Howard Carter

Alfred Howard Carter was born in Birmingham, England, in 1891. He grew up in an Anglican family, but religion did not initially occupy the centre of his interests. He struggled with a speech impediment and discovered an aptitude for drawing that gave him confidence. He studied art and worked as a draftsman. These details are preserved in Pentecostal histories of his early years and help explain why public preaching was not the obvious career others might have expected for him. He became part of a movement in which people without the established routes to ministry were often called upon to teach and organise new congregations.

As a young man he began attending Christian meetings with his younger brother, John. They were drawn toward the Pentecostal movement through contacts in the English Midlands. The early years of that movement were marked by small assemblies, strong expectations about the work of the Holy Spirit and frequent disagreements with older churches. Carter moved from the occupations for which he had trained into religious service. In 1913 he became involved with the Crown Mission in Birmingham, an early Pentecostal congregation. He eventually undertook leadership there and in a second work that required increasing amounts of his time.

The First World War placed him in direct conflict with the state. Britain introduced military conscription in 1916, and Carter's religious convictions led him to refuse service. It was not enough for him to accept a military position away from combat; he maintained a strict objection to participating in the system. His brother John received a different ruling from a tribunal, while Howard's appeal failed. Historical research records his imprisonment, including time at Wormwood Scrubs and Dartmoor. Some devotional retellings give simplified dates and overstate the conditions of his confinement, but the core facts of conscientious objection and imprisonment are well supported.

Carter later wrote and spoke about the spiritual questions that occupied him during his imprisonment. In particular, he studied the New Testament passages concerning the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The prison years became important in the Pentecostal interpretation of his life because they seemed to turn an interruption of his public ministry into a period of sustained biblical study. His own explanation belongs to the history of how he understood events. It does not require a historian to claim knowledge of every spiritual experience he said he had. What can be observed is that his teaching on spiritual gifts became one of the most lasting results of his later career.

After the war Carter returned to work among Pentecostal congregations. By 1921 he had assumed the leadership of Hampstead Bible School in London. He remained associated with the school for more than twenty-five years, helping train people who would serve as missionaries, pastors and teachers. A Bible school required more than an inspiring speaker. Students needed regular instruction, schedules, places to live and an organisation able to support them. Carter's influence therefore extended to people who learned from him in a structured educational setting and later carried those lessons elsewhere. His brother John was also active in Pentecostal leadership, though their separate careers must not be merged.

He took part in the formation of the Assemblies of God in Great Britain and Ireland in 1924. The organisation brought many of the growing Pentecostal assemblies into a form of fellowship and cooperation. Carter became one of its prominent leaders, serving in roles that included chairman during the 1930s and 1940s. These responsibilities put him at the intersection of local church life, training and national coordination. The Pentecostal movement was still learning how to maintain its expectation of spiritual freedom while establishing accountable structures. Carter's participation showed that he considered organisation and the life of the Spirit capable of belonging together.

His books addressed questions that ordinary congregations and ministers were already asking. Questions and Answers on Spiritual Gifts explained different kinds of gifts and their operation in Christian meetings. The work sought to distinguish experiences that Pentecostals often discussed in broad terms. He also wrote and spoke about prophecy, healing and the place of spiritual manifestations in worship. The interpretations did not command universal agreement, even among Pentecostals, but they contributed a body of teaching later speakers continued to use. His reputation as a teacher came partly from the effort to explain these subjects systematically rather than leaving them only to accounts of extraordinary meetings.

Carter travelled widely, and his association with the younger American preacher Lester Sumrall became especially well known. They made visits to churches and missions in several countries during the 1930s. Sumrall later wrote about Carter as a mentor and remembered dramatic events from their journeys. Those memoirs are sources for their relationship, but memories composed years afterward should be checked before every detail is treated as an established fact. The travel itself was demanding and depended upon local hosts, interpreters and missionaries whose labour is not always visible in the stories of the visiting men.

In 1948 Carter left his position at Hampstead Bible School and moved toward a more extensive period of travel and ministry connected with the United States. His later marriage to Ruth Steelberg brought together two people already familiar with the costs of denominational leadership. Ruth was the widow of Wesley Steelberg, a former general superintendent of the American Assemblies of God, and became an ordained minister with her own work among prisoners. She should not be introduced merely as Carter's companion. Her history, including connections with the early Los Angeles Pentecostal movement and later prison chaplaincy, had significance independent of his career.

The Carters continued to travel and teach. In his later years he settled in Springfield, Missouri, where the American Assemblies of God maintained important institutions. His name was already familiar to Pentecostal ministers in Britain, America and elsewhere through his teaching and the missionaries who had attended Hampstead. As with other widely remembered preachers, some accounts became filled with sweeping claims about prophecies, distances travelled and supernatural incidents. The historical task is to preserve his recognised service while separating reports that can be documented from claims repeated only because they make an impressive story.

Howard Carter died in Springfield on January 22, 1971. His life had taken him from artistic work in Birmingham to the responsibility of a Bible school and international teaching. He experienced imprisonment because he refused military service, and in later years worked within the structures of a denomination he had helped to establish. His contribution was not only that he spoke about the Spirit, but that he gave many younger ministers a framework for examining and discussing the gifts they believed were available to the church. The less familiar parts of his story—education, administration, family relationships and the consequences of conscience—remain essential alongside the accounts of his travels.