Pre-Pentecostal Roots

Old Drawyers Quaker Church, built in 1773

George Fox

In the early days, the Spirit of God often moved in their midst. Many of them literally trembled under the power of God; hence the nickname Quakers. A number of them received the Holy Spirit with the sign of speaking in tongues. In his Book of Miracles, Fox recorded miraculous healings among them and even some instances of the dead being raised. Taking their cue from Scripture, the early Quaker leaders refused to speak of God as a trinity or as three persons. Instead, they emphasized that God is one and that Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh. George Fox taught that the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit were not distinct from eternity but that Christ is in the Father and the Father in Him. Moreover, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. Fox wrote: As for the word trinity, and three persons, we have not read it in the Bible, but in the common prayer book, or mass book, which the pope was the author of. But as for unity we own it, and Christ being the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his substance (of the Father) we own; that which agrees with the Scriptures.

A Shaker meeting.

The Shakers and Nineteenth Century Revivalism

Ann Lee (1736-81), founder of the Shakers, was a member of a small branch of English Quakers known as the "Shaking Quakers" who advocated purity of life, enthusiastic worship, healing, and tongues. In 1766 she had already been married for four years and had given birth to four children--each of whom died in infancy. That year she began to preach that sexual intercourse prevented humans from achieving divine understanding and redemption. She further believed herself to be the second Incarnation of God (Christ being the first, and male, Incarnation).

In 1774, Lee persuaded her husband, her brother, and six other followers to emigrate to America to establish a "Shaker" church. The group settled near Albany, New York, and Lee began traveling throughout New England and New York to spread her message.

Within five years, "Mother Ann," (short for Mother of the New Creation), had attracted several thousand converts. They formed isolated communities, called "families," of 30 to 90 individuals, distinguished by celibate men and women living and working separately as "Brothers" and "Sisters." The Shakers continued to grow after her death until the mid-1800s to include more than 6,000 members in 18 major communities from Maine to Ohio and Kentucky. The movement eventually became formal and withered away. Only one Shaker community, in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, remains today.

The Shakers are one example of groups that tried to institutionalize revival by creating hierarchical church governments led by charismatic figures. These were often marked by the introduction of heretical doctrines, and cultic practices. While some of these movements survived the death of their founders, most deteriorated from their original revivalist zeal. In the late 1820s a prominent Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) pastor named Edward Irving began to preach that believers should seek the restoration of all the miracles and gifts of the Spirit that characterized the New Testament church. In 1830 the Holy Spirit fell among his followers, beginning with Mary Campbell and James and Margaret MacDonald. Although there is no record that Irving himself ever spoke in tongues, he approved of and promoted this experience both in Scotland and in his church in London. Expelled by his denomination, Irving founded the Catholic Apostolic Church, which emphasized the gifts of the Spirit. The Irvingite revival also gave birth to the Christian Catholic Church and the New Apostolic Church, and there were Irvingites in the mainline denominations. While there are many names associated with Nineteenth Century Revivalism, the movement was not tied to any one denomination or set of personalities. Instead, it often broke out spontaneously.

Edward Irving

A wave of revival began in Logan County, Kentucky in 1799, with the preaching of Presbyterian revivalist James McGready. The first camp meeting was held in July 1800 in the same area near the Gasper River, and it was noted for weeping and shouts of ecstasy. The famous Cane Ridge campmeeting took place nearby in August 1801. Organized by Presbyterians and Methodists, twenty to thirty thousand people attended. Participants engaged in extended prayer; enthusiastic, emotional worship; and physical demonstrations as the Spirit of God moved upon them. These demonstrations included sobbing, shrieking, falling (over three thousand fell under the power of God), exuberant singing, shouting, laughing ("holy laughter"), dancing, shaking, "jerking," jumping, leaping, rolling, and running. People testified that they fell into trances, saw visions, and exercised various gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Similar demonstrations occurred at other revival meetings throughout the century. Sometimes an entire congregation would begin breathing in distress, weeping, and repenting, with hundreds of people falling on the ground under the conviction of sin followed by profound moral reforms. There were also numerous reports of speaking in tongues. For example, during the University of Georgia revival in 1800-1801 the students "shouted and talked in unknown tongues." In many cases speaking in tongues probably went unreported because observers did not recognize it or its significance and did not distinguish it from other physical phenomena.

According to historian Barton Stone,

Throughout the nineteenth century speaking in unknown tongues occurred occasionally in the revivals and camp meetings that dotted the countryside. Perhaps the phenomenon was considered just another of the many evidences that one had been saved or sanctified.

Other outpourings of the Holy Spirit with tongues took place among the Readers (Lasare) in Sweden from 1841 to 1843, in Irish revivals of 1859, among the Lutheran followers of Gustav von Below in the early 1800s in Germany, and among Congregationalists and "gift people" (or "gift adventists") in New England beginning in 1824.