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Los Angeles events had reached India. 81 According to Joe Creech the ‘myth of
origin’ that the Azusa Street revival is ‘the central point from which worldwide
Pentecostal movement emerged’ is the ‘long-term effect’ of Bartleman’s accounts.
He rightly comments that as most historians of Pentecostalism heavily relied on
Bartleman, other points of origin were neglected. 82 There has been a notion even
among many south Indian Pentecostals that Pentecostalism was brought to India
by North American missionaries.
This Eurocentric view holds that the Pentecostal Movement came to and spread in
India through western Pentecostal missionaries who had received the Azusa Street
experience. Alfred G. (1874-1944) and Lillian Garr (1878-1916), who came to
Calcutta (east India) in late December 1906, were the first among them. T.B.
Barratt of Norway came to Coonoor in 1908, and shortly afterwards Mary Weems
Chapman began to work in Madras before moving to Travancore. George E. Berg,
an independent American missionary of German origin who had experienced the
Azusa Street Revival, came to South India in 1908 along with his wife Mary
Berg. 83 One of the outcomes of their work was the establishment of the first
Pentecostal church in Kerala, Thuvayur Church (1911). 84 Another American
missionary, R.F. Cook, who received Holy Spirit baptism from the Azusa Street
81
Anderson, Spreading Fires, 75-108. See also Gary B. McGee, '"Latter Rain" Falling in the East:
Early-Twentieth-Century Pentecostalism in India and the Debate over Speaking in Tongues,’
Church History 68, no.3 (1999): 648-665.
82
Joe Creech, ‘Visions of Glory: The Place of the Azusa Street Revival in Pentecostal History,’
Church History 65, no.3 (1996): 406-09.
83
Berg was working in South India with Bangalore as his station, from 1901, as a Brethren
missionary, but he received the Azusa Street experience only in 1906. For further details, see
Anderson, Spreading Fires, 95-98; George, ‘Pentecostal Beginnings in India,’ 224-25; George,
‘Pentecostal Beginnings in Travancore,’ 24-26.
84
According to Mathew, it was an independent church, but accepted Pentecostal faith as the result
of the revival meetings conducted by Berg. See Mathew, Kerala Penthecosthu, 31. The church
building was constructed only in 1914.
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