Montgomery, Carrie Judd

( 18 5 8-1946 )

   Pentecostalist healer and leader

   Carrie Judd Montgomery was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1858. Her parents were members of the Episcopal Church, in which she was confirmed. Always a sickly child, she became an invalid following an accident. In 1879, however, she was healed through the ministry of an African-American Holiness woman, Elizabeth Mix. Montgomery wrote a book, The Prayer of Faith (1880), and began speaking in public about her experience. She began a periodical, Triumphs of Faith, in 1881 and continued editing it for the next 65 years. She became friends with Albert Benjamin Simpson and joined him in 1885 in the founding of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA).

   Montgomery transformed her Buffalo home into the Faith Rest Cottage, a place of prayer for the ill and her base for a wider healing ministry, practiced especially at Holiness movement gatherings. In 1890, she moved to Oakland, California, and a short time later married George simpson Montgomery (b. 1851), a prosperous businessman. in 1891, she started a CMA congregation and worked closely with the Salvation Army. Two years later, she opened the Home of Peace, the center of an expanding ministry that included an orphanage and school.

   After hearing of the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, Montgomery began to pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the accompanying sign of speaking in tongues. she actually received the baptism while visiting with a friend in Chicago in 1908. She began publicizing Pente-costalism in her now widely circulated magazine. she opposed an exclusive emphasis on speaking in tongues to the exclusion of healing and other gifts of the spirit. Nevertheless, she became a charter member of the Assemblies of God and in 1917 was ordained an assemblies minister.

   Montgomery was cited by a number of Holiness and Pentecostal leaders as an influence on their life and ministry. Though she was not particularly active pressing the case for the ordination of women, she was a successful example that inspired many others. Montgomery published her autobiography, Under His Wings, in 1936. Her Home of Peace in oakland survived her death and continues as a healing center to the present.

   Further reading:

   ■ Daniel E. Albrecht, "Carrie Judd Montgomery: Pioneering Contributor to Three Religious Movements." Pneuma 8 (Fall 1986): 101-119

   ■ Carie Judd Montgomery, "Under His Wings": The Story of My Life (Oakland, Calif.: Office of Triumphs of Faith, 1936); , with Donald W. Dayton, The Life and the Teaching of Carrie Judd Montgomery (New York: Garland, 1985).