WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM PENTECOSTAL CHURCH HISTORY
The story of 20th-century Pentecostalism in Canada
In 1906 a British immigrant with four children was praying for strength – she had stared a rest home for missionaries on furlough in Toronto, and it was exhausting – when “it” happened to her. A Holiness preacher from the Ottawa Valley travelled to
Los Angeles to visit the Azusa Street Revival when “it” happened to him.
In Montreal a local haberdasher took a chance and attended a prayer meeting seeking healing for his ill wife when “it” happened.
And in Winnipeg a local businessman was meeting with his Methodist friends and praying for revival before travelling to Chicago to see if “it” would change his life.
These four stories are about key Canadian Pentecostals who experienced revival in the early 20th century.
The rest home worker was Ellen Hebden who was the first to establish a Pentecostal mission in Toronto where many came to experience revival.
The Holiness preacher was R. E. McAlister who became a charter member of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) in 1919 and editor of its magazine The Pentecostal Testimony.
The Montreal haberdasher was C. E. Baker, a Methodist lay preacher whose wife was
healed of cancer. He gave up his career in fashion to become the pastor of a prominent Pentecostal church in Montreal.
The Winnipeg businessman was A. H. Argue who experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Chicago and started a travelling revival ministry with his children, most notably Zelma Argue, a prominent preacher throughout Canada and the United States.
In our new book After the Revival we examine the culture of Pentecostalism, how revival was transformed into an efficient organization, the stories they told about themselves and the world they lived in, and the mission and vision that inspired people to join Pentecostal churches. It’s the story of how the PAOC grew into the country’s largest evangelical denomination.
Statistical growth often leads observers to ask why. Some non-Pentecostal church leaders have wondered if Pentecostals hold some kind of key to success. Our study had more scholarly motives. We set out to understand and document what Pentecostals in Canada did after the heady days of revival ended.
CHARISMA AND CORPORATE ORDER
We found the PAOC was quick to adopt modern organizational practices. They did this even as Pentecostals debated among themselves whether they should emphasize the freedom of the Holy Spirit (“Quench not the Spirit” became the anti-organizers’ refrain) or whether they should be careful stewards of what was entrusted to them (“Let everything be done decently and in order” was the national leadership’s retort).
That conflict between charisma and corporate order is still being debated. But early PAOC leadership was quick to set up systems to manage their money so they could be accountable to their donors and responsible for the missionaries they were dispatching. They made decisions for the congregations, established policies, procedures, Bible schools for training clergy and programs for its members. The PAOC was very successful at this and the more those boundaries were tested, internally and externally, the more they became sure of their mission and vision.
Our book also seeks to normalize Pentecostalism. In other words, this particular expression of Christianity is really not that different from other denominations. Popular stereotypes have abounded about the strange practices of Pentecostals – holy rollers who reportedly fell to the ground after being slain in the spirit, engaged in physical forms of worship as they danced in the spirit and made mysterious noises when they spoke in tongues.
Despite those unusual experiences we found the biggest thing that happened after the revival is that Pentecostals became an organized church – very much like the existing churches most of their members had previously attended. In effect, Pentecostals have operated very much like other denominations.
The PAOC worked hard to gain respectability too. They created comprehensive programs to cater to postwar families with children, youth, men’s and women’s ministries. They purchased real estate, and built and enlarged churches, adding gymnasiums and fellowship halls to accommodate their growing membership base. They used these programs to create and reinforce a subculture that reminded participants they were to be “in the world, but not of the world.”
Buoyed by the success of their membership statistics and their material assets, the PAOC took steps to engage in public life by forming committees to protest injustice and social ills, as well as critiquing public policies and lobbying governments through their Social Concerns Committee. Attempts were made to engage
new immigrants, and support work in Quebec and among Indigenous Peoples.
ADVICE FOR TODAY
Because of our study we are often asked what advice we have for churches today. However, we are scholars trained in history and sociology, not church health consultants. We are intrigued by change over time and also by continuity. After writing this book we have three observations to make.
First, we often hear church leaders wondering how to go forward by bringing back the days of revival. Our answer is that the past was not a glorious golden age. Before churches start strategizing about the good old days, we would caution they were not problem-free or simply a tale of progress. The PAOC was born out of conflicting views, it sometimes struggled to grow at all, and its members and leaders were human – like the rest of us, they had their share of sorrow, grief, conflict and loss.
Second, because we emphasize how successful the PAOC was with its efforts to organize, we are often asked whether organization is good or bad for churches. In some ways efficient organization serves churches very well. At other times too much emphasis on organization and tradition hampers innovation. If we were in the business of giving advice to churches, we might recommend that doing things the way they have always been done risks becoming stale and irrelevant.
Third, all church groups including Pentecostals are experiencing difficulty with people leaving their churches. This can be measured in declining participation rates, smaller revenues and shrinking cohorts of clergy. So, while denominations can tinker with modifying the wording of their statements of faith, subscribe to the latest streaming services to enlarge their internet presence and brainstorm about how programming can be tweaked, those efforts may be in vain and not addressing the questions people are asking. We do not have advice about how to reverse the decline.
What is the best way forward for the post-pandemic Church in Canada? Churches would be wise to ensure they are innovative as Canadians are less inclined to look to organized religion. We will be watching with interest to see how Pentecostals and all other expressions of Christianity in Canada attempt to flourish in the 21st century.
Michael Wilkinson, professor of sociology at Trinity Western University, and Linda M. Ambrose, professor of history at Laurentian University, met at a meeting of the Canadian Society of Church History in Vancouver in 2008. Their new book is After the Revival: Pentecostalism and the Making of a Canadian Church (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).