| The Azusa Street Revival that took place in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A in the early twentieth century is regarded as one of the crucial events of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement with its lasting, influential, and far-reaching legacies. Its meetings that were held in a run-down mission under the name Apostolic Faith is then considered as the symbolic origin of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement. It is interesting to note that the special development pattern presented by the Apostolic Faith Mission, that is, the co-existence of its attraction of Azusa participants for founding cohesive communities and its continuing divisions among followers scattered around the world.;The attraction of worship services is devoted to the ritual's liminal stage, worship symbols (speaking in tongues or other blessings), and the specific script for performance. The participants could gain a strong sense of cohesion with each other during the process. However, their different reactions to the script, and furthermore, their different understandings and explanations towards the script in the post-liminal stage could, on the contrary, make the cohesive community promoted during worship services unstable, which, working with other factors, have led to its separation and division. Worship services are then the source for both community cohesion and division. This study argues also that such ritual patterns and the post-liminal consequences repeat themselves in the subsequent Pentecostal/Chrismatic movement. In this study, I critically adopt the performance theory offered by Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, Daniel E. Albrecht's pentecostal worship structure, and Mircea Eliade's heirophany theory to construct my arguments.;Indeed, different scholars have already studied its special development pattern to argue respectively the factors behind for its cohesion or separation. However, the coexistence of these two contrasting models of development within the Apostolic Faith Mission is still left unanswered, which is due to the fact that earlier studies failed to investigate and discuss closely the Apostolic Faith Mission's worship and the strong effects exerted by worship rites on Azusa participants. I therefore argue first in this study that the Azusa Street integrated worship is actually the key factor for its special development pattern, that is, the rites of worship practiced by the Apostolic Faith Mission attracted people from a diversity of backgrounds came together, while almost at the same time, caused their divisions too. |
