The Great Convergence
Convergence…the act of converging
Two of the greatest African American male leaders in American history are William Seymour and Martin Luther King Jr.
Converging...to come together and unite in a common interest or focus
I’m writing this to highlight a Native American aspect to their life’s work.
Rev. William Seymour came to Downtown Los Angeles from Houston in February 1906 in search of a “second Pentecost”. Pentecost, as recorded in the Book of Acts, was an overwhelmingly dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem and the result eventually was called “Christianity”. Rev. Seymour found his “second Pentecost”, commonly called the Azusa Street Revival.
In 2000, Time-Life published The One Hundred Most Important Events Of The Past One Thousand Years 1000–2000AD. Number 68 on their list was the Azusa Street Revival of 1906.
Rev. Seymour, the son of slaves, came to Los Angeles when it was illegal for a Black man to be on the streets at night in some parts of the City. One of those places was Pasadena.
One night, before the Revival began, a Voice told him to take the train to Pasadena, what station to get off at, go here a couple blocks, turn left for a block, knock on this front door. And Rev. Seymour knocked.
A young white woman opened the door. Rev. Seymour said, I am the answer to your prayers. She let him inside and her friends from Pasadena ended up initially financing the Azusa Street Revival.
Azusa Street is a small side street in the southern part of Little Tokyo, very close to Skid Row.
The Azusa Street Revival took place inside a building that Biddy Mason, an early Los Angeles matriarch and former slave, used for her church (FAME — First African Methodist Episcopal) when she owned the building twenty years earlier. After three years, the Revival began to collapse mainly due to the sin of Racism.
As the Revival collapsed, Rev. Seymour gave a prophecy that in about 100 years there would be an even greater and more far reaching Outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Shekinah Glory that what was experienced at Azusa. Shekinah Glory is a Hebrew phrase referring to extraordinary manifestations of the Presence of God. Moses and the Burning Bush is an example of Shekinah Glory.
Azusa is a Tongva word most often translated as Blessed Miracle or Healing. The Tongva are Native indigenous people of Los Angeles. Azusa was a name for Coma Lee, a teen-age divine healer from the 1700's.
In his mid-20’s in 1954, Martin Luther King Jr. was the Pastor of Rosa Parks. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law, Dr. King, realizing the Civil Rights Movement needed a “second phase”, decided to focus on the issue of Poverty in America.
That “second phase” became the Poor People’s Campaign, announced to the public by Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in December 1967. A March and Occupation of Washington was planned for the summer of 1968.
In March 1968, a strategic summit in Atlanta for the upcoming action in Washington brought together leaders of poor people from across the country. The strategy forged over the weekend was to tell the Native story first, then the African American story, then the Hispanic story. Three weeks later, Dr. King was assassinated and the strategy collapsed.
Like Dr. King in December 1967, Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis announced in December 2017 the beginning of the Poor People’s Campaign: a national call for moral revival. A foundational truth in this modern version is to confront the Distorted Moral Narrative. This Distorted Moral Narrative can be found in how Christian leaders support Donald Trump, often called Christian Nationalism.
In December 2020, Sean Fuecht brought Let Us Worship, COVID “worship protests” to Azusa Street, including an “outreach” into Skid Row that was met with strong resistance through an effort by Skid Row Community Leaders and the California and Los Angeles Poor Peoples Campaign.