User:Mattwithoutabat/sandbox

Early life and career
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"Seymour was born the son of former slaves named Simon and Phyllis Salabar Seymour in Centerville, in the U.S. state ofLouisiana.[2] At the age of 25, Seymour moved to Indianapolis, Indiana to work as a railroad porter, then later as a waiter at a restaurant. It was during this time that he contracted smallpox and subsequently went blind in his left eye. [3] After overcoming the smallpox, Seymour was ordained by the Evening Light Saints. [4]As a grown man he became a student at a newly formed bible school founded by Charles Parham in Houston, Texas, in 1905. It was here that he learned the major tenets of the Holiness Movement. He developed a belief in glossolalia ("speaking in tongues") as a confirmation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit when he witnessed it from one of his followers. He believed this proved that the person was born-again and could then go to Heaven.[5] Itinerant, upon the request of Neely Terry, he moved to Los Angeles to candidate for the pastorate of her Holiness Mission.[6]"

My proposed edits below:

"Seymour was born to former slaves Simon and Phyllis Salabar Seymour in Centerville, Louisiana. Though he was baptized at the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption in Franklin, he and his family attended the New Providence Baptist Church in Centerville. The racial violence in the American South at this time — Louisiana had one of the highest rates of lynchings in the nation — would have a huge effect on Seymour's later emphasis on racial equality at the Azusa mission.

In the 1890s, Seymour left the South in order to travel north, to places such as Memphis, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. In doing this, he escaped the horrific violence aimed at African Americans in the south during this period; even though he would continue to face racial prejudice in the north, it was not at the violent level that he faced in the South. In 1895, Seymour moved to Indianapolis, where he attended the Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church. It was at this church where Seymour became a born-again Christian.

During Seymour's travels, he was influenced by Daniel S. Warner's Evening Light Saints, a Holiness group dedicated to racial equality—their view of a racially egalitarian church would influence his theology for the rest of his life. In 1901, Seymour moved to Cincinnati, where his views on holiness and racial integration were shaped by a Bible school he attended. It was during this time that he contracted smallpox and subsequently went blind in his left eye; after overcoming the smallpox, he was ordained by the Evening Light Saints. Seymour then traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, where he visited Charles Price Jones, and left the South with a very firm commitment to his beliefs.

In 1906, Seymour joined a newly formed Bible school founded by Charles Parham in Houston, Texas. Parham's teachings on the baptism of the Holy Spirit stuck with Seymour and influenced his later doctrines; however, Seymour did not agree with some of Parham's more radical views. It was here that Seymour developed his belief in glossolalia ("speaking in tongues") as a confirmation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit when he witnessed it from one of his followers. Seymour did not remain at the school for very long — he spent just six weeks there, and left before his studies were complete. In late January or early February 1906, Neely Terry asked Seymour to pastor a church in Los Angeles. Feeling called by God, Seymour took the opportunity against Parham's wishes, and moved to Los Angeles.

Azusa Street Revival
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"As a consequence of his newfound Pentecostal doctrine he was removed from the parish where he had been appointed. Without a place to go, Seymour began staying at the home of Edward Lee. Edward Lee became impressed by Seymour's spirituality, humility, grasp of theology and persuasive abilities.[7] There he held prayer meetings, which eventually grew so large that he had to move the gatherings to Richard and Ruth Asberry's Bonnie Bray Street home. It was here that he received his own baptism in the Holy Spirit on April 12, 1906.[8] Soon after, the prayer group once again outgrew its meeting place, causing Seymour to make the move to 312 Azusa Street.[9]

From his base on Azusa Street he began to preach his doctrinal beliefs. Seymour not only rejected the existing racial barriers in favor of "unity in Christ", he also rejected the then almost-universal barriers to women in any form of church leadership. This revival meetingextended from 1906 until 1909, and became known as the Azusa Street Revival. It became the subject of intense investigation by more mainstream Protestants. Some left feeling that Seymour's views were heresy, while others accepted his teachings and returned to their own congregations to expound them. The resulting movement became widely known as "Pentecostalism", likening it to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded as occurring in the first two chapters of Acts as occurring from the day of the Feast of Pentecost onwards.[10] It is believed, Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, received the Holy Spirit at the revival.[11] During the revival, Seymour also spearheaded the publication of the Apostolic Faith newsletter, which was distributed from 1906 to 1908.[12] Seymour began printing Apostolic Faith newsletter to argue that the Spirits baptism brought people together in Christian unity across all man-made racial, social, and ecclesiastical boundaries. [13] Seymour died of a heart attack in 1922."

My Proposed Edits Below:

"Seymour arrived in Los Angeles on February 22, 1906, and began preaching at Julia Hutchins's Holiness Church two days later. Less than two weeks later, Hutchins, outraged by Seymour's claims on tongue-speech, padlocked the church door, thereby expelling him from the mission. Without a place to go, Seymour began staying at the home of Edward Lee, and before long a prayer group began meeting at their house. The group quickly grew too large, and it was moved to Richard Asberry's house. On April 9, 1906, Lee reportedly spoke in tongues after Seymour laid hands on him, and the Azusa Street Revival began. Seymour himself received the Holy Spirit baptism three days later, on April 12. Soon the group grew too large for the Asberry's house as well, and the weight of the attendees caused the front porch to collapse, causing Seymour to look for a new location. The mission moved to an old African Methodist Episcopal church building on Azusa Street, thus giving the movement its name.

The movement was, at the outset, racially egalitarian. Blacks and whites worshiped together and at the same altar, against the normal segregation of the day. In September 1906, the leaders of the revival began printing the Apostolic Faith newsletter, and argued through it that the Spirit was bringing people together across all social lines and boundaries to the revival. The movement transgressed many of the social boundaries of the time, bringing blacks and whites into worshiping together, and Latinos soon began attending as well after a Mexican-American worker received the Spirit baptism on April 13, 1906.

The revival itself lasted from 1906-1909. Three times a day, a service would be led by Seymour or one of his associates, during which participants would pray for the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, often signified by speaking in tongues. After services, groups would go to a secluded place to spend more time in prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Seymour taught the doctrine of glossolalia, or tongues that were the language of God, and not any real human language. The movement became the subject of intense investigation by more mainstream Protestants. Some left feeling that Seymour's views were heresy, while others accepted his teachings and returned to their own congregations to expound them. The resulting movement became widely known as "Pentecostalism", likening it to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded as occurring in the first two chapters of Acts as occurring from the day of the Feast of Pentecost onwards. It is believed that Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, received the Holy Spirit at the revival.

In October 1906, Parham arrived at the Azusa revival. After preaching several times, he became disgusted at the state of the revival. After observing some ecstatic practices and racial mixing in worship, he went to pulpit and began to preach that God was disgusted at the state of the revival. Seymour refused to back down from the the doctrines of the revival, and Parham proclaimed the Azusa revival as false. He was subsequently removed from the revival by Glenn Cook, one of the Seymour's trustees. Parham began to attack Seymour and Azusa as being from the devil shortly after. He claimed that Seymour had corrupted the teaching of tongue-speach — for Parham, tongues had to be a real human language, while Seymour's theology allowed for a divine tongue that could not be understood by human ears. Parham denounced these views as unscriptural. Parham denounced the racial mixing of the revival, causing the egalitarian Seymour to disassociate with him.

Later life
Current:

"Seymour died of a heart attack in 1922."

Proposed:

"As the revival went on, issues began to pop up that would take a toll on Seymour's leadership. It took only a couple of years before race issues within the movement started to become divisive — Seymour's habit of leaving white pastors instead of black pastors in charge whenever he left Los Angeles caused the black members to feel neglected, and as though the mission was in danger of being taken over. Accusations by some whites about embezzlement weighed heavily on Seymour, and affected his influence in the mission. Other missions, affiliated with Azusa, began to open, and drawing people away from the main revival. Race was quickly becoming an issue in the movement.

On May 13, 1908, Seymour married Jennie Moore Evans. This came as a shock to some in the church, who saw it as a violation of sanctification and as going against the message of the end-times. As a result of the wedding, Seymour's coeditor of the Apostolic Faith newsletter, Clara Lum, left Azusa very suddenly with the newsletter and the mailing lists in hand, and moved to Portland. She refused to give the paper back to Seymour when he came to see her, and with no recourse left to him, he no longer had the newsletter to spread his ideas. The loss of the newsletter was a crippling blow to the revival movement.

The biggest blow to Seymour's authority in the later movement, however, was the split between Seymour and William Durham. During one of Seymour's revival tours in 1911, he asked Durham if Durham would serve as the visiting preacher; Durham agreed, and through his more extreme views on sanctification caused a schism in the budding Pentecostal church. Seymour was asked to return to Azusa immediately, while his wife Jennie padlocked Durham out of the mission. Durham began to attack Seymour publicly, launching an extreme polemic by claiming that Seymour was no longer following the will of God or fit to be a leader, devestating Seymour. After Durham's death in 1912, the Pentecostal community in Los Angeles remained split.

On September 28, 1922, Seymour suffered two heart attacks, and died in his wife Jennie's arms. He was buried in Evergreen Cemtery in East Los Angeles, near influential Pentecostal preacher Francisco Olazabal. Jennie Seymour died on July 2, 1936, and was buried next to Seymour.

Legacy
Current:

"Most of the current charismatic groups can claim some lineage to the Azusa Street Revival and Seymour. While the movement was largely to fracture along racial lines within a decade, the splits were in some ways perhaps less deep than the vast divide that seems often to separate many white religious denominations from their black counterparts. Probably the deepest split in the Pentecostal movement today is not racial, but rather between Trinitarian and Oneness theologies.

While there had been similar religious movements in the past (the Cane Ridge, Kentucky, religious movement a century before in the Second Great Awakening being one such example), the current worldwide Pentecostal and charismatic movements are generally agreed to have been in part outgrowths of Seymour's ministry and the Azusa Street Revival."

Proposed:

"The spirit of revival spread from Azusa all over the United States, and many missions modeled themselves after Azusa, especially the racially integrated services. By 1914, Pentecostalism had spread to almost every major U.S. city. The egalitarian message was very attractive to many people experiencing some sort of racial division, all over the world. The mission spread all around the world quickly: from Liberia, to the Middle East, to Sweden and Norway, the Pentecostal message flourished rapidly, and many of those missionaries had themselves been at the Azusa revival. Seymour's global influence spread far beyond his direct interactions with missions.

Protestant Pentecostals trace their roots back to early leaders such as Seymour, and estimates of worldwide Pentecostal membership ranges from 115 million to 400 million. Most modern Charismatic groups can claim some lineage to the Azusa Street Revival and Seymour. Pentecostalism is the second largest Christian denomination in Latin America, behind Roman Catholicism, and many African churches are Pentecostal or Charismatic in practice. While there were many other centers for revivals, such as Topeka, India, and Chicago, it was the socially transgressive and egalitarian message of Azusa that appealed to many converts. The specific doctrines taught at Azusa, such as glossolalia, are still taught today, as opposed to Parham's insistence that tongue-speech had to be a recognizable language.