Almost immediately after the birth of Pentecostalism, the branch of Christianity that gave birth to the movement was disowning the offspring. The parent, radical evangelicalism, regarded the child as an ugly mutant. Abusive words flew back and forth for decades, subsiding into sullen silence only in the 1930s.

These "radical evangelicals"—Holiness Wesleyans and "higher life" fundamentalists (such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance)—repeatedly called the new movement a "fad" or a "craze." The Christian Witness and Advocate of Bible Holiness, for example, charged that the "new fanaticism" would soon "have its run and lie a curiosity in the museum of ten thousand dead follies."

Others highlighted the notoriety of the revival's geographical birthplace. F. W. Pitt, a prominent London pastor, dismissed the stirring as a peculiarly American phenomenon, "the land of wonder-meetings and freak religions." Another writer affirmed what many suspected: Los Angeles harbored more fanatics ...

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