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This article uses archival sources and secondary sources to argue that narratives from various pentecostal church presses reflected shifts in the broader understanding of homosexuality when discussing the 1907 arrest of pentecostal founder Charles Fox Parham for “unnatural offenses.” In the early 1900s, gay men were free to pursue other men in separate spaces of towns and were generally left alone as long as they did not attract attention. Although there was growing recognition that homosexuality might be a matter of biology, the more popular literature on the topic through the 1920s proclaimed that homosexuality was a choice, influenced by environmental factors. Pentecostalism was then in its infancy, and two schools of thought became prevalent regarding Parham’s arrest: there were those like his wife, who denied the truth of the matter, and those like his protégé Howard Goss, who believed that the behavior was a temporary failing, not a permanent tendency. During World War II and the Cold War, beliefs about the causes of homosexuality shifted again, and as the gay rights movements flourished and the field of pentecostal history became professionalized, authors tended to examine the details of the incident rather than draw conclusions about the accusations. This examination of pentecostal narratives demonstrates the power that narrators have either to emphasize or to minimize certain details, allowing them to shape the reputations of leaders of the movement. This article uses archival sources and secondary sources to argue that narratives from various pentecostal church presses reflected shifts in the broader understanding of homosexuality when discussing the 1907 arrest of pentecostal founder Charles Fox Parham for “unnatural offenses.” In the early 1900s, gay men were free to pursue other men in separate spaces of towns and were generally left alone as long as they did not attract attention. Although there was growing recognition that homosexuality might be a matter of biology, the more popular literature on the topic through the 1920s proclaimed that homosexuality was a choice, influenced by environmental factors. Pentecostalism was then in its infancy, and two schools of thought became prevalent regarding Parham’s arrest: there were those like his wife, who denied the truth of the matter, and those like his protégé Howard Goss, who believed that the behavior was a temporary failing, not a permanent tendency. During World War II and the Cold War, beliefs about the causes of homosexuality shifted again, and as the gay rights movements flourished and the field of pentecostal history became professionalized, authors tended to examine the details of the incident rather than draw conclusions about the accusations. This examination of pentecostal narratives demonstrates the power that narrators have either to emphasize or to minimize certain details, allowing them to shape the reputations of leaders of the movement.
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