Protestant vs Pentecostal: Pentecostals Are Protestants Who Expect the Spirit’s Gifts Today

Pentecostals are Protestants. Their churches grew out of the Holiness movement, the outbreak of tongues at Topeka in 1901 and the Azusa Street revival in 1906. They keep the Bible’s authority and salvation by grace through faith, and add a baptism in the Holy Spirit after conversion, shown by speaking in tongues, and the expectation of healing today.

So “Protestant or Pentecostal” is not a choice between two religions. It is a family and one of its branches. The Pew Research Center defines Pentecostals as “members of distinct Protestant denominations or independent churches that hold the teaching that all Christians should seek a post-conversion religious experience called the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” The Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ are among them. What sets the branch apart is one morning in Jerusalem, the day of Pentecost, and a single question about it: was the wind and fire of that day given once, or is it meant to fall on every believer again?

Where Pentecostal churches part from other Protestant churches

Why are Pentecostals counted as Protestants?

Because of where they came from and what they still confess. The movement’s roots, as Pew traces them, lie in “the 19th-century Holiness Movement, which promoted intense personal piety.” On 1 January 1901, students at Charles Parham’s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, began speaking in tongues at a prayer meeting, and Parham taught that tongues were the “Bible evidence” of Spirit baptism. One of his students, William J. Seymour, an African-American Holiness preacher, led the revival that broke out in 1906 at the Apostolic Faith Mission, 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles. It drew “thousands of curiosity seekers and pilgrims from around the world,” in the words of the Assemblies of God’s own history. The Assemblies of God was organized in 1914 at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the midst of the Pentecostal revival that followed.

Then it spread across the world. Pew’s 2011 analysis of figures from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity counted about 279 million Pentecostal Christians in 2010, and 305 million charismatic Christians in other churches.

On the questions that divided Protestants from Rome, Pentecostals stand with the Reformation. The first article of the Assemblies of God’s statement calls the Scriptures “the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.” Its article on salvation says that “Salvation is received through repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ,” and that a person is saved “being justified by grace through faith.” That is Paul’s gospel, the one every Protestant church would sign: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

The church’s own magazine, Influence, marks the place where the paths divide: “Christians from various denominations and traditions can affirm the first six articles of the Assemblies of God’s Statement of Fundamental Truths. Article 7 is where the document becomes distinctively Pentecostal.” Six articles shared, then one apart. The common ground, and the creeds behind it, are the subject of Christianity: What Christians Have Believed for 2,000 Years, a free course of short lessons.

What is the baptism in the Holy Spirit?

Pentecostals take their name and their central teaching from the day the Spirit came:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Acts 2:1–4

The Assemblies of God reads that morning as a pattern for every believer, coming after conversion. Its seventh article says that “All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire,” that with it comes “the enduement of power for life and service,” and that “This experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth.” The eighth names the sign: Spirit baptism “is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance.” The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) believes “In the baptism with the Holy Ghost subsequent to a clean heart,” and in speaking with tongues as “the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Ghost.”

Other Protestants read Pentecost as the Spirit given once, at the start of the Christian life. Paul wrote: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Southern Baptists take him at his word: “At the moment of regeneration He baptizes every believer into the Body of Christ.” Lutherans tie the Spirit to preaching and the sacraments. The Augsburg Confession says that “through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Ghost is given, who works faith; where and when it pleases God, in them that hear the Gospel.” Both sides want the same Spirit. They differ on how he comes.

Do Pentecostals believe you must speak in tongues to be saved?

The Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ say no. The Assemblies of God’s 1999 position paper on Spirit baptism states: “Scripture clearly states that all believers have the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:9, 16).” It calls conversion “supremely precious,” and teaches Spirit baptism as something more that God gives to people who are already his. The Church of God in Christ says it in one sentence: “We believe that we are not baptized with the Holy Ghost in order to be saved.” It still holds that “a Holy Ghost experience is mandatory for all men today,” and rests that teaching on the needs of the early church’s mission.

Oneness Pentecostals teach otherwise. The United Pentecostal Church International says that “We obey the gospel” by “repentance (death to sin), water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ (burial), and the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the initial sign of speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance (resurrection).” For them, Spirit baptism with tongues is part of obeying the gospel itself. The Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ and the other Protestant churches in the table do not teach that.

Are Oneness Pentecostals Protestant?

They came out of the same revival, but most Protestants do not count their teaching about God as orthodox. The United Pentecostal Church International teaches that “There is one God, who has revealed Himself as Father; through His Son, in redemption; and as the Holy Spirit, by emanation.” That is a different confession from the Trinity, one God in three persons.

The break came early, and it was painful. Almost as soon as it was founded, the Assemblies of God faced, in its own history’s words, a dispute over “whether to abandon traditional Trinitarian theology in favor of a modal monarchian view of the godhead (also called the ‘New Issue’ or Oneness theology).” In 1916 its General Council approved the Statement of Fundamental Truths, “which affirmed Trinitarian orthodoxy.” The National Association of Evangelicals confesses “one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” and lists the Assemblies of God and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) among its member denominations; the United Pentecostal Church International is not among them. Pentecostals and the Trinity sets out the two views.

Do other Protestants believe in tongues and healing today?

Some do and some do not. The Westminster Confession, the standard of Presbyterian churches, teaches that God committed his revelation “wholly unto writing,” with “those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.” Many Reformed Christians conclude that prophecy and tongues ended with the apostles; they are called cessationists. Both sides open the same letter of Paul. He wrote that “whether there be tongues, they shall cease” (1 Corinthians 13:8), and a chapter later, “Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:39–40).

Every Protestant church prays for the sick. James told us how: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick” (James 5:14–15). Pentecostals go further and make healing part of what Christ won on the cross. The Assemblies of God’s twelfth article says: “Divine healing is an integral part of the gospel. Deliverance from sickness is provided for in the Atonement, and is the privilege of all believers.” The Church of God (Cleveland) agrees: “Divine healing is provided for all in the atonement.”

Since 1960 the charismatic movement has carried Pentecostal practices into other churches, beginning, Pew says, among “mainline Protestants in the U.S. in 1960”; Pentecostals, charismatics and evangelicals explains how the three differ.

In France, are Pentecostals Protestants or evangelicals?

Both. The French Protestant Federation (Fédération protestante de France) describes French Protestantism as two main currents. One is Lutheran and Reformed, going back to Luther and Calvin. The other is evangelical, and the federation lists Pentecostals in it alongside Adventists, Baptists, charismatics, Mennonites, Methodists and the Salvation Army. Its members include Pentecostal churches such as the Église de Pentecôte de France, a union of Assemblies of God churches (ADFP) and the Mission évangélique tzigane. The Musée protestant names the Assemblées de Dieu and the Mission évangélique tzigane as the main Pentecostal churches in France.

Assemblies of God churches sit in both bodies. Besides the federation’s own Assemblies of God union, the Assemblées de Dieu de France describe themselves as an evangelical Christian association of Pentecostal churches and a member of the National Council of Evangelicals of France (CNEF). The CNEF describes its members as Protestant evangelical churches and says it represents more than 70% of them, through 36 unions of churches and 176 member associations. So the French line runs between the two currents, with the Lutheran and Reformed churches on one side and the evangelical churches, Pentecostals among them, on the other. The federation counts both as Protestant, and both trace themselves to the Reformation.

Elsewhere, too, many Pentecostals are counted as evangelicals. Evangelical vs Pentecostal churches explains what the word evangelical covers and where Pentecostal churches differ from other evangelical ones.

Whatever we call them, every one of these churches looks back to the same room in Jerusalem, where the disciples waited “with one accord in one place” (Acts 2:1). They argue over what happened next. They agree on who came.

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