The evangelical awakening gained unexpected reinforcement in 1906 from another source of "personal" Christianity, Pentecostalism. The Pentecostal experience--"the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues"--was not new. The spark of twentieth-century Pentecostalism as a three-year-long revival, beginning in 1906, at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. There were personal experiences of tongue-speaking earlier, but Azusa Street ignited world-wide Pentecostalism. Christians from all over North America, Europe, and the Third World visited Azusa Street and carried the fire back home

Pentecostal denominations followed. The largest in the United States were the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church. These were usually filled with socially and economically depressed people. In 1960 the Pentecostal experience broke out in middle class Lutheran and Episcopal congregations.

This new explosion of Pentecostal passion was dubbed "neo-Pentecostalism" or