A new book reveals the incredible history of the Pentecostalist Church, from brutal exorcisms where people were tortured to death to the imprisonment of a pastor who attacked his wife with rattlesnakes.
Elle Hardy Hurst’s Beyond Belief offers a fascinating expose of the fastest-growing religion on earth, detailing how a religion founded at the turn of the 20th century Stars loved the tech-savvy Christian group.
Hardy is a US-based journalist and foreign correspondent who has spent years researching the religion, touring 12 countries, including the UK, and six American states to visit various churches and prayer groups.
The movement is a form of Christianity that focuses on the Holy Spirit and the believer achieving a ‘third blessing’ – direct experience of the presence of God – and many subsects of the movement are biblical literalists and religious fundamentalists.
It’s predicted that by 2050 around one in ten people will be part of the movement, which is estimated to be accumulating 35,000 new followers each day.
A quarter of the globe’s Christians are said to be Pentecostal, though many members of the movement around the globe don’t refer to themselves as such – with Koreans dubbing it the Presbyterian movement and in Brazil and Latin America, evangélicos.
Detailing her global tour of Pentecostalism, Hardy details more recent stories including an evangelical celebrity singer who adopted more than 50 boys with the young husband she has been charged with murdering.
Elsewhere, she tells the story of the movement’s founders, two of whom became embroiled in scandal, from a kidnapping plot to disguising a suspected affair – to accusations of demonic posse causing a riot among the congregation.
Femail tells the story of some of the fascinating stories from the history and present, as well as the interesting facts about the fast-growing movement.
MOVEMENT’S FOUNDING FATHER: ARRESTED OVER HOMOSEXUAL AFFAIR AND SPARKED BRUTAL EXORCISM DEATHS
Charles Fox Parham was born in Iowa, 1873. He became the founder father of the Pentecostalist Movement before his career fell apart due to sexual scandals and an attack in which three of his disciples murdered him during an exorcism.
Born in Iowa in 1873, Charles Fox Parham was raised as a member of the Methodist Church, and by his teenage years was already preaching the word of the bible.
By 22 though, he had become frustrated by the Methodist hierarchy and decided to go out on his own, travelling from place to place with a ‘silver tongue that could clock 250 words per minute’.
His main belief was of the ‘third blessing’ – the first to be born again as a Christian and the second being sanctified – which was a visible outpouring of the Holy Spirit in action.
Parham and his family settled once again in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901 after his son was apparently saved from a serious illness by divine intervention and started a Bible college in a suburban mansion called Stone’s Folly.
It was here that a 30-year-old worshipper named Agnes Ozman became the first person to speak in tongues, speaking and writing in ‘Chinese’ and apparently unable to return to her native English language for three days.
By 1905, Parham had befriended William J. Seymour, the son of emancipated slaves who later led the ‘Azusa Street Revival’, an outpouring of ‘babbling tongues’ at a church in downtown Los Angeles.
Two years later, Parham was arrested in San Antonio after being accused of having a homosexual relationship with a young man, and despite the case being dropped his reputation was left in tatters in a time when same-sex affairs were illegal.
According to the preacher, his innocence was maintained and he claimed he was a victim of Wilbur Glenn Voliva (a prominent flat earther) who had set him up as a rival evangelist.
Parham was finally put to death by an incident that occurred at Illinois’ “Parhamite” where his followers were enthralled with the idea of the end, the ‘End Times.
Accusations of demonic possession among the congregation led to a riot resulting in a spate of brutal exorcisms that saw three people tortured to death.
SISTER AIMEE – PREACHER IS ACCUSED OF FAKED HER OWN WITNESS KIDNAP
Aimee Smple McPherson was the one who introduced the religion to the masses. She is still an icon of this movement, despite the fact that she was accused of pretending kidnapping herself while having an affair and being married to a lover.
While Parham’s career was left in tatters, the movement had vastly expanded throughout America and Aimee Semple McPherson took the religion to the masses.
The last of Pentecostalism’s founding trinity, Aimee ‘shaped the modern conception of a Pentecostal preacher’ by creating a traveling roadshow promising miracles, supernatural healing and prophecy.
Aimee Smple McPherson was a natural talent for self-promotion and wrote the script to the public evangelicalism you can see today …’
She produced radio shows which acted as a precursor to today’s televangelism and built the first ‘mega-church’, the Foursquare Gospel.
Despite her hoards of loyal followers, Sister Aimee, as she became known to her followers, battled with obsessive compulsive disorder and was said to have engaged in numerous affairs.
She became embroiled in scandal in May 1926 when she vanished from a Los Angeles beach, with her disappearance hitting headlines across the country before she emerged in a Mexico desert five weeks later ‘with a sordid tale of capture and escape’.
Rumours soon began that Aimee had run off with her married lover and when she returned she was trialled for conspiracy and obstruction of justice – however, the case only served to raise significant funds and publicity for the movement.
While Charles Parham’s sex scandal had ended his public career, the alleged kidnapping – which courts deemed impossible to prove – boosted Sister Aimee’s and she resumed her life preaching in California.
Despite her own scandal, Sister Aimee became known for her church’s charitable work during the Great Depression, and in her later years she even became involved in politics – briefly supporting Herbert Hoover and later Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Hardy writes that Aimee McPherson was a gifted fundraiser and has a knack for self-promotion.
CRIMINAL-TURNED PENETECOSTALIST WHO TRYPTED TO MURDER HIS WIFE Using 17 VENOMOUS SNAAKES
Glenn Summerford (pictured was a criminal who turned into a serpent-handling pastor for the fundamentalist Church of God with Signals Following, who tried to murder Darlene with an axesnake back in October 1991
At what Hardy calls the ‘most literal end of the Pentecostal spectrum’ are what the movement calls ‘with signs’ churches where attendees handle venomous snakes and drink poison to prove their devotion to god.
It is an idea that comes from a scripture verse which states: “In my Name shall they cast out the devils, they will speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if any deadly substance is drunk, it shall not affect them. They shall then lay their hands on the sick to make sure they recover.”
Many Pentecostals believe this is a metaphor, but those who attend ‘with signs’ churches take the scripture literally and believe that handling snakes, a demonic presence, is a sign of God’s power over Satan and It is considered a sign that you believe in God by drinking their poison.
The author visited the Rock House Holiness Church in Alabama, one of the few ‘snake-handling’ churches in the country that still exists, where she met an attendee called Cylus Crawford Cylus.
He revealed to her that he’d been bitten ‘pretty bad’ on the leg, chest and hand because of his faith and said he hates it when he receives unwanted medical assistance because ‘you have no say, they have full control.’
These types of churches came under the spotlight in 1991, when Pastor Glenn Summerford, cousin of the Rock House’s lead pastor, tried to murder his wife Darlene.
In a drunken rage he stuck a gun to her head before dragging her by her hair to the shed where his seventeen poisonous snakes were kept in a cage.
After banging and rattling the cage in an attempt to rattle the snakes, the husband told his wife to insert her hand and threatened to forcibly force her into the cage if she didn’t.
When she had recovered from the life-threatening bites, Darlene testified that her husband had tried to kill her because he wanted to marry another woman and he was sentenced to 129 years in prison.
HOLLYWOOD’S FAVOURITE RELIGION: PENTECOSTALISM
Justin Bieber is seen with Carl Lentz (disgraced pastor), who was charged with sexual misconduct in 2017. He also was found guilty of cheating on Laura his wife, for 17 years.
Justin Bieber’s Hailey Baldwin was pictured in 2014 with Lentz and his wife Laura as well as Kylie Jenner, Kendall Jenner, and Kendall Jenner.
Selena Gomez (pictured below after she attended a Hillsong service in 2014 with friends)
The recognisable face of Western Pentecostalism in modern days comes in the form of the Hillsong – a worldwide chain of churches attended by the likes of Justin Bieber and various Kardashian-Jenners.
Hardy writes that it has been described as Australia’s strongest brand, money machine and even a religion.
Other A-listers who have been spotted attending the church in the past, according to reports, include; Hailey Baldwin, Chris Pratt, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Nick Jonas and Hailee Steinfeld.
Since the movement was founded in 1983, with 45 people gathered at a school hall in Western Sydney, Hillsong has 150,000 weekly worshippers and locations in thirty countries on six continents.
It was founded by Brian Houston, an Australian pastor and evangelist, with his wife Bobbie and was originally known as the Hills Christian Life Centre.
Houston and the other pastors in the church are Biblical Literalists. They avoid controversial rhetoric about the bible and promote their message with a positive tone.
‘Instead of delivering a thundering sermon against gay marriage, a Hillsong preacher is more likely to tell you that you must love yourself first and then find love—albeit with the coda that you should find love in the way God tells us to in the Bible’, Hardy explains.
Within three years Hillsong hosted its first worship music conference and in 1988 the church’s self-titled group released their debut album, Spirit and Truth.
Hillsong is one of the biggest music companies in the world, with 50 million users worldwide singing their songs every week.
In fact, the movement was so influential in the music industry that in 2007, the Church had so many members appearing on Australian Idol a whistleblower producer contacted the media fearing the movement was manipulating the vote.
An Australian news programme claimed five of the nine finalists – a claim which has been disputed – were from Hillsong and interviewed two ex-Hillsong followers who alleged they had been ‘pressured’ to vote for Christian contestants in the past.
The church has evolved into a ‘multilevel marketing industry’ streaming preachers on YouTube and selling miracle oils, self-education and the ‘Holy Spirit’s ability to manifest everything from private jets to Covid cures.’
While tithes once accounted for the majority of the church’s income, up to 80 per cent of their revenue now comes from music and merchandise sales.
Hardy says their streaming numbers can be compared to Justin Bieber, its most well-known alumnus.
Hardy says that the third-wave church has “morphed into an international, digital corporate culture” which is more than just a building. It’s now a conglomerate.
Two thirds of people attending the tech-savvy church are younger than 50, according to researchers. Meanwhile the pandemic is only strengthening the faith of young believers.
Hillsong has been tarnished by a series of alleged sexual indiscretions in recent years after celebrity pastor Carl Lentz – who baptised Bieber – was accused of sexual misconduct and found to have cheating on his wife of 17 years Laura.
Brian Houston, the leader of the Australian church, fired Lentz. He co-founded the New York City branch in 2010 and accused Lentz’s pastor of moral failings, as well as breaches of trust, in a statement.
But in August 2021: Houston was removed from the board of the church two months after he was charged in Australia with hiding his father’s 1970 sex crimes. Houston denies the charges.
PENTECOSTALISM and THE TRAVELLING COMMUNITY
On the old military airfield at Semoutiers in north-eastern France (August 2010), caravans are surrounded by a large roof where an evangelist ceremony is performed.
It’s estimated that around three million people in the UK are part of the broad Pentecostal movement with an estimated 17,000 Pentecostal churches in the UK—about one congregation for every two pubs in England.
And the movement is growing at a rapid rate among the traveller community, with the author meeting members of the Light and Life boys, who believe their born-again Christian identity is linked to their ‘Gypsy heritage’.
The group claims to be evangelising at lightning speed, with thirty-three congregations and around 20,000 followers in the UK – one tenth of the estimated Gypsy population.
The Dartford-based church has five pastors, whom the author met up with in Bexleyheath, Kent in December last year.
One of the group’s pastors, Uncle John, admitted to previously being a ‘ten-out-of-ten sinner’ having ‘plotted a couple of murders’ and prize-fight for money before turning to the Holy Spirit.
Another of the pastors, Bill, says he’s anxious about his life before being saved, admitting: ‘I was brought up to lie and con to get money, and if I couldn’t, I was a thief.
It wouldn’t be possible for us Gypsies to do it. God calls his people. This is the best and clearest answer that I have.
Light and Life recently built a church in Soroca around 300 kilometres north-east of Marius’ village, Toflea, in Romania and, in the UK, they hold a regular religious service in the Surrey town of Leatherhead.
Light and Life, like many Pentecostalists across the globe, take the bible literally. John claims that Satan got to Catholics because Catholics believe in Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Christ is the only one who can be a “mediator with God”.
The majority of Gypsy evangelicals disagree with modern ideas filtering into churches such as female clergy and welcoming LGBTQ+ people.
Addressing further spread of Pentecostalism in the UK, the author claimed the movement appeals to immigrant and minority groups.
She claimed those arriving in the country for economic opportunities ‘are being born again; or renewing their faith as a way of coping with the transition and of making connections in a big, cosmopolitan city.’
Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World by Elle Hardy, Hurst, is available for £20