Charles Fox Parham

Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) was an independent holiness evangelist who believed strongly in divine healing.
Charles was the first to associate glossolalia (speaking in tongues) with the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He was the first to articulate Pentecostalism’s distinctive doctrine of evidential tongues. In 1900 he founded the Bethel Bible School,

Charles was born in Muscatine, Iowa on 4th June 1873. In 1878 his family moved by covered wagon to Cheney, Kansas. As a child he had very severe rheumatic fever.

The next year his father married Harriet Miller, the daughter of a Methodist circuit rider. The Parham’s opened their home for religious activities.

Aged 15 he began conducting hie first religious services. In 1890 he enrolled at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, a Methodist affiliated school. He left in 1893 when he came to believe education would prevent him from ministering effectively. He worked in a Methodist Episcopal church as a supply pastor ( he was never ordained). He left in 1895 because he disagreed with its hierarchy.

He established his own itinerant evangelistic ministry which preached the ideas of the holiness movement and was well received by the people of Kansas.

On 31st December 1896 Charles married Sarah Thistlewaite, a daughter of a Quaker, in a Friends’ ceremony. In 1897 Charles and his baby son Claude fell ill. Recovery was attributed to divine intervention so he committed to preaching divine healing and prayer for the sick. 1898 moved to Topeka. Kansas where he established the Bethel Healing Home and published the Apostolic Faith magazine.

1900 he took a sabbatical. Most of his time was spent with Frank Sandford in Maine. He picked up Frank’s Bible school model and other ideas.

In his absence others had taken charge of the healing home. He decided to start Bethel Bible College at Topeka in October 1900. There he taught that speaking in tongues was the scriptural evidence for the reception of the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

It happened!
On 1st January 1901, after a New Year’s Eve watch night. His students had prayed for and received the baptism with the the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. Charles, away at the time, later received the same experience. He then began to preach it at all his services.

With his controversial beliefs and aggressive style he found funding difficult. In 1903 his fortunes changed. Mary Arthur, a prominent citizen of Galena, Kansas, claimed she had been healed. He was invited that winter to preach in a warehouse seating 100s. News Heraldreported 1,000 healed, 800 converted. He developed a strong following which would form the backbone of his movement for the rest of his life.

He preached for a further 26 years but his heart, weaken by rheumatic fever as a child, took his life on 29th January 1929.

Charles originated the doctrine of initial evidence. It was this doctrine which made Pentecostalism distinct from other holiness Christian groups.