Theology

Parham on Social Reform

Note: Charles Parham was a founder of the Assembly of God.

     "While we are not personally a member of any lodge, or union, neither have we aught against them, for if the church had done its duty in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, these institutions would not have existed" (from Parham's Everlasting Gospel, p. 33 as quoted in Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism by Robert Mapes Anderson, 1979, p. 210)

     "How long can this nation go unpunished, when the principle support of the city government is blood money, drawn from the saloons and the brothels, wine-presses, where the blood of your sons and daughters is ruthlessly trodden out. Thousands perishing year after year, with scarce a pitying eye, save of Him who shall render judgment. ...
     "According to the Word of God, we are facing an international struggle, wherein the governments, and the rich and the churches will be arrayed on one side. On the other side will stand the masses of wage slaves who have been ground under the iron heel of oppression, whose lives have been exploited in industries and sweatshops until their whole being cries out for revenge. Conditions have obtained similar to those when a nation is sorely oppressed by a foreign power and the people patriotically arise to overthrow the power of the oppressor. ... The Bible declares that the rich will be killed like dogs. ... It is God's purpose to let all the plans of humanity fail, that they may be ready and willing to accept the rule of the Son of God. ...
     "The Lord demands today of every true follower that he drop narrow creedisms, sink denominationalism into oblivion, accept the full gospel with all its gifts and graces, and purify their hearts for His soon coming, or be lost in the chaos and darkness of the coming overthrow of nations in the 'struggle of the classes.'" (The Sermons of Charles F. Parham, 1985, p. 118, 20, 26, 32)

     "In a 1912 sermon Parham lampooned the United States in resistance saying 'this country will end with a dictator and a final fall ... in which the government, the rich and the churches will be on one side and the masses on the other.' " Heaven Below by Grant Wacker, Harvard U Pr, 2001, p. 218.