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Charles Parham

1873-1929 - Holiness roots, Topeka Bible school, tongues, and early Pentecostal teaching

Early Pentecostal teacher whose Bible school and theology helped shape the link between Spirit baptism and speaking in tongues.

Biography

Charles Fox Parham was an American holiness preacher and teacher associated with the earliest phase of Pentecostalism. His ministry developed in the atmosphere of late nineteenth-century holiness religion, revivalism, healing teaching, and expectation of a deeper work of the Holy Spirit.

Parham is especially remembered for his Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, where students studied the book of Acts and concluded that speaking in tongues was connected to baptism in the Holy Spirit. This teaching became one of the most influential ideas in classical Pentecostalism.

  • - American holiness preacher and Bible teacher
  • - Associated with Topeka, Kansas, and early Pentecostal teaching
  • - Linked Spirit baptism with tongues in a way that shaped later Pentecostal doctrine

Place In Protestant History

Parham's importance is not that he created all of Pentecostalism by himself, but that he gave a doctrinal form to a movement already drawing from holiness, healing, revival, and missionary expectation.

His influence reached William J. Seymour, even though Seymour's Azusa Street work became the more famous global center of Pentecostal spread.

Resources

Apostolic Faith MissionWilliam J. Seymour