Charles Fox Parham:

Father of the Twentieth Century Pentecostal Movement

Charles F. Parham was born June 4, 1873 in Muscatine County, Iowa. When he was five, his family moved to Kansas where Parham spent most of his life. As a child, Parham experienced many debilitating illnesses including encephalitis and rheumatic fever. These unfortunate confrontations with pain, and even death, would greatly impact his adult life.

Even before his conversion at a teenager, Parham felt an attraction to the Bible and a call to preach. He began conducting revival meetings in local Methodist churches when he was fifteen. In 1890 he started preparatory classes for ministry at Southwest Kansas College.

A year later Parham turned his back on God and the ministry. Deciding that he preferred the income and social standing of a physician, he considered medical studies. Soon his rheumatic fever returned and it didn't seem that Parham would recover. He trusted God for his healing, and the pain and fever that had tortured his body for months immediately disappeared. However, the healing was not yet complete. Months of inactivity had left Parham a virtual cripple. His ankles were too weak to support the weight of his body so he staggered about walking on the sides of his feet. In December 1891, Parham renewed his commitments to God and the ministry and he was instantaneously and totally healed.

Parham served a brief term as a Methodist pastor, but left the organization after a falling out with his ecclesiastical superiors. He then became loosely affiliated with the holiness movement that split from the Methodists late in the Nineteenth Century. He never returned to structured denominationalism.

On December 31, 1896, Parham married Sarah Eleanor Thistlethwaite, a devoted Quaker. The young couple worked together in the ministry, conducting revival campaigns in several Kansas cities. Influenced by a number of successful faith healers, Parham's holiness message evolved to include an ever increasing emphasis on divine healing. Eventually, Parham arrived at the belief that the use of medicines was forbidden in the Bible.

In the summer of 1898, the aspiring evangelist moved his family to Topeka and opened Bethel Healing Home. For almost two years, the home served both the physical and spiritual needs of the city. Included in the services that Parham offered were an infirmary, a Bible Institute, an adoption agency, and even an unemployment office. Parham also published a religious periodical, The Apostolic Faith . In only a few years, this would become the first Pentecostal journal.

Parham said, “Our purpose in this Bible School was not to learn things in our head only but have each thing in the Scriptures wrought out in our hearts.” All students (mostly mature, seasoned gospel workers from the Midwest) were expected to sell everything they owned and give the proceeds away so each could trust God for daily provisions. From this unusual college, a theology was developed that would change the face of the Christian church forever.

The young preacher soon accompanied a team of evangelists who went forth from Topeka to share what Parham called the “Apostolic Faith” message. Unfortunately, their earliest attempts at spreading the news were less than successful. After the tragic death of Parham's youngest child, Bethel College closed and Parham entered another period of introspection. During this time, he wrote and published his first book of Pentecostal theology, Kol Kare Bomidbar: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness.

Parham's first successful Pentecostal meetings were in Galena and Baxter Springs, Kansas and Joplin, Missouri in 1903 and 1904. Hundreds were saved, healed and baptized in the Holy Spirit as Parham preached to thousands in the booming mine towns.

Following the fruitful meetings in Kansas and Missouri, Parham set his eyes on the Lone Star State. In the spring and summer of 1905 the evangelist conducted a highly successful crusade in Orchard, Texas, and then he moved his team to the Houston-Galveston area. After returning to Kansas for a few months, he moved his entire enterprise to Houston and opened another Bible College. “The Bible Training School,” as it was called, provided ten weeks of intensive Pentecostal indoctrination.

William Seymour attended the school and took the Pentecostal message to Los Angeles where revival spread from the Azusa Street Mission. Parham and Seymour had a falling out and the fledgling movement splintered.

Parham next set his sites on Zion, Illinois where he tried to gather a congregation from John Alexander Dowie's crumbling empire. Many of Pentecost's greatest leaders came out of Zion.

Charges of sexual misconduct followed Parham and greatly hindered his ministry. Despite the hindrance, for the rest of his life Parham continued to travel across the United States holding revivals and sharing the full gospel message.

Parham died in Baxter Springs, Kansas on January 29, 1929.