The United Pentecostal Church International, usually known as the UPCI, brings us to a major dividing line within Pentecostal history. The Assemblies of God, Church of God (Cleveland), COGIC, and Foursquare disagree about sanctification, church government, and various practices, but all four affirm the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The UPCI does not. It belongs to the Oneness Pentecostal, or Apostolic, tradition, which confesses one God revealed fully in Jesus Christ but rejects the traditional formulation of one divine essence eternally existing in three distinct persons.
That disagreement is significant, and I think Oneness theology is wrong. But we need to make an equally important distinction at the beginning. Rejecting modalism isn’t the same thing as rejecting Oneness Pentecostals. I don’t believe anybody will be standing at the pearly gates taking an examination on the Athanasian Creed before being allowed inside. We can take the doctrine of God seriously, explain why Trinitarian Christians disagree with the UPCI, and still recognize sincere Christians whose understanding of the Godhead differs from ours.
And if we’re going to understand why they believe what they believe, we need to go back to the earliest years of Pentecostalism.
Before There Was a UPCI
The UPCI didn’t appear until 1945, but its theological ancestry reaches back to the beginnings of the modern Pentecostal movement. Like the other Pentecostal denominations we’ve studied, its history runs through Charles Parham’s ministry in Topeka and William Seymour’s Azusa Street Revival.
In April 1913, Pentecostals gathered for a large camp meeting at Arroyo Seco, near Los Angeles. The UPCI itself identifies this meeting as the catalyst for the emergence of the Oneness movement. According to the traditional account, a sermon preached during the meeting prompted reflection about the baptismal formula used in the book of Acts. The apostles repeatedly baptized converts in the name of Jesus Christ or in the name of the Lord Jesus. Why, some Pentecostals wondered, were churches baptizing converts using the words “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” instead?
That question was about to become considerably larger than baptism.
The “New Issue”
Minister Frank Ewart became one of the principal advocates of what was soon called the New Issue. Ewart and others concluded that the apostolic pattern wasn’t merely baptism by the authority of Jesus but baptism with the actual invocation of Jesus’ name. People who had already been baptized using the traditional Trinitarian formula began being rebaptized in Jesus’ name.
Then another question followed. If Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are titles, and the saving name revealed in the New Testament is Jesus, what does that tell us about God Himself? The baptismal controversy became a doctrine-of-God controversy. Within a few years, Oneness teachers were arguing that the traditional doctrine of three distinct divine persons wasn’t biblical. The one God of Israel had revealed Himself completely in Jesus Christ. The New Issue had become Oneness Pentecostalism.
G. T. Haywood
One of the most important early converts to the new teaching was Garfield Thomas Haywood, usually known as G. T. Haywood. Haywood was an African American Pentecostal pastor in Indianapolis and one of the most respected ministers in early Pentecostalism. He embraced Jesus-name baptism and became an influential advocate of Oneness theology.
His role is important for another reason. Like the early history of COGIC, the story of Oneness Pentecostalism reminds us that Pentecostalism originally crossed racial boundaries more freely than much of American Christianity did. Azusa Street had brought Black and white Christians together, and the early Apostolic movement likewise contained significant interracial relationships.
American segregation eventually complicated that story, as it did almost everywhere else. But G. T. Haywood remains one of the towering figures of early Apostolic Pentecostalism.
The Assemblies of God Faces the New Issue
The controversy soon reached the newly formed Assemblies of God. Some AG ministers embraced Jesus-name baptism and Oneness theology. Others believed the teaching contradicted the biblical distinction among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and departed from historic Christian teaching about God. Something had to give.
At its Fourth General Council in 1916, the Assemblies of God adopted its Statement of Fundamental Truths, explicitly affirming Trinitarian doctrine. Ministers who couldn’t accept that position withdrew or lost their place within the fellowship. That decision was the crucial separation point between the AG and the emerging Oneness movement. The Pentecostal family tree had acquired another branch.
A Rather Complicated Family Tree
What happened next can become confusing quickly because Oneness Pentecostals organized, reorganized, merged, divided, and renamed organizations with an enthusiasm normally reserved for church committees.
Among the early bodies was the General Assembly of the Apostolic Assemblies, organized in 1917. Other organizations followed, including the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Pentecostal Ministerial Alliance, Pentecostal Church Incorporated, and Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ.
We’ll deal more extensively with the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World in its own article because its history deserves separate treatment. For our purposes here, two organizations eventually became especially important: the Pentecostal Church, Incorporated and the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ.
In September 1945 representatives of those organizations met in St. Louis and voted to merge. The new body became the United Pentecostal Church. The word International was later added to the name. The UPCI celebrated the eightieth anniversary of that merger in St. Louis in 2025. The organization began with 521 churches, but it wouldn’t stay small.
What Does “Oneness” Mean?
This is where we need to slow down.
Many (including me) have referred to the UPCI position as “Unitarian”, but I wouldn’t use Unitarian now without considerable qualification because it can create the wrong impression. UPCI Christians aren’t Unitarians in the ordinary modern sense. They believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, miracles, atoning death, bodily resurrection, second coming, biblical authority, supernatural gifts of the Spirit, and salvation through Christ.
Their disagreement concerns how the one God exists and is revealed. Historic Trinitarian Christianity says that there is one God who eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three distinct persons sharing the one divine being. The UPCI rejects that formulation.
Its current statement of belief says there is one God who has revealed Himself as Father, through His Son in redemption, and as the Holy Spirit in activity, and that Jesus Christ is God manifested in flesh. In Oneness theology, Jesus isn’t merely one divine person alongside the Father and Holy Spirit. Jesus is the full revelation of the one God.
Is Oneness the Same as Modalism?
This is where conversations can deteriorate quickly. Trinitarian theologians frequently classify Oneness Pentecostal theology as a form of modalism, comparing it with ancient teachings associated with Sabellius. The comparison isn’t unreasonable. Both reject three eternal divine persons and emphasize the absolute unity of God.
Oneness Pentecostals generally resist being reduced to ancient Sabellianism, however. They argue that their theology emerges from Scripture rather than from an attempt to revive an ancient heresy, and contemporary Oneness theologians often use considerably more sophisticated Christological language than the caricature that God simply “changes masks.”
I remain Trinitarian because I think Scripture presents genuine interpersonal distinctions that Oneness theology doesn’t adequately explain. Jesus prays to the Father. The Father sends the Son. The Son returns to the Father. The Father sends the Holy Spirit, and Jesus speaks of the Spirit in personally distinguishable ways.
I don’t think those passages are best explained as one divine person merely operating under different titles. But acknowledging that disagreement doesn’t require pretending Oneness Pentecostals don’t believe in Jesus. They emphatically do.
Jesus Is God
In fact, if you’ve ever spent time around Apostolic Pentecostals, you know they’re unlikely to be accused of saying too little about Jesus. Their theology is intensely Christocentric. Colossians 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”—is particularly important in Oneness theology. So are passages identifying Jesus as Emmanuel, the Word made flesh, the image of the invisible God, and the revelation of the Father.
The disagreement with Trinitarians isn’t over whether Jesus is divine. Both say He is. The disagreement concerns the relationship of Jesus to the Father and Holy Spirit and whether the biblical evidence requires eternal personal distinctions within the one God.
That’s a much more accurate description of the dispute than saying, “They don’t believe in the Trinity, so they don’t believe Jesus is God.” They actually emphasize His deity relentlessly.
Why Baptize in Jesus’ Name?
The second major distinction is water baptism. The UPCI baptizes converts by immersion in the name of Jesus Christ rather than using the traditional formula “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Why? Because that’s what they believe the apostles did. Acts describes baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ” in Acts 2:38, “in the name of the Lord Jesus” in Acts 8:16 and 19:5, and in connection with Jesus’ name elsewhere in the apostolic preaching.
Oneness Pentecostals interpret those passages as establishing the apostolic baptismal formula. Trinitarians usually understand them differently. They argue that Acts is identifying the authority and allegiance under which Christian baptism occurs rather than necessarily recording the exact words spoken over every convert. They also point to Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:19 to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Oneness Christians respond that name in Matthew 28:19 is singular and that the revealed saving name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is Jesus. And there you have one of those theological arguments that has managed to keep Pentecostals busy for more than a century.
Acts 2:38
If one verse functions as the theological crossroads of UPCI soteriology, it is probably Acts 2:38: Peter tells his hearers to repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The UPCI understands the new birth through this apostolic pattern: repentance, water baptism in Jesus’ name, and receiving the Holy Spirit. Its current doctrinal summary explicitly connects these with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.
This is considerably different from the way many evangelicals explain conversion. A Baptist evangelist, for example, may emphasize repentance and faith in Christ and then regard baptism as the believer’s subsequent public testimony. An Apostolic Pentecostal is much more likely to ask: Have you obeyed Acts 2:38?
Salvation by Grace—and Obedience to the Gospel
We should be careful here because it’s easy to misrepresent the UPCI in either direction.
UPCI teaching has been accused of departing from the evangelical view that salvation is “by grace alone through faith alone.” The distinction remains important, but UPCI itself explicitly says that salvation comes by grace through faith based on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The disagreement is over what saving faith and the new birth entail. UPCI theology doesn’t regard repentance, Jesus-name baptism, and receiving the Spirit as human works by which someone earns salvation. It regards them as the biblical response of faith to the gospel.
Many evangelicals disagree with that interpretation because they believe it risks making particular experiences or ordinances conditions that Scripture doesn’t require for justification. That’s a real disagreement. We don’t need to make either side say something it doesn’t say in order to explain it.
“Born of Water and of the Spirit”
John 3:5 is another important Apostolic text: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
UPCI theology commonly connects water with baptism and Spirit with receiving the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38 and John 3:5 therefore reinforce one another within the Apostolic understanding of salvation.
Other Christians interpret John 3 differently. Some understand water figuratively as cleansing, some connect it with natural birth, and others accept a baptismal reference without accepting the complete UPCI understanding of Acts 2:38. Again, the important thing is understanding how the pieces fit together.
UPCI theology isn’t a random collection of unusual Pentecostal doctrines. It has an internal logic.
Speaking in Tongues
That brings us to the third distinctive. The UPCI teaches that receiving the Holy Spirit is accompanied by the initial sign of speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance. At first glance, that sounds almost identical to the Assemblies of God. It isn’t.
The AG teaches baptism in the Holy Spirit with tongues as initial evidence as an empowering experience subsequent to salvation. The UPCI incorporates receiving the Holy Spirit into its understanding of the new birth itself. That’s a substantial theological difference.
Two Pentecostals can therefore stand next to each other speaking in tongues while disagreeing about what the experience signifies in relation to salvation. If you’ve been wondering how Pentecostals managed to create so many denominations, we’re beginning to collect clues.
Holiness Inside and Out
UPCI spirituality also retains a strong emphasis on holiness. When I was young Oneness Pentecostals were known to emphasize holiness (which is a good thing) by linking it to television, women’s hair, clothing, and makeup, and men’s facial hair (which isn’t). That’s all a real part of Apostolic culture, but beginning there can make the theology look almost trivial. The underlying idea is more substantial.
UPCI teaching argues that because Christians belong to God, holiness should transform both inner character and outward conduct. Its official holiness material discusses modesty as involving not only clothing but behavior and conversation, and it teaches visible distinctions between male and female appearance.
Historically this has produced recognizable standards concerning dress, hair, jewelry, cosmetics, entertainment, sexuality, alcohol, tobacco, and other aspects of everyday life. Women in traditional Apostolic churches are often recognizable by uncut hair and modest dresses or skirts. Men are expected to maintain distinctively masculine appearance and dress.
Individual congregations and believers don’t necessarily apply every standard identically. But outward holiness isn’t an accidental cultural leftover within UPCI. It comes from a theological conviction that the body as well as the heart belongs to God.
The Hair Question
The teaching concerning women’s uncut hair deserves particular explanation because outsiders sometimes encounter the practice without understanding the reasoning behind it.
The primary passage is 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul discusses headship, men and women, head coverings, and hair. Apostolic Pentecostals traditionally understand Paul’s statement that a woman’s long hair is given to her “for a covering” as establishing an ongoing distinction between male and female appearance. Many therefore believe women shouldn’t cut their hair.
Other Christians interpret the passage differently, often understanding Paul’s instructions in connection with cultural practices surrounding head coverings in Corinth or distinguishing the natural hair reference from the earlier discussion of coverings.
The disagreement is exegetical before it’s cultural. That’s worth remembering before reducing it to: “Those are the people whose women don’t cut their hair.”
Apostolic Worship
Walk into a lively UPCI congregation and many things will feel completely familiar to someone from another Pentecostal background.
People raise their hands. They pray aloud. Music can be energetic. Worship may become spontaneous. People gather around the altar. Ministers pray for the sick. Prophecy, tongues, interpretation, and other spiritual gifts are expected rather than relegated to the first century.
There is often an intense emphasis on prayer.
Apostolic preaching can also be strongly biblical in style, with extensive use of Scripture and a particular emphasis on Acts, the identity of Jesus, holiness, evangelism, and spiritual experience.
So although the theological disagreement with Trinitarian Pentecostals is substantial, culturally the family resemblance is unmistakable.
These people are Pentecostals.
Women in Ministry
Here’s an interesting contrast. UPCI congregations may maintain visibly conservative distinctions between men and women in dress and family roles, yet the organization has a long history of credentialing women for ministry.
Women have served as evangelists, missionaries, church planters, pastors, teachers, and licensed ministers within Apostolic Pentecostalism. In 2024, UPCI reported more than one thousand credentialed women in the United States and Canada, representing about 8.5 percent of its credentialed ministry.
Once again, Pentecostalism refuses to fit neatly into modern categories. A church can maintain very conservative gender distinctions while simultaneously putting a woman behind the pulpit. History is messy like that.
A Global Apostolic Movement
The UPCI now reports more than six million constituents, more than 49,000 churches and preaching points, approximately 51,000 credentialed ministers, and a presence in 203 nations and numerous territories.
That’s especially significant because UPCI is only one part of the larger Oneness Pentecostal world. Other Apostolic organizations—including the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World—have their own histories and constituencies.
So UPCI and Oneness Pentecostalism aren’t synonyms. UPCI is one particularly large expression of a much broader movement.
Missions
The missionary impulse that characterized early Pentecostalism remains central to UPCI identity. Its slogan summarizes the ambition nicely: “The whole gospel to the whole world by the whole church.”
In 2025, more than 4,100 North American UPCI churches contributed to at least one denominational missions initiative, and congregations collectively gave about $62 million across the organization’s missions-related ministries.
The global growth also changes the way we should think about Apostolic Pentecostalism. It isn’t merely an American subculture identified by church signs reading Apostolic and women wearing long skirts. It is an international Christian movement.
A Changing American Church
Even the North American UPCI is more diverse than stereotypes might suggest. A 2025 survey of UPCI pastors reported that approximately 47 percent of typical attendees belonged to non-white minority groups, including Hispanic, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native, and multiracial members. Nearly half of typical attendees were under thirty-five.
That’s a considerable development for a movement whose American history was profoundly affected by twentieth-century racial divisions. It also suggests that the future UPCI may look considerably different from the Apostolic churches many Americans remember from previous generations.
Education
Apostolic Pentecostals, like other early Pentecostals, weren’t initially known for building elaborate systems of higher education, but that has changed.
The UPCI operates Urshan University and Urshan Graduate School of Theology in Missouri. The denomination’s 2024 overview reported approximately 600 students and accredited bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs. upci.org
One particularly interesting example of contemporary Oneness scholarship is the denomination’s current General Superintendent, David K. Bernard. Bernard holds theological doctorates, has written extensively on Oneness theology and Pentecostalism, and has participated in theological discussions and debates with Trinitarian scholars. He currently leads a global organization reporting roughly six million constituents.
That matters because serious disagreement requires us to engage the strongest version of another position. If we’re going to disagree with Oneness theology, we should disagree with what thoughtful Oneness theologians actually teach—not with a cartoon version of it.
So Are Oneness Pentecostals Christians?
This is where I part company with Christians who want an immediate yes-or-no test based solely on someone’s ability to articulate Nicene or Athanasian Trinitarian terminology.
I believe the Trinity best explains the biblical evidence. I believe Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are genuinely distinguishable and that modalistic explanations fail to account adequately for that evidence.
So I reject Oneness theology. I don’t therefore reject Oneness Pentecostals. There is an important difference between saying a doctrine is wrong and saying every person who holds that doctrine is outside salvation.
Christians have spent centuries developing increasingly precise language about the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That work matters. Theology matters. Truth matters.
But salvation isn’t awarded for passing a systematic-theology examination. I don’t expect St. Peter to be standing at the pearly gates with the Athanasian Creed asking applicants to explain how the persons are “neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.”
And if there is a theology exam, I’m hoping it’s open-book.
Why I Remain Trinitarian
Tolerance isn’t the same as pretending the disagreement doesn’t matter. Jesus’ relationship with the Father is one of the principal reasons I remain Trinitarian. Jesus doesn’t merely speak as the Father. He speaks to the Father. He says the Father sent Him. He speaks of glory He had with the Father before the world existed. At His baptism, the Son is in the water, the Spirit descends, and the Father’s voice comes from heaven.
Likewise, Jesus promises another Comforter and speaks of the Holy Spirit as one who teaches, speaks, guides, and glorifies Christ. Oneness theology has explanations for these passages, usually involving the relationship between Christ’s genuine humanity and deity or the different ways the one God works. I simply don’t find those explanations as persuasive as the Trinitarian one.
That’s a theological judgment. It isn’t a declaration that I know the contents of somebody else’s heart.
Why the UPCI Matters
The UPCI gives us one of the clearest examples of how quickly theological developments occurred during early Pentecostalism. Azusa Street began in 1906. The Arroyo Seco meeting occurred in 1913. The Assemblies of God organized in 1914. The AG formally drew its Trinitarian boundary in 1916.
Oneness organizations were appearing almost immediately afterward. And by 1945 two major Apostolic organizations had merged to create what became the UPCI. In less than forty years, a revival movement had generated entirely new denominations, international missions, theological controversies, educational institutions, publishing ministries, and competing understandings of the Godhead.
Pentecostals didn’t waste much time.
One Pentecostal Family, One Major Disagreement
The UPCI belongs unmistakably to the Pentecostal story.
It shares with other Pentecostals an expectation of Spirit baptism, speaking in tongues, divine healing, spiritual gifts, energetic worship, evangelism, missions, prayer, and the supernatural activity of God. But it also represents the most significant theological divide we’ve encountered so far.
The Assemblies of God, Foursquare, COGIC, and Church of God (Cleveland) say: One God in three persons.
The UPCI says: One God revealed fully in Jesus Christ.
Those aren’t merely two ways of saying exactly the same thing. There is a genuine theological disagreement, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Neither should we pretend that every theological disagreement gives us permission to decide who belongs to Jesus.
I can disagree with my Oneness Pentecostal brothers and sisters about the Godhead, argue vigorously for the Trinity, and still recognize something familiar when I hear them talk about Jesus, pray for the sick, preach Acts, worship enthusiastically, send missionaries around the world, and expect the Holy Spirit to move.
Sometimes the people sitting on another branch of the family tree are still family. And considering the history of Pentecostalism, it’s probably wise to get used to complicated relatives.