This Week in Church History

Each week this year we will be looking at a significant event in church history starting with today, January 1st! Sign up for our email newsletter to receive these right to your inbox every Monday!

In the late-night hours of January 1, 1901, thirty-year-old Agnes Ozman and several of her classmates in the Bethel Bible School of Topeka, Kansas met for a prayer meeting. They had been studying together about the Bible’s use of the phrase “the gift of the Holy Spirit.” 

Agnes asked her classmates and their teacher, Charles Fox Parham, to pray for her specifically and lay hands upon her. As they did so, Agnes first began reciting Scripture, but eventually began speaking in unknown tongues. She reportedly spoke only in tongues for the next several days, and within several weeks her teacher and many other students were likewise baptized in the Holy Spirit. 

This event is generally considered to be the beginning of the Pentecostal Revival, which would soon spread across the United States.