Disappointment in Early Pentecostalism: Toward a Historical Methodology

Abstract

Early Pentecostal historiography displays an ethos of disappointment. As charted through historians and scholars of Pentecostalism such as Robert Mapes Anderson, Grant Wacker, and Heather Curtis, it is clear that disappointment served as an impetus for the movement’s founding and a key factor in its continual development. Nevertheless, because of limited and/or hagiographical sources, individuals’ disappointments are often missing in primary literature. Following historian of emotion Jan Plamper yet utilizing philosopher Charles Taylor, this essay develops a means for examining historical emotions in instances where emotionally-charged language is lacking. The essay utilizes the proposed methodology to reexamine early Pentecostal leader William Seymour, revealing the possibilities for exploring the role of unexpressed yet present disappointment in future historical work in and beyond early Pentecostalism.

1. Introduction

In the opening decades of the twentieth century, a new expression of Christian ecstatic religion moved across the United States. Building networks of Holiness and radical Evangelical communities around a rearticulated understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the burgeoning Pentecostal movement ignited hopes for the transformation of its practitioners’ lives and, indeed, the renewal of the entire world. Such a radical hope was not entirely new on the American religious scene. Millenarian eschatology, the divine healing movement, and developments in Protestant global missions had been building many Evangelicals’ extravagant hopes throughout the nineteenth century. Pentecostalism can be seen as a culmination of these nineteenth century hopes in as much as hope and expectation filled the ethos of early Pentecostal communities. Believers hoped for their bodily healing, Holy Spirit baptisms (evidenced by speaking in tongues), the rapid evangelization of the world, and the soon-coming return of Christ. In short, they hoped for direct and immediate divine intervention in their daily lives.

Oftentimes Pentecostals’ hopes were fulfilled. They experienced bodily healing (in some manner), were set free from their sinful entanglements (to some degree), and spoke in tongues (though not usually the ones they expected). Their hopes were not without warrant; preachers, periodicals, and friends testified to healings, Spirit baptisms, conversions, and miracles. Yet the fulfilments of hopes were never as regular as their disappointments. For every healing, there were countless who remained infirm. For every answered prayer, there were many left wanting.

Pentecostals did not necessarily lose their hope in the face of disappointment (though some did). Indeed, even occasional fulfillments kept hopes high. Nevertheless, disappointment characterized the normal experience of Pentecostals. Grappling with the meaning, causes, and ultimate ends of disappointments was a common experience. For people so formed by hope, disappointment was a necessary part of the movement’s development.

Disappointment is a timely historiographical lens for viewing Pentecostalism. In recent years, historical studies has taken an emotional turn. Investigation into historical actors’ emotions often sheds new light on old historiographical debates and provides insight into actors’ psychology. That said, the emotional avenue presents several potential pitfalls. Do historians have the proper evidence to know the emotional states of historical actors? To what extent can historians intuit actors’ unexpressed or unarticulated emotions? These questions present methodological hurdles. This essay therefore attempts to utilize Charles Taylor’s philosophy of language and emotions to overcome these methodological challenges to better intuit the emotions of actors where emotionally-charged language is lacking. Pentecostal history with its broad ethos of hope and disappointment, is an apt place to test this methodology. The 1906 Azusa Street Revival, typically seen as the origin story for the movement,1 itself presents a narrative paved with disappointment. To this end, this essay first evaluates the place of disappointment in the historiography of early Pentecostalism. Second, it dialogues with Charles Taylor to develop a methodology for identifying disappointment in historical sources wherein emotionally-charged language is absent. Third, it applies this methodology to unexpressed disappointment in Pentecostal origins, specifically in the narrative of early leader William Seymour.

2. An Ethos of Disappointment in Pentecostal Historiography

Though it may be underarticulated, disappointment is readily apparent in Pentecostal historiography. Robert Mapes Anderson’s 1979 monograph, Vision of the Disinherited, remains one of the most frequently cited studies. The book contended that early Pentecostals were primarily (though not exclusively) drawn from disenfranchised classes such as poor whites and racial minorities.2 As the proletariat, they were “frustrated” with their social status, social mobility, and economic means (Anderson 1979, p. 195). Indeed, other sources have provided similar analyses. Christian Lalive D’Epinay’s 1969 sociological study saw Chilean Pentecostalism as the “expression of real misery … protest against real misery”.3 Likewise, Gary Schwartz’s 1970 comparative study of U.S. Pentecostal and Adventist communities observed a similar phenomenon, arguing that Pentecostals were largely poor and working-class, which led to the “cognitive and emotional factors which predispose a person to join” a group such as Pentecostalism.4 Indeed, dissatisfaction with the objective conditions of life or the subjective conditions of one’s religion give impetus for religious conversion and theological change.

According to Anderson’s account, following the Civil War, Protestantism became more and more a middle-class and even upper middle-class culture. Poor families who converted during nineteenth century revivalism moved into the middle class (partly) by virtue of the Protestant work ethic, and industrialization helped these hard-working Protestants prosper all the more. These shifts, however, more starkly stratified American classes, and rural Protestants—often, Holiness believers—fell behind in the pursuit of the American dream. The Social Gospel Movement, with its urban emphasis, seldom appealed to Holiness folk. Thus, movements from higher classes that sought to offer the hope of social equality and prosperity for the poor were lost on these rural Christians. They were, in short, economically and socially frustrated (Anderson 1979, pp. 27–31).

Out of this economic and social frustration, Anderson argues that Pentecostals formed alternative communities that centered around premillennial eschatology.5 Such eschatology further rejected wealth and American culture (“worldliness”) in the opening decade of the twentieth century. Inclined toward dispensationalism, Pentecostals imagined themselves to be in the last days, and therefore, as Grant Wacker perhaps best illustrates, began to embody a “relentless heavenly-mindedness” (Wacker 2001, p. 19). It is important to realize that, for Wacker, “heavenly-mindedness” is not merely a hope in the afterlife. It shaped the way in which Pentecostals experienced their present lives. “For some, [heavenly-mindedness] engendered something like a sixth sense, a fundamentally new way of seeing even the natural landscape around them”.6 Even the title of Wacker’s book, Heaven Below, is telling. Heaven was not merely a place where Pentecostals would go eschatologically; it was a kind of “realized eschatology”. In as much as the believers communed together in the Holy Spirit, heaven constituted their present reality.7

For both Anderson and Wacker, the facts remained that Pentecostalism operated in alternative communities, with alternative religious imaginations. They were articulating and practicing new ways to be Christian. The difference between the two thinkers lay in the causes they thought gave rise to these alternative communities and imaginations. For Anderson, Pentecostalism was primarily the result of frustration with America and American Christianity. Wacker admitted that frustration played a role, but he nuanced the importance of the socioeconomic location of these emotional responses by suggesting that Pentecostal hope—the hope of eternity in heaven but also the bringing of heaven to earth in their communities—likewise caused the movement’s development. Rather than seeing “Holy Ghost religion” as simply “compensation for the good things Pentecostals wanted but could not have”, Wacker suggested that it “dislodge[d] them from their old commitments and thus open[ed] them to new possibilities” (Wacker 2001, p. 202, emphasis original). Pentecostal activity was “prompted” by an “exhilarating sense of hope” (Wacker 2001, p. 251). Pentecostals were not merely responding out of their frustration; they were also responding to a hope that, out of their piety, they regarded as certain and fixed (Wacker 2001, p. 22).

Regardless, Anderson and Wacker characterized Pentecostalism as filled with emotion. Specifically, Pentecostals experienced frustration socially and economically, and they experienced hope theologically, eschatologically, and sometimes even realized in their social imaginaries—indeed, Pentecostal hope genuinely altered the way they saw the world and their relations within it.

Anderson, moreover, not only argued that Pentecostals were drawn together by frustration but pointed to the failures of Pentecostalism that further entrenched many of its constituents in disappointment. For instance, Anderson understood the Pentecostal act of speaking in tongues as an utter failure. He dedicated most of his opening chapter to arguing that tongues is completely inarticulate and nonlinguistic despite many early Pentecostal claims to the contrary (Anderson 1979, pp. 10–27). Though perhaps Anderson’s argument over engages with whether or not tongues constituted real languages while ignoring the practice’s religious significance,8 the fact that Pentecostal tongues often failed to constitute articulate languages not only is well-documented but has given rise to a theology of speaking in tongues distinct from the original theology. The earliest Pentecostals thought speaking in tongues was a missional gift—God baptized individuals with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke in tongues (as evidenced in the book of Acts) for the sake of transmitting the Gospel across linguistic boundaries. This doctrine is often called xenolalia. However, the fact of missional tongues’ frequent failure necessitated the articulation of an alternative theology: glossolalia.9 That is, the gift of tongues signals an individual’s Spirit baptism, and the individual may speak in tongues as the Spirit leads, but the speech likely does not constitute a human language (though, it may be an angelic language à la 1 Corinthians 13:1, “Though I speak in the tongues of … angels …”).

It is in expressions such as these that disappointment is a more appropriate term to characterize the early Pentecostal ethos. Frustration does not account for Pentecostal hope in the same way as disappointment. Disappointment is inherently tied to hope—regardless of the kind of hope (social, economic, theological, etc.). In short, largely because of their hopeful disposition, early Pentecostal frustration often took the form of disappointment.

For a clear example of this kind of disappointment, we can examine the practice of divine healing. The Divine Healing Movement directly preceded Pentecostalism, but its theology, as well as many of its adherents and leaders, quickly became Pentecostal.10 As direct descendants of the Movement, Pentecostals constituted part of the American citizenry who were dissatisfied with current medical practice. Heather Curtis convincingly and thoroughly laid out this history in her award-winning monograph Faith in the Great Physician. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, a variety of alternatives to traditional medicine arose. Many of these alternatives were, indeed, centered around religious figures (such as the Pentecostal prefigurer and later leader Maria Woodworth-Etter) and often developed into religious communities (e.g., healing homes).11 Divine healing was not solely within the Holiness movement; Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science arose (Curtis 2007, p. 58) and even figures such as Santa Teresa Urrea—a Mexican popular saint and Amerindian revolutionary figurehead—traversed the United States offering healing services.12 It is no stretch to say that Pentecostal forebears were disappointed with American medical practice. They even began to develop a theology of divine healing that contended that the work of Christ was a “double-cure”—salvation in Christ provided both the forgiveness of sins and the healing of the body. For example, in 1890, drawing upon New Testament passages such as James 5:14, Divine Healing stalwart A.B. Simpson wrote, “pardon and healing may be claimed together in His [Jesus’] name”.13 This theology provided a very practical (if not always effective) remedy for sickness: as sickness was caused by sin, healing for the body was provided hand in hand with redemption from sin. Of course, though provided for in the atonement, bodily healing was practically realized through holy living, earnest prayer, and confident claiming of healing power. As one could easily imagine, this hopeful response to the disappointment of medicine caused further disappointment as faithful yet physically suffering Christians failed to receive bodily healing.

Thus far, we see several causes for disappointment—economic, social, eschatological, theological, and even medical causes. Social and cultural historians Robert Mapes Anderson, Grant Wacker, and Heather Curtis have characterized the early Pentecostal (and, for Curtis, pre-Pentecostal) ethos as filled with frustration, hope, and disappointment. Anderson characterized these (primarily) Holiness believers who would come to constitute Pentecostalism as frustrated with the social and economic status quo; Curtis characterized them as frustrated with medicine. Wacker, however, highlighted the role of hope among early Pentecostals, which was evident in the development of both alternative communities and divine healing practices (for Anderson and Curtis, respectively).

Early Pentecostalism, in this manner, was characterized by the conjunction of hope and frustration into, what I deem, disappointment. The conjunction, moreover, was cyclical and mutually informing. In the case of divine healing, frustration and disappointment with medical practice led to a hope of divine healing, but that practice itself was often—though perhaps not always—disappointing. Likewise, to use Anderson, the gift of tongues emerged out of a frustration with social location, but the hope of speaking in tongues—preaching the gospel to all nations and thereby hastening the second coming—pushed them further to the margins of society, reinforcing their proletariat location (Anderson 1979, p. 235). Thus the Los Angeles Times mocked the Azusa Street Revival titling their infamous and racially charged article, “Weird Babble of Tongues.”14 In this way, hopes of social change were also disappointed.

3. Identifying William Seymour’s Disappointment

Identifying a cultural ethos of disappointment is one matter but locating such emotions within early Pentecostal actors is another. Indeed, some figures did express “disappointment” in early Pentecostal literature.15 Furthermore, there were a variety of significant early Pentecostal figures whose disappointment was readily identifiable. Pandita Ramabai, whose search for religious “satisfaction” led her eventually to a key role in early Pentecostalism, could certainly be seen as shaped by disappointment.16 G.B. Cashwell, the “Apostle of Pentecost to the South” who is credited with spreading the Azusa message to the Church of God (Cleveland, TN, USA) and the Pentecostal Holiness Church, among others, returned to Methodism after only a few grueling years of itinerant Pentecostal preaching.17 Alfred Garr learned the hard way that his gift of tongues did not allow him to communicate with those he met in India and China.18 Indeed, for many figures, disappointment was the means by which they became Pentecostal, ceased to be Pentecostal, or altered the ways in which they practiced Pentecostalism. For the purpose of this essay—a case study that, if successful, could be used for figures like those above—I focus on, perhaps, early Pentecostalism’s most crucial figure, William Seymour.19 Seymour seemed to experience disappointment even though he did not express it as thus in the extant literature. In order to perform this analysis, it was therefore necessary to develop a critical methodology for identifying unarticulated disappointment. The following section examines disappointment in a particular episode of William Seymour’s famous Pentecostal origins narrative while developing a methodology for identifying emotion therein.

3.1. The Difficulty of Locating Disappointment in Seymour’s Narrative

William Seymour provides, perhaps, one of the more salient examples of disappointment, even though he did not express his emotion explicitly as “disappointment”. Traveling from Houston to Los Angeles to preach at Julia Hutchins’ church, he preached Charles Parham’s unique view of the Holy Ghost baptism.20 When Seymour told the congregants that they—and he himself—were sanctified but not yet baptized in the Holy Ghost, they initially refused his teaching. Seymour supped at the home of the Lees, a couple from the congregation, but then returned for the afternoon service to find that Pastor Hutchins had locked him out of the church. The ever-courteous Lees housed Seymour until he could earn enough money to return to Texas.21

Primary sources do not explicitly characterize Seymour as “disappointed” during this time. Unfortunately, Seymour’s written voice scarcely emerged until his newspaper starts printing. Pre-Azusa Seymour was one of history’s “inarticulate” (to use E. P. Thompson’s term), who, “by definition, leave few records of their thoughts” (Thompson 1966, p. 55). Even after the printing of his newspaper, his concern was primarily “to evangelize a lost world”, and this (perhaps rightly, according to his theological inclinations) “overshadowed any desire to develop a written legacy” (Alexander 2011, p. 12). Estrelda Alexander’s above quotation applies to African American Pentecostal leaders as a whole, but the fact that this characterization fits so well for Seymour, arguably Pentecostalism’s (not just African American Pentecostalism’s) most salient figure, suggests that historical investigations into emotions can be challenging. Figures such as Seymour are not always interested in leaving behind their emotional selves for posterity. Moreover, secondary accounts in early Pentecostalism are often hagiographical and therefore less likely to frame their protagonists negatively. This, significantly, includes negative emotions such as disappointment. Especially considering the possibility of disappointment being construed by readers as a “lack of faith”,22 it is no wonder that we have no written record of Seymour articulating his disappointment in this situation. However, importantly for this kind of work, the historian must go beyond the mere words of historical actors; “it is not enough to define emotion according to the manner in which historical actors define it” (Plamper 2015, p. 38). The historian can and ought to utilize context and “reading between the lines” in order to discern the historical agents’ emotions.

The experience of emotion, nevertheless, cannot be mapped neatly across history in a universalizing manner. In short, my feeling of disappointment is shaped by own unique experiences and articulations of disappointment. Though not entirely foreign—Seymour and I are both human, male, and English-speaking—Seymour had experiences and articulations distinct from my own. Therefore, his experience of disappointment was not entirely like my experience, and, even where our experiences may have been physiologically or psychologically similar, he may not have utilized the same vocabulary or articulations to express his emotions. Furthermore, this manner of expressing emotion—that is, rendering emotion to verbal articulation or other signs—shapes the very experience of the emotion: “conceptions of emotion have an impact upon the way emotion is experienced in the self-perception of the feeling subject” (Plamper 2015, p. 34).

3.2. A Possible Methodology: Charles Taylor’s Philosophy of Language and Emotions

In the above quotation and elsewhere, Jan Plamper expressed this theory of emotions I am utilizing, but I am primarily drawing on Charles Taylor’s constitutive–expressive view of language.23 Language constitutes emotions through the process of articulation. Emotions can, however, through articulation, be transvaluated. In this sense, the raw emotion is changed through articulation; once articulated, the particular emotion is felt differently. No emotion exists unembodied. Emotions are, in a sense, determined both by the resources of the feeler’s language and the feeler’s articulation of it (Taylor 1985a, pp. 68–76). In one of his clearer statements, Taylor said,

[A]rticulations are attempts to formulate what is initially inchoate, or confused, or badly formulated. But this kind of formation or reformulation does not leave its object unchanged. To give a certain articulation is to shape our sense of what we desire or what we hold important in a certain way.24

The experience of emotions—which even emotionally intelligent adults often struggle to articulate—presents a profound challenge to human language. The situation is unlike that of a person (or group of people) determining a name for a physical object (“ball”, “grass”, “book”); emotions are far less tangible, and the boundaries between emotions are less defined. Taylor even argues that emotional language is “irreducible”—there is no “thing” to which emotional language can point beyond itself. In essence, the reason for this, Taylor said, is that emotional language signifies not only a feeling but a feeling as constructed in relation to the individual’s “import[,] and goal… and consummation desired” (Taylor 1985a, p. 57). For instance, individuals do not simply “feel disappointed”, but the physical phenomena associated with disappointment (frowning, drooping head, slumped shoulders, etc.) are mixed together with the individual’s desires, values, and self-imagination. Disappointment depends on what a person desires. This is clear enough; if I do not receive what I want to receive, I will be disappointed. Thus, if I were to want the baptism of the Holy Spirit with initial evidence, but I do not actually receive it, I would be disappointed. Emotions necessitate locating an agent’s desires and goals. The fulfilment of desire and the meeting of a goal, or the lack of fulfilling desire or meeting of a goal, bring about particular responses. In short, in order to know what disappoints a person, one has to identify that person’s desires and goals.

Moreover, individuals do not simply desire things; they value themselves in particular ways. Thus, my desires are necessarily tied to my values and, significantly, those aspects I value in myself, namely, my ideal or self-understanding. Thus, disappointment can appear when an individual fails to fulfill their own ideal of themselves. Seymour, in this measure, by his efforts and calling, saw himself as a pastor. The failure to fulfill this ideal could be disappointing. Thus, disappointment is necessarily tied to the individual’s desires, goals, and self-understanding (in the case of Seymour). Disappointment is not objectively recognizable in this sense, but it depends upon the individual. With emotional language, “there is no escape into objectified nature” (Taylor 1985a, p. 57). There is simply no precise “thing” toward which one can point beyond the language itself, because emotions depends so firmly on the individual’s desires, goals, and self-understanding. Thus, if we can identify Seymour’s goals, desires, and self-understanding and see where these fail to be fulfilled, we can identify instances wherein Seymour was likely disappointed.

3.3. Locked Out: Reading Seymour as Disappointed

Seymour’s most recent biographer, Gastón Espinosa, perhaps captured a bit of the “disappointment” through his narration: “Now penniless and without a place to stay, Seymour turned hat-in-hand to Edward Lee”.25 Seymour had felt called to ministry for years.26 Having received a chance to interim preach at Lucy Farrow’s church in Houston, Seymour earned an invitation from Angeleno visitor, Terry Neely (Cotton 2014, p. 335). Having hardly begun Parham’s school, he quickly departed for Los Angeles against his teacher’s recommendation.27 Espinosa even said that Parham was surprised by Seymour’s decisiveness because he was typically so “compliant” (Espinosa 2014, p. 51). In one sense, this reflects Seymour’s agency over and against Parham, but—perhaps most precisely—it reflects the assurance Seymour felt of his call. Seymour relocated—once again28—to a place where his reputation as a preacher preceded him. He was wanted and welcomed in Hutchins’ church. This is evidenced by the fact of the invitation itself and even by the Lee’s hosting him despite their hesitancy toward his doctrine. Finally, one should not overlook the fact that while preaching that Spirit baptism is evidenced by speaking in tongues, Seymour was yet to speak in tongues himself.

In brief, Seymour had followed the divine call to a new place far from his connections, and he had no money to support himself. Not only was he denied a job, but the church had symbolically denounced his sense of calling and symbolically labeled him a false teacher. Seymour’s “import [,] and goal … and consummation desired” were clearly unmet (Taylor 1985a, p. 57). Metaphorically, Seymour had “swung out” hard on faith, and not only did he whiff the ball, but his identity as a baseball player was rejected. Especially where hope is so high, the dissatisfaction of hope can make the sense of disappointment all the more acute. Pulling the context together, it seems safe to interpret Seymour’s experience as disappointing.

Nevertheless, in true hagiographical style, Emma Cotton’s later account of Seymour does not suggest that disappointment caused him to despair of his calling. In response, Seymour simply “stayed in his room and prayed” (Cotton 2014, p. 335). Here, we glimpse one of early Pentecostalism’s frequent response to disappointment: prayer. In short, Pentecostals deemed prayer as one of the most faithful responses to disappointment.29 For a people so intent on personal piety and attentiveness to the Bible, prayer was a “holy” response to disappointment. After praying alone for a few days, Seymour invited the skeptical though hospitable Lees to pray with him. Community and sociality provide another resource for disappointment that Pentecostals continually utilized in a variety of manners. Through their prayers together, the Lees came to respect Seymour. “They would not receive his doctrine, but they would pray with him” (Cotton 2014, p. 336). These meetings eventually moved to a home on Bonnie Brae Street, and some slowly began to reconsider Seymour’s doctrines. Edward Lee himself was slain in the Spirit—overcome by the Spirit to such a degree that he fell onto the floor—through Seymour’s laying on of hands, and, in April, especially empowered minister Lucy Farrow30 arrived and imparted the baptism of the Holy Spirit to several including Lee, Jennie Moore (Seymour’s future wife), and—a couple days later—Seymour himself.

For Seymour, early disappointment was the consequence of “going out on faith”. Disappointment followed obedience to God’s call.31 And yet, significantly, this kind of disappointment altered but did not fully reject his expectation. The contours of Seymour’s expectations certainly shifted. He likely did not imagine the story to develop the way it did, but, nonetheless, he ministered in Los Angeles with the particular doctrines he had received and developed, and even though he did not technically preach at and pastor Hutchins’ church, he effectively pastored the congregation. Only half a year after she locked Seymour out of her church, Seymour’s Apostolic Faith Mission commissioned Hutchins as a missionary to Liberia. Indeed, Seymour’s hopes and desires were initially disappointed but, ultimately, what eventually happened likely exceeded his initial expectations.

4. Conclusions

This paper attempts to provide a historiographical methodology for examining the emotions of historical actors, particularly, the experience of disappointment in early Pentecostalism. First, it provides an account of the leading secondary historiography wherein the sense of disappointment expresses the cycle of Pentecostal frustration, hope, and fulfillment of hopes or lack thereof. In this sense, this essay attempts to demonstrate that disappointment can add to the broader characterization of the early Pentecostal ethos. Second, the paper turns toward the identification of disappointment in historical actors, namely William Seymour. Starting from emotional historian Jan Plamper and utilizing Charles Taylor’s philosophies of language and emotion, it argus that the emotions of historical agents—like those of contemporary people—are shaped by language and their articulations of their emotions, especially as they relate to their desires, goals, and self-understandings. The historian’s job in discussing the emotions of historical actors, therefore, involves discerning an actor’s particular desires, goals, and self-understanding. Finally, this paper applies this historical methodology to William Seymour—a figure who admittedly did not describe himself as “disappointed”—and determined that because of his desires, goals, and self-understanding, he likely felt disappointed in the given account. However, remarkably, his initial disappointment eventually led to the fulfilling of different (and perhaps better) expectations than he had initially. This suggests the value of further investigation into Pentecostal disappointment. Indeed, if this method is successful, future work could apply the method not only to early Pentecostals such as Ramabai, Cashwell, and Garr but even later charismatic figures such as televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, “church growth” expert C. Peter Wagner, Toronto Blessing leader Randy Clark, or prosperity megachurch leader David Yonggi Cho. While it may seem counterintuitive to focus on disappointment for religious leaders so well known for hope, disappointment is hope’s corollary. Where hope is so present and important, studying disappointment is crucial.