From brutal exorcisms that saw people tortured to death, to a pastor s…

From brutal exorcisms that saw people tortured to death, to a pastor sentenced to life in prison for attacking his wife with rattlesnakes, the astonishing history of the Pentecostalist church has been revealed in a new book. 
Elle Hardy Hurst's Beyond Belief offers a fascinating expose of the fastest-growing religion on earth, detailing how do i provide first aid for snake bites a religion founded at the turn of the 20th century became a tech-savvy Christian movement loved by A-list celebrities.  
Hardy is a US-based journalist and foreign correspondent who has spent years researching the religion, touring 12 countries, including the UK, and six American states to visit various churches and prayer groups. 
The movement is a form of Christianity that focuses on the Holy Spirit and the believer achieving a 'third blessing' - direct experience of the presence of God - and many subsects of the movement are biblical literalists and religious fundamentalists.
It's predicted that by 2050 around one in ten people will be part of the movement, which is estimated to be accumulating 35,000 new followers each day. 
A quarter of the globe's Christians are said to be Pentecostal, though many members of the movement around the globe don't refer to themselves as such - with Koreans dubbing it the Presbyterian movement and in Brazil and Latin America, evangélicos.  
Detailing her global tour of Pentecostalism, Hardy details more recent stories including an evangelical celebrity singer who adopted more than 50 boys with the young husband she has been charged with murdering.  
Elsewhere, she tells the story of the movement's founders, two of whom became embroiled in scandal, from a kidnapping plot to disguising a suspected affair - to accusations of demonic posse causing a riot among the congregation. 
Here, Femail reveals the book's most fascinating anecdotes from the past and present of the rapidly growing movement. 
MOVEMENT'S FOUNDING FATHER: ARRESTED OVER HOMOSEXUAL AFFAIR AND SPARKED BRUTAL EXORCISM DEATHS
Born in Iowa in 1873, Charles Fox Parham became the founding father of the Pentecostalist movement before his career was left in tatters after sexual scandal and an incident in which his followers murdered three during a brutal exorcism 
Born in Iowa in 1873, Charles Fox Parham was raised as a member of the Methodist Church, and by his teenage years was already preaching the word of the bible.  
By 22 though, he had become frustrated by the Methodist hierarchy and decided to go out on his own, travelling from place to place with a 'silver tongue that could clock 250 words per minute'. 
His main belief was of the 'third blessing' - the first to be born again as a Christian and the second being sanctified - which was a visible outpouring of the Holy Spirit in action.  
Parham and his family settled once again in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901 after his son was apparently saved from a serious illness by divine intervention and started a Bible college in a suburban mansion called Stone's Folly. 
It was here that a 30-year-old worshipper named Agnes Ozman became the first person to speak in tongues, speaking and writing in 'Chinese' and apparently unable to return to her native English language for three days.   
By 1905, Parham had befriended William J.

Seymour, the son of emancipated slaves who later led the 'Azusa Street Revival', an outpouring of 'babbling tongues' at a church in downtown Los Angeles. 
Two years later, Parham was arrested in San Antonio after being accused of having a homosexual relationship with a young man, and despite the case being dropped his reputation was left in tatters in a time when same-sex affairs were illegal. 
The preacher maintained his innocence, insisting he had been set up by rival evangelist and prominent flat earther Wilbur Glenn Voliva.   
The final nail in Parham's coffin was an incident at a 'Parhamite' in Illinois in which the preacher's followers became crazed with anticipation that the end of the world - the 'End Times' - were drawing near. 
Accusations of demonic possession among the congregation led to a riot resulting in a spate of brutal exorcisms that saw three people tortured to death.  
SISTER AIMEE: PREACHER ACCUSED OF FAKING HER OWN KIDNAP 
Aimee Semple McPherson took the religion to the masses and despite being accused of faking her own kidnapping while having an affair with a married lover remains an icon of the movement 
While Parham's career was left in tatters, the movement had vastly expanded throughout America and Aimee Semple McPherson took the religion to the masses.
The last of Pentecostalism's founding trinity, Aimee 'shaped the modern conception of a Pentecostal preacher' by creating a traveling roadshow promising miracles, supernatural healing and prophecy.  
With a flair for self-promotion, Aimee Semple McPherson wrote the script for the public evangelicalism that can be seen today...'  Elle Hardy HurstShe produced radio shows which acted as a precursor to today's televangelism and built the first 'mega-church', the Foursquare Gospel. 
Despite her hoards of loyal followers, Sister Aimee, as she became known to her followers, battled with obsessive compulsive disorder and was said to have engaged in numerous affairs.  
She became embroiled in scandal in May 1926 when she vanished from a Los Angeles beach, with her disappearance hitting headlines across the country before she emerged in a Mexico desert five weeks later 'with a sordid tale of capture and escape'. 
Rumours soon began that Aimee had run off with her married lover and when she returned she was trialled for conspiracy and obstruction of justice - however, the case only served to raise significant funds and publicity for the movement. 
While Charles Parham's sex scandal had ended his public career, the alleged kidnapping - which courts deemed impossible to prove - boosted Sister Aimee's and she resumed her life preaching in California.  
Despite her own scandal, Sister Aimee became known for her church's charitable work during the Great Depression, and in her later years she even became involved in politics - briefly supporting Herbert Hoover and later Franklin D.

Roosevelt. 
'With a seemingly endless ability to raise money and a flair for self-promotion, Aimee Semple McPherson wrote the script for the public evangelicalism that can be seen in her many heirs today', writes Hardy. 
CRIMINAL TURNED PENTECOSTALIST WHO ATTEMPTED TO MURDER HIS WIFE WITH 17 VENOMOUS SNAKES
Glenn Summerford (pictured) was a criminal turned born-again serpent handling minister for the fundamentalist Church of God with Signs Following who attempted to murder his wife, Darlene with a rattlesnake in October 1991
At what Hardy calls the 'most literal end of the Pentecostal spectrum' are what the movement calls 'with signs' churches where attendees handle venomous snakes and drink poison to prove their devotion to god.  
The idea comes from a bible verse stating 'In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.' 
Many Pentecostals believe this is a metaphor, but those who attend 'with signs' churches take the scripture literally and believe that handling snakes, a demonic presence, is a sign of God's power over Satan and drinking their poison is a sign of faith.
The author visited the Rock House Holiness Church in Alabama, one of the few 'snake-handling' churches in the country that still exists, where she met an attendee called Cylus Crawford Cylus. 
He revealed to her that he'd been bitten 'pretty bad' on the leg, chest and hand because of his faith and said he hates it when he receives unwanted medical assistance because 'you have no say, they have full control.' 
These types of churches came under the spotlight in 1991, when Pastor Glenn Summerford, cousin of the Rock House's lead pastor, tried to murder his wife Darlene. 
In a drunken rage he stuck a gun to her head before dragging her by her hair to the shed where his seventeen poisonous snakes were kept in a cage. 
After rattling and banging the cage to rile up the snakes, he told his wife to put her hand in and said that if she refused he would forcibly shove her face into the cage. 
When she had recovered from the life-threatening bites, Darlene testified that her husband had tried to kill her because he wanted to marry another woman and he was sentenced to 129 years in prison.