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Japanese A Pentecostal church is an evangelical church. In Latin America “evangelical” means any Protestant church, and in most countries Pew surveyed, a majority of Protestants were Pentecostal. So the difference lies inside one family: Pentecostal churches teach a baptism in the Holy Spirit after conversion, shown by speaking in tongues, and the Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist churches beside them do not.
Both kinds of church preach that a person must be born again through faith in Christ, both hold the Bible as their final authority, and both work to spread the gospel. We can see where they part in one scene from Acts. The believers in Samaria had already been baptized when Peter and John came down and prayed for them, “that they might receive the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:15). Pentecostals read there a second experience that every believer should seek, while Baptists and most other evangelicals hold that every believer receives the Spirit at conversion. The other questions between them, about tongues, healing and prophecy, and about what a believer should expect from God in worship, all gather around that one.
To see what Pentecostals teach beside what nondenominational and evangelical churches teach on 55 questions, open our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations.
What Pentecostal and other evangelical churches share, and where they part
| Question | Pentecostal churches | Other evangelical churches |
|---|---|---|
| Must a person be born again? | Yes, by repentance and faith in Christ | Yes, by repentance and faith in Christ |
| The Bible | The “infallible, authoritative rule” (Assemblies of God) | The “supreme standard” (Southern Baptists) |
| A second experience after conversion | Every believer should seek the baptism in the Spirit, shown by tongues | Not taught: the Spirit’s baptism comes with the new birth |
| Healing and prophecy | Healing “an integral part of the gospel” (Assemblies of God) | Prayer for the sick; views on prophecy vary |
| Worship | Often includes tongues, prayer for healing and prophecy (Pew, Latin America) | Varies from church to church |
| Rules on dress and conduct | Strict in some, such as Mexico’s Iglesia Apostólica | No dress rules in the Baptist confession |
How Pentecostals and nondenominational churches answer
Each answer is quoted from the church’s own documents or from one of our articles.
Revelation today
Pentecostal
The Church needs to recognize and respond to the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit through the gift of prophecy given to the Church today.
From Assemblies of God position paper, Modern-Day Prophecy (Wayback copy)
Nondenominational and Evangelical
God’s revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today.
From Lausanne Covenant, section 2 (evangelical statement, 1974)
Who is saved
Pentecostal
The Assemblies of God does not believe that someone will go to hell because they were born in the wrong country or the wrong century.
From Assemblies of God (USA), position paper The Final Judgment, section 2
Nondenominational and Evangelical
Jesus Christ, being himself the only God-Man, who gave himself as the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and people. There is no other name by which we must be saved.
From Lausanne Covenant, section 3 (evangelical statement, 1974)
Human nature
Pentecostal
Every call to repentance in Scripture is an indication that God has given to humankind a free will which can choose right or wrong.
Nondenominational and Evangelical
We acknowledge that sin affects the degree to which human beings can fully reflect the image of God. Sin corrupts our inherent human nature and capacities, our relationships with others, and our human vocation in the world.
From Lausanne Movement, The Seoul Statement (2024), IV. The Human Person
Holiness in this life
Pentecostal
Sanctification is realized in the believer by recognizing his identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, and by the faith reckoning daily upon the fact of that union, and by offering every faculty continually to the dominion of the Holy Spirit.
From Assemblies of God Statement of Fundamental Truths, truth 9, Sanctification (Wayback copy)
Nondenominational and Evangelical
However, like seed planted in good soil, the good news does not bring the fullness of transformation or bear the fruit of transformation all at once. Rather, this transformation takes place gradually over the course of a lifetime in which the increase of holiness and love demonstrates the reality of the gospel’s transforming power.
From Lausanne Movement, The Seoul Statement (2024), V. Discipleship: Our Calling to Holiness and Mission
How baptism is done
Pentecostal
The ordinance of baptism by immersion is commanded by the Scriptures.
Nondenominational and Evangelical
We believe that the Lord, Jesus Christ instituted two ordinances for the church: the full-immersion water baptism of believers and the Lord’s Supper
Women ministers
Pentecostal
The Assemblies of God recognizes the spiritual gifting of women in all aspects and levels of church ministry as revealed in the Scriptures.
From Assemblies of God position paper, Women in Ministerial Leadership (Wayback copy)
Nondenominational and Evangelical
We recognize that there are different views sincerely held by those who seek to be faithful and obedient to Scripture. Some interpret apostolic teaching to imply that women should not teach or preach, or that they may do so but not in sole authority over men. Others interpret the spiritual equality of women, the exercise of the edifying gift of prophecy by women in the New Testament church, and their hosting of churches in their homes, as implying that the spiritual gifts of leading and teaching may be received and exercised in ministry by both women and men.
Demons and exorcism
Pentecostal
While believers will engage in spiritual warfare and will be oppressed, they cannot be possessed by the demonic forces.
From Assemblies of God (USA), position paper Spiritual Warfare and the Believer
Nondenominational and Evangelical
While affirming that being in Christ means the Christian belongs to Christ and that our nature is transformed, just as with sin and our need to deal with sin in our body, mind, emotions, and will, we wonder if the demonic, while no longer able to claim ownership of Christians, may continue to afflict them in body, mind, and emotions, unless dealt with.
From Lausanne Movement, Deliver Us From Evil consultation statement (Nairobi 2000), Areas of Tension
Alcohol
Pentecostal
From its inception, the Assemblies of God has been unequivocally committed to abstinence from alcoholic beverages, a conviction firmly rooted in what the Bible teaches about the abuse of wine, the consumption of strong drink, and also in its cardinal ethical principle of love for God and others.
From Assemblies of God (USA), position paper Abstinence from Alcohol (2016)
Nondenominational and Evangelical
In keeping with our historic stance, we also called on our churches to take seriously the national problem of alcohol use, educating their members to its dangers and encouraging them to practice abstinence.
From National Association of Evangelicals, Alcohol Abuse (1989 resolution, archived)
Where the table quotes a church, the Pentecostal words come from the Statement of Fundamental Truths of the Assemblies of God (USA) and the evangelical words from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The rest comes from the Pew Research Center’s 2014 survey of Latin America and a 2015 study of a Mexican Pentecostal church.
Is a Pentecostal church an evangelical church?
In most uses of the word it is, and Latin America shows it plainly. When the Pew Research Center surveyed 18 Latin American countries and Puerto Rico in 2014, it found that in the region “‘Protestant’ and ‘evangelical’ often are used interchangeably.” Its count of Protestants there takes in “members of historical Protestant churches (e.g., Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, Methodists, Lutherans or Presbyterians), members of Pentecostal churches (e.g., Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal Church of God or the Quadrangular Evangelical Church) and members of other Protestant churches.”
Across the countries surveyed, a median of 65% of those Protestants identified as Pentecostal Christians, either because their church belongs to a Pentecostal denomination (a median of 47%) or because they call themselves Pentecostal whatever their church (52%), and the two groups overlap. In Panama 39% of Protestants, and in Brazil 33%, said they had spoken in tongues themselves. So in Latin America most evangelical churches are already Pentecostal, and the real comparison there is between them and the Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist and Brethren churches beside them.
Pew’s 2011 study of world Christianity gives the same answer outside Latin America, speaking of evangelicals as “a trans-denominational movement,” found in “numerous denominations and church traditions, such as Methodism and Presbyterianism; pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God; and denominations that are expressly and historically evangelical.”
What do evangelicals and Pentecostals believe in common?
They hold the great truths of the Christian creeds in common, and the evangelical stress on conversion as well. The National Association of Evangelicals confesses “one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” and calls the Bible “the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” The Assemblies of God teaches that “Salvation is received through repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.” They even baptize alike: the Southern Baptist confession says that “Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and the Assemblies of God also baptizes “All who repent and believe on Christ as Savior and Lord,” by immersion.
Both stand on what Jesus told Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3), and they stand there together before any question about tongues comes up. A free series of short lessons, Christianity: What Christians Have Believed for 2,000 Years, walks through the faith that evangelicals and Pentecostals hold in common with Christians of every tradition.
What do Pentecostal churches teach about the Holy Spirit?
Pentecostal churches teach that every believer should seek a second experience after conversion. The Assemblies of God’s seventh article calls the baptism in the Holy Spirit “the promise of the Father” and says, “This was the normal experience of all in the early Christian church.” It comes “distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth,” and it brings power for life and service, with the gifts of the Spirit.
Pentecostals find the pattern in Acts, most clearly in Samaria, where the believers had already been baptized when Peter and John came to them:
Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
Acts 8:15–17
Jesus had promised that power: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8). And when the Spirit fell on Cornelius’s household, the believers who came with Peter were astonished, “For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God” (Acts 10:46). It is from scenes like these that the eighth article of the Assemblies of God calls tongues “the initial physical sign” of Spirit baptism.
What do Baptist and other evangelical churches teach about the Spirit?
They teach that every believer receives the Spirit at conversion, and that no second baptism is needed. The Baptist Faith and Message says that the Holy Spirit “cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows the spiritual gifts by which they serve God through His church.” When Paul writes, “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9), they hear him saying that everyone who belongs to Christ already has the Spirit.
Many evangelicals also point to Paul’s questions about the gifts: “Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?” (1 Corinthians 12:30). Paul expects the answer no, and so they do not make tongues the sign of anything every believer should have. The Assemblies of God answers with a distinction: the tongues that come with Spirit baptism, its eighth article says, are “the same in essence as the gift of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:4-10,28), but different in purpose and use.” One is a sign meant for every Spirit-baptized believer, and the other is a gift that, as Paul says, not all receive.
The Assemblies of God knows that the Pentecostal hope, taught badly, can turn into pressure. An article in Influence, its own magazine, warns: “There are Pentecostals who teach the promise as a demand rather than an expectation. What a sense of demand treats as an obligation, a sense of expectation sees as an opportunity.” If you have been told that without tongues you lack the Spirit, those words are for you. Whether tongues are needed for salvation, and which churches say so, is the subject of Protestant vs Pentecostal.
Do Pentecostal churches have rules about dress?
Some do, among them the Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús, a Mexican Oneness Pentecostal church that baptizes in the name of Jesus Christ. It was founded by migrants who had met the Azusa Street movement in Los Angeles, and a 2015 study of it describes a discipline that forbids alcohol, tobacco, jewelry and makeup. The Assemblies of God’s statement asks for “a life of righteousness and true holiness” but sets no dress code, and the Baptist Faith and Message has none either. The reasons such churches give are set out in Why United Pentecostal women wear dresses and skirts.
What does evangelical mean in the United States?
In the United States “evangelical” names a movement that runs through many denominations, rather than every Protestant church. The National Association of Evangelicals describes it by the four marks the British historian David Bebbington named: conversionism, “the belief that lives need to be transformed through a ‘born-again’ experience and a life long process of following Jesus”; biblicism, “a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority”; activism, “the expression and demonstration of the gospel in missionary and social reform efforts”; and crucicentrism, “a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity.”
Most American Pentecostal churches fit inside that movement. The Assemblies of God, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and the Foursquare Church all belong to the National Association of Evangelicals, whose community, it says, “brings together Reformed, Holiness, Anabaptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic and other traditions.” Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study puts the Assemblies of God and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) in the evangelical Protestant tradition. There are exceptions, though: Pew places the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal church, in the historically Black Protestant tradition, which it counts separately, and the Oneness United Pentecostal Church International is not a member of the National Association of Evangelicals. Mainline churches such as the United Methodist Church are Protestant without being evangelical in this sense, and Evangelical vs Protestant explains that line.
Are evangelicals and Pentecostals different in Italy?
In Italy, as in Latin America, “evangelical” is the ordinary word for Protestant. The Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy even gives its own name in English as the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy. It unites almost all of Italy’s historic Protestant denominations and some Pentecostal and charismatic churches, about 65,000 people by its own count.
Pentecostals are by far the largest group of Italian evangelicals: in 2023 CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, estimated that of 366,000 Protestants who are Italian citizens, 250,000 (68%) were Pentecostal, against 61,000 in the historic Protestant churches, and the Assemblies of God in Italy alone counted 120,000 of them.
That church’s full name translates as Christian Evangelical Churches Assemblies of God in Italy, and it describes its faith as Christian, evangelical and Pentecostal. Its articles of faith teach the baptism in the Holy Spirit as an experience after the new birth, with speaking in other tongues as its first sign, and divine healing through prayer, anointing with oil and the laying on of hands. The churches trace their beginning to the Los Angeles revival of 1906 and to Italian emigrants who brought the message home from 1908, and there is suffering in their story: they were persecuted from 1935 to 1944, and they won legal recognition in 1959.
An Italian Pentecostal, then, is an evangelical too, and what sets Pentecostals apart there, as in Latin America and the United States, is the baptism in the Spirit and the gifts they expect to follow it. On the rest they stand with their Baptist neighbors: the new birth, the Bible, and the work Jesus gave to all who follow him, “ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8).
Related reading
- Protestant vs Pentecostal
- Pentecostals, charismatics and evangelicals
- Pentecostal vs Baptist
- Evangelical vs Protestant
- Evangelical vs Catholic
- What it means to be baptized in the Holy Spirit
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