Baptism of fire

The birthplace of British Pentecostalism, the place where the fire fell in September 1907, is said to be a humble Anglican church hall in Fulwell Road, Sunderland, a few streets from the old Roker Park football ground.

Last weekend in the same hall - now with personal computers, videos, overhead projectors and something called the God Channel on television - they gathered to mark the centenary and to seek another Sunderland Revival, another outbreak of fire.

"We've a packed place tonight, but there's a few more people in Sunderland than there are in here," said John Glass, general superintendent of the 500 Elim churches - a branch of Pentecostalism - in Great Britain.

In truth there would be many in the single-storey terraces crowded by the Wear who assumed the Sunderland Revival to have been scraping a 2-1 win at home to Reading a few days previously.

The spark, if you like, was the Reverend Alexander Boddy, Vicar of All Saints, Monkwearmouth, world traveller, author, astronomer, evangelist and gifted public speaker. At a talk in 1899, it's reported, Boddy raised £1,700 for the hall, opened five years later.

He also believed that he was protected by angels, not least when several times he fell off his bike.

Boddy, though devout, longed for something more, something to set the place alight, an out-of-Boddy experience. He wanted a second baptism, a baptism of fire, and in 1907 persuaded Thomas Barratt, a Norwegian preacher of whom great things had been heard, to spend several weeks at All Saints vicarage.

A stone in the church hall wall records that it was there, in September 1907, that the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the debt.

The word spread quickly, like - well - wildfire. The town, said the Sunderland Echo, was talking of nothing else. Men staggered home as if drunk, though it was the Holy Spirit which filled them. Meetings could last until 4am.

All Saints became home for several years to the national Pentecostal convention, Boddy, still a Church of England priest but said to be the "unchallenged pioneer of British Pentecostalism", was encouraged by Dr Handley Moule, described in a Pentecostal history as the "saintly" Bishop of Durham. He became vicar of Pittington, near Durham, in 1922.

Smith Wigglesworth, a Bradford plumber, had also been born again (as they say) in Sunderland in 1907, becoming a regular visitor and in 1913 causing a national sensation by the early morning baptism of five people by total immersion in the sea off Roker beach.

Photographs filled the entire front page of the Daily Mirror, the caption talking of a man in blue pyjamas and a woman almost collapsed from shock. Inside, a report was headed "Convert's icy shock," and with no regard for the niceties of punctuation.

The Northern Echo couldn't run to photographs - we had a nice one of the king on his horse, instead - but talked of one of the women coming out of the water in hysterics and then screaming and dancing on the sands.

"The whole proceedings were marked by great religious fervour," we added.

All Saints church hall is now home to the Monkwearmouth Christian Fellowship, an Elim church led by Pastor Mark Drew, who'd been a minister on the south side of the river until asked in the mid-1990s to open a church on the opposite bank.

In 1996, just a year after they became tenants, the Church of England decided that it wanted to sell the building. An anonymous donor gave Mr Drew £60,000, a second stone marking that event, too.

"When the fire of the Lord fell again, there was no debt."

Last Thursday evening's meeting is well filled, including a ten-year-old lad in a Sunderland shirt - either that or Reg Vardy's has some awfully young car salesmen - whose dad threatens to send him home unless he behaves.

Sent home from church? "When we moved here we had a service almost every night for two years," says Mr Drew. "We always used not going to church as a threat of discipline to our son."

It begins with Send the Fire, a hymn written by Salvation Army founder William Booth. The meeting needs no warming up, aflame in moments. It was never like this at Sunderland Empire.

At once they're leaping, dancing, singing, arm waving. Before long, when spontaneity meets cacophony, they seem to be speaking in tongues. One chap appears to be saying "See you later, alligator", though it may not be the case at all.

Doubtless it's a coincidence - health and safety - that the column finds itself sitting next to the fire extinguishers.

Mr Glass has driven 250 miles from London and that night will drive 250 miles back again. He must cover a canny few more in the course of a 45 minute address - lucid, impassioned, restlessly peripatetic.

"If God can do it in a scruffy building like this was, he can do it through us tonight," he tells them. "It's not about being blessed, it's about being a blessing."

The meeting's been running for almost two and a half hours, drawing to a conclusion of passion and of paroxysm, when it's necessary to leave in order to catch the last train homeward.

A third stone may be some time in appearing, of course, but it shows no sign of burning itself out