Pentecostalism in South Africa

Pentecostalism began spreading in South Africa after William J. Seymour, of the Azusa Street mission, sent missionaries to convert and organize missions. By the 1990s, approximately 10% of the population of South Africa was Pentecostal. The largest denominations were the Apostolic Faith Mission, Assemblies of God, and the Full Gospel Church of God. Another 30% of the population was made up of mostly black Zionist and Apostolic churches, which comprise a majority of South Africa's African Instituted Churches(AICs). In a 2006 survey, 1 in 10 urban South Africans said they were Pentecostal, and 2 in 10 said they were charismatic. In total, renewalists comprised one-third of the South African urban population. Half of all protestants surveyed said that they were Pentecostal or charismatic, and one-third of all South African AIC members said they were charismatic.

In 1895, John Alexander Dowie established a church in Johannesburg. Eventually this joins with the Christian Catholic Church in Zion. In 1904 a missionary from Dowie's Zion City was sent to oversee this church consisting of around 5,000 members who were mostly Zulus.

In 1908, Thomas Hezmalhalch and John Lake, along with others, from William Seymour's Azusa Street Mission went to South Africa to convert and organize missions. Seymour decided to send missionaries to South Africa because a reader of Seymour's Apostolic Faith newsletter responded inviting Azusa missionaries to South Africa. This mission was well received as South Africans were predisposed to pentecostal ideas such as Speaking in Tongues, Spirit Healing and the Holy Spirit from previous missions done by Holiness missionaries as well as John Alexander Dowie's Zion City. John Lake, who was also an elder in Zion City, helped bridge the two missions together and partnered with Afrikaner Pieter Le Roux to establish the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa in October 1913. Seymour's Pentecostal vision was not always well received in South Africa because Seymour's missionaries promoted the idea of social equality between the white South Africans and the native black South Africans, which the white South Africans disagreed with. The issue of racial segregation created a few breakaway churches from the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa, the Catholic Apostolic Holy Spirit Church in Zion, created in 1910, Zion Apostolic Faith Mission, created in 1920, which later in 1925, split into the Zion Christian Church which is the largest South African church today. Seymour's missionary work in South Africa caused Pieter Le Roux, an Afrikaner Pastor, to adopt the Pentecostal message and spread it through native black South Africans and eventually through Zionist Pentecostalism and into African Instituted Churches.

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