth or sixth day of a revival. Businessmen in doubleknit suits, factory workers in dark pants and sport shirts the colors of their tract homes, farmers in Sears ready-to-wear, older women in dark suits, younger women in bright dresses, their long hair tied in buns, their well-disciplined babies and teenagers-all have gathered at the church before dark. The outside of the church is brick; the inside is carpeted and the pews are padded. A bathroom stands at the back of the sanctuary, constantly in use during the service. The people file in. Conversation is hushed; handshaking is less effusive than usual. There is no printed program, no set order, but the people know what to expect. The seekers have prayed, constantly. Jesus is ever on their lips. Someone raises a chorus and they all join in:
I don't know what you came to do but I came to praise the Lord;
Well I don't know what you came to do but I came to praise the Lord;
Well I don't know what you came to do but I came to praise the Lord;
Hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah.
There is no more to the
song than this chorus, repeated several times until the pastor breaks in,
asking for prayer. Individual prayers go up all at once, out loud. Some chant
their prayers; some with the baptism pray in tongues. To the outsider it is
bedlam; to the believer it confirms the presence of the Spirit. More choruses
follow, accompanied by piano, drums, tambourine. At the close of each chorus
the people lift holy hands heavenward, shouting "Praise God" and
letting the Spirit enter. The posture means "I surrender all." The
pastor strides quickly across the pulpit, body tense, arms pumping as he claps
to the music, on the beat. A short, well-muscled young man, he might easily be
mistaken for a high-school wrestling coach. Speaking rapidly - everyone speaks
enthusiastically and rapidly at a Pentecostal revival - he exhorts the
assembled group:
Amen, praise the
Lord! Well, how many's glad the Holy Ghost can lead
you all the way? Praise the name of the Lord! I thought when Peter preached
this message, and Brother A preached it, and has told us about it this week,
that they thought they were drunken! They said,
"These men are drunken, but not as you suppose." In
Acts, the second chapter. They had been in an upper room, and the Bible
said it "came with the sound as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled up all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared
unto them cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they all
began to speak with other tongues." They all were filled; they all
received it. They received it at Pentecost, huh! They received it there huh in
the book of Acts, tenth chapter. In Acts, the nineteenth chapter,
when Paul huh met some of those men. They said, "Have you received
the Holy Ghost since you believe?" They said, "We've not even heard
whether there be any Holy Ghost," huh! And they said, "Well, how was you baptized?" They said, "Under John's
baptism." Listen, when Paul laid his hands upon them, the Bible says they
prophesied and they spake with tongues. Aren't you
glad that God's still giving the Holy Ghost away? He's still giving it to you
and me tonight, and I'm glad that it'll lead us all the way!
The belief system is spelled out in speech and song for the observer,
even as it is made plain for the seekers of the Holy Ghost baptism. The pastor
continues:
We've
sung this chorus several times but I feel like we need to sing it again
tonight: "I've got the Holy Ghost down in my soul." Hallelujah!
Listen, that's where you'll have it. It'll be down in you. Can't see it but you can feel it.
It'll change you, and when men and women look at a Holy Ghost-filled person,
listen, they'll know there's been a change in that.
The group stands and the
pastor leads the chorus. There is no need for hymn-books.
I've
got the Holy Ghost down in my soul, just like the Bible says;
I've
got the Holy Ghost down in my soul, just like the Bible says.
Well
I've been to the water and I've been baptized
My
soul got happy and I'm satisfied.
I
wouldn't take nothing for my journey now,
Just
like the Bible, just like the Bible, just like the Bible says!
For the saints, choruses like these describe their
feelings and strengthen their faith; for the seekers, they invite the Spirit.
The chorus is repeated a half-dozen times. A deacon steps behind the rostrum
and begins testifying, telling what the Lord has done in his life. As he
speaks, the evangelist sits meditating at the back of the pulpit under a Last
Supper tapestry. A big-chested,
tall man even in repose, Brother A left a job as a federal meat inspector in 1971 to become a full-time evangelist.
"You know, everything was going good," he told me; "I was making
$20,000 a year, practically my own boss. But I knew one thing:
I had to obey the calling that I had. Might be more or less like explaining how
does a young bird learn to leave the nest. There's
something in nature drawing him. Of course there's more to it than that. It's
just the calling of the Lord that a person knows they've got. If you don't obey
it you're so miserable you can't hardly live, you
know." A full-time evangelist is supported by the offerings taken up for
him in the churches as he travels the gospel circuit. The pastor is asking for
one now, and everyone moves to the front of the sanctuary, singing "When
the Saints Go Marching In," dropping bills and coins into a large basket
under the eye of the assistant pastor. Back at their pews, they stand one at a
time, requesting prayer. A tiny grandmother asks everyone to pray for her
husband who has the arthritis so bad he can't come to church tonight. A
matronly woman in a gray suit asks for prayer for her nephew who wouldn't come
despite her pleas. Prayer requests for unsaved loved ones are common, as only
the saved will enjoy the heavenly homecoming.
…
The requests finished,
several come forward to take up prayer positions, one line kneeling toward the
altar, the other toward the front pew. Once again the sanctuary erupts, each praying his own
prayer. The prayers are spontaneous, unrehearsed; the people pray as the Spirit
moves them, and the prayer is through when the last person is silent. The
pastor calls on the evangelist to deliver the sermon. He steps forward,
carrying his Bible to the rostrum, where he finds a microphone on a long cord.
He moves down from the pulpit into the altar area, and even here he towers over
the seated assembly, microphone pressed in one hand, perspiration-soaked
handkerchief in the other. His text is Matthew 5: 6 - "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness for they shall be filled." An orator, a raconteur,
Brother A speaks without notes. He has a repertoire of sermon subjects, each
with a general outline fixed in his memory, but his sermons are remembered, not
memorized. He embellishes, digresses, and builds by improvisation.
"That's where the anointing comes in," he told me. "The Holy
Ghost just anoints your mind and your thoughts, and so when you can feel which
direction you're going, well, it just comes. The Lord inspires many times a
message, thoughts in your mind that you never thought of before. It fits in
just perfect." It is a dangerous technique, for sometimes the Spirit does
not inspire, and the sermon is less than coherent. But tonight brother A - is
in fine form, as he returns again and again to the theme of hunger:
There's an old saying: a lot of
people live and learn, and then others just live. I'll tell you one thing: when
someone begins to mess with your meal, it don't take
you long to learn! And I'll never forget the first day I took that black lunch
box to the field. Amen, I mean had them sandwiches and chocolate cake, and I
hung it in the shade, you know, so the sun wouldn't melt all the icing on the
cake and I'd drink it instead of eating it for dinner. (Laughter.)
So I tried to hang it you know where the cheese wouldn't all melt around the
sandwich, so I'd have a little bit left to eat.
Well, listen! I didn’t didn't take me long to learn. After working about
six to seven hours, after doing the milking and going to the hay fields, and I
mean when
Oh, I’ll tell you one thing, friend,
you let people get hungry enough and they’ll eat things they wouldn’t
ordinarily eat! You get thirsty enough and I’ll guarantee you one thing: you’ll
drink water you wouldn’t drink if you wasn’t thirsty.
… Brother, we need an appetite hah! To reach out after God.
.. And when they come to the service hah!
They’re going to have an appetite!
And they’re going to reach out after everything that God’s got for them
(Shouts of “Hallelujah,” “Glory.”)
Brother A’s body is bent
at the waist, held like a spring, thrust forward in challenge, cocked like a
pistol. He looks people in the eye, points at them, calls them by name. They
love it. It is quite a performance. …
The evangelist winds down; he climbs back behind the rostrum and his voice becomes soft, almost monotonic, as he pleads the invitation to come forward and receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. In a quiet, whispering voice, a message in tongues escapes from his lips, for he has the gift of tongues, one of the nine Spiritual gifts (I Corinthians 12:8-10), … as the initial evidence of the Holy Ghost. He speaks:
kantášabaravo sántolavo.
ílamašax rábaxo kalarábou.
rišádalabo píta rabása tóyεn** …
Another of the nine Spiritual gifts is the interpretation of tongues. Brother A has this as well, and he booms out the translation, sounding like a Hebrew prophet speaking the King James Version:
Yeah for even this night saith the Lord,
Yea knowest thou not that my hands are outstretched unto thee,
Yea that I would bid thee come.
But yea why would thou not come?
I would even talk into thine heart,
Yea and reach down with my Spirit saith the Lord,
Yea to even bring conviction upon thine heart,
Yea to tug at thine heartstrings,
That ye might know that I am the Lord God that liveth. …
The people in the pews
are still; some murmur, others cry softly, others pray: "Jesus,
Jesus." The evangelist
finishes the message, once again in tongues:
šántoraba sátrobaho
sárabaho satóya.
ríka sálara sánto laborεsiso lεbokolí
risántobo šantyabaDiánte íkolorosi balεsó koloriánti
Slowly the seekers move
to the altar, praying. Falling on their knees, they cry and pray, cry and pray.
Those who will help stand close, gently exhorting. The evangelist, exhausted
from his message, sits, head slumped forward, at the
rear of the pulpit. The pastor picks up the tempo, moving from group to group,
exhorting loudly. The deacons follow suit. Some of the seekers sit up and raise
holy hands, praying. Some begin vocalizing: "Lalalalalalala."
Infants, they are becoming born again. Some rise to their feet, somnambulists
slowly spinning, then faster. Exhorters touch the seekers' hands, shoulders,
sides, attempting to transfer the Spirit. The seeking continues for a
half-hour, sometimes longer if it appears that a person is on the verge of glossolalia. Most of the seekers are unsuccessful. But when
one is successful and receives the baptism of the Holy Ghost there is great
joy, hugging, and kissing. The rite of passage has been accomplished, and the
seeker, transformed, joins the saints.
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