The Pentecostal experience—“the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues”—was not new. The spark of twentieth-century Pentecostalism was a three-year-long revival, beginning in 1906, at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. There were personal experiences of tongue-speaking earlier, but Azusa Street ignited worldwide Pentecostalism. Christians from all over North America, Europe, and the Third World visited Azusa Street and carried the fire back home.
