The General Council of the Assemblies of God, operating as the Assemblies of God USA (AG), is a Pentecostal Christian denomination in the United States and the U.S. branch of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, the world's largest Pentecostal body.
The AG reported 2.98 million adherents and 1.74 million members in 2023. In 2011, it was the ninth largest Christian denomination and the second largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. It was the fourth largest Protestant denomination in 2025 according to Pew Research. In 2024, Pew Research Center estimated that 1.1% of US adults, or about 2.9 million people, self-identifies with the Assemblies of God USA. The Assemblies of God is a Finished Work denomination, and it holds to a conservative, evangelical and classical Arminian theology as expressed in the Statement of Fundamental Truths and position papers, which emphasize such core Pentecostal doctrines as the baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, divine healing and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The fellowship's polity is a hybrid of presbyterian and congregational models. This tension between local independence and national authority is seen in the AG's historical reluctance to refer to itself as a denomination, preferring the terms fellowship and movement. The national headquarters are in Springfield, Missouri, where the administrative and executive offices and Gospel Publishing House are located. Convoy of Hope serves as the AG's aid organization. The AG's college ministry is Chi Alpha. The Assemblies of God maintains relationships with other Pentecostal groups at both regional and national levels through the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America and the Pentecostal World Fellowship. It is also a member of the Wesleyan Holiness Consortium and the National Association of Evangelicals.
The denomination was founded in 1914 during a meeting of Pentecostal ministers at Hot Springs, Arkansas. These ministers came from several different Pentecostal movements. Some were loosely affiliated with the Church of God in Christ, Apostolic Faith, or other early Pentecostal groups. In 1916, the General Council condemned Oneness Pentecostalism, causing a split within the young denomination and the adoption of the Statement of Fundamental Truths, which endorses the Trinity. Established during the Jim Crow era, the AG forbade the ordination of black ministers from 1939 until 1962, although the AG explicitly included Hispanic Americans from 1918 onwards. African Americans could still be issued local licenses to preach. Black Pentecostals seeking ordination were referred to the Church of God in Christ. Women were allowed to become pastors in 1935, but prior to that women had served as evangelists, preachers, and missionaries.
The denomination identified itself with the broader American evangelical movement in the 1940s. The charismatic movement of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the AG as well. Standards on behavior and dress became more relaxed over time, and the denomination dropped pacifism as an official teaching. In the 1990s and 2000s, AG churches have experienced revivals that have drawn comparisons to early Pentecostalism, the most famous being the Brownsville Revival. Chi Alpha, the AG's college ministry, has been involved in multiple controversies over sexual abuse since 2022.
History
Background
Charles Parham Charles Parham was a leading figure in the early development of the Assemblies of God. Parham was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and served as an unordained supply pastor in Eudora, Kansas, from 1893 to 1895. Parham believed in the Methodist doctrine of entire sanctification as a second work of grace. He was also an adherent of the holiness movement and believed that faith healing was provided for in Christ's atonement. Parham had some contact with the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church led by Benjamin H. Irwin. He accepted Irwin's teaching of a third experience of grace identified with the "baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire".
After 1895, Parham left the Methodist Church and became a nondenominational evangelist. As a restorationist, he rejected traditional denominations as incompatible with true, biblical Christianity, which he referred to as the "apostolic faith". By 1900, he concluded based on his study of the Bible that glossolalia (speaking in tongues) was the evidence of receiving baptism with the Holy Spirit. While other people had claimed to speak in tongues before Parham, he was the first to connect glossolalia with Spirit baptism. His Apostolic Faith Movement was strongest in southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas. He established several congregations around Galena, Kansas.
In 1905, Parham moved his headquarters to Houston, Texas, and opened a Bible training school. One of his students was William J. Seymour, an African American holiness preacher; Seymour studied outside of Parham's classrooms due to the Jim Crow laws. In 1906, Seymour moved to Los Angeles, California, where his preaching ignited the interracial Azusa Street Revival. Seymour initially considered himself under Parham's authority, but Parham's criticism of the revival led to a permanent split between the two men. Seymour was also only permitted by Parham to preach to blacks. The Azusa Street Revival soon eclipsed Parham’s influence over the nascent Pentecostal movement.
In 1906, Parham's movement had an estimated 8,600 members concentrated in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. In that year, he appointed Warren Fay Carothers as general field director for the United States. Howard A. Goss was appointed field director for Texas to supervise around 60 full-time evangelists. Around this time, L. C. Hall and D. C. O. Opperman joined the movement. Both men were prominent former members of John Alexander Dowie's Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. Parham attempted to gain control of Zion, Illinois, the utopian community established by Dowie. As a result, a number of Dowie's followers accepted the Pentecostal message.
In 1907, Parham was charged with sodomy while in San Antonio, Texas. The scandal led evangelists to renounce his authority, and his organization dissolved.
Apostolic Faith Movement reorganized
Parham's former associates reorganized the Apostolic Faith Movement. Prominent leaders of the new movement were Howard A. Goss, L. C. Hall, D. C. O. Opperman, and A. G. Canada. They were later joined by Eudorus N. Bell, previously a Southern Baptist minister. They began to identify themselves as Pentecostals. The Apostolic Faith Movement played a leading role in organizing and institutionalizing Pentecostalism in the Midwest and Southwest and from 1909 to 1912 absorbed smaller Pentecostal groups. The Apostolic Faith Movement was a mostly-white organization, but it had some black and Hispanic ministers and missionaries.
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) was a predominantly African-American Holiness church headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1907, its founder, Charles Harrison Mason, visited Azusa Street and adopted the Pentecostal message. Mason's group was the first Pentecostal denomination to incorporate, which gave its clergy privileges such as railroad discounts. As COGIC grew, it became interracial with many white members, and many white Pentecostal ministers sought ordination from Mason.
Early Pentecostal groups were loosely organized. Historian Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. notes, "While a person might hold primary allegiance to one organization, she or he could hold credentials with a second organization as well." In 1907, Goss had received a license to preach from Mason's group, and he claimed that Mason had given him permission to issue ministerial credentials under the Churches of God in Christ name for the "white work". In 1910, the Apostolic Faith Movement was renamed “Church of God in Christ and in Unity with the Apostolic Faith.” This change was part of a movement within Pentecostalism at that time to adopt church names that appeared in the Bible, such as Church of God, Church of God in Christ, and Assembly of God.
In the Church of God in Christ, white ministers were supervised by the African-American leaders of the denomination; though in some instances, the relations between Mason's church and white ministers were more informal. Beginning in 1911, many white ministers affiliated with COGIC expressed dissatisfaction with being under African American leadership.Cecil M. Robeck, Jr, Amos Yong, The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2014, p. 78 In 1913, 353 white ministers formed a new church, which gave its own credentials, although still using the same name as Mason's organization.
Chicago revival By 1910, the center of the Pentecostal movement had moved from Los Angeles to Chicago, Illinois. According to historian Vinson Synan, "for the next decade, Chicago served as the de facto worldwide missions and theological center for the fast-growing movement".
The two most important Pentecostal congregations were the Stone Church and the North Avenue Mission. Both churches had contacts with the Apostolic Faith Movement. The Stone Church was established in 1906 by William Hamner Piper, a former follower of Dowie who had joined the Pentecostal movement. Due to its strategic location in Chicago, the church often hosted large conventions and rallies.
The North Avenue Mission was pastored by William Howard Durham, who received Spirit baptism at Azusa Street in 1907. Unlike other early Pentecostal leaders, Durham did not believe in entire sanctification as a second work of grace. He believed in the finished work doctrine, teaching that "when God saves a man, He makes him clean". Durham had a direct influence on many of the founders of Pentecostal movements around the world. A. H. Argue of Winnipeg, Canada, received Spirit baptism under Durham's ministry. Argue returned to Canada, and his preaching led to the founding of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, the Assemblies of God's sister denomination.
Christian and Missionary Alliance The Stone Church and the North Avenue Mission were the "main exporters" of Pentecostalism to Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) churches of the Midwest and Northeast. The CMA was a higher life denomination founded by A. B. Simpson.
Simpson and other Alliance leaders were cautiously receptive to the new movement. In the spring of 1907, the Alliance's annual council was convinced "that God [was] now visiting His people in many places with a special manifestation of power".Christian and Missionary Alliance, 8 June 1907, 205, quoted in Throughout the summer of 1907, aspects of the Pentecostal revival were on display at CMA events. At the Beulah Park Convention in Collinwood, Ohio, it was reported that "God poured out His Spirit upon the people in general and upon others in particular, so that they spoke with new tongues and magnified God. The sick were healed and demons were expelled"."Beulah Park Convention," Christian and Missionary Alliance, 14 September 1907, 128, quoted in
While Simpson was not opposed to speaking in tongues, he opposed the doctrine of evidentiary tongues. In 1914, the Alliance adopted an official position stating, "the consecrated believer may receive the Spirit in His fulness without speaking in tongues or any miraculous manifestation whatever.""Official Statement of the Board of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Setting Forth Its Position with Reference to 'Tongues' and the Baptism of the Spirit," Alliance Collection, AGA, quoted in Afterwards, CMA members who believed strongly in evidentiary tongues left the Alliance. After Simpson's death, the Alliance became more hostile to tongue-speaking. A. W. Tozer coined the phrase "seek not, forbid not" that summarized the CMA stance on speaking in tongues.