Chile, 1909

Hoover himself printed broken homes and an attempted murder and suicide among his people. He also printed an error of bringing seekers through by making them repeat a word rapidly. Kessler writes, from a letter of Campbell, a party, that young men and women lay on the ground together, and that Hoover did not intervene in September and October, the first months of the revival.

Kessler writes that in Holy Week of 1932 young people whom Hoover had forbidden the cinema accused him of immorality, and that Ramón Yáñez, his assistant, supported them. He writes that the charge was behaviour that gave cause for offence, and that it stopped short of immoral relations. By his account a tribunal under Manuel Umaña, Hoover's rival for the leadership, met at Valparaíso from 17 to 20 November.

Kessler writes that Hoover confessed to the charge, and that the tribunal found extenuating circumstances and let him stay as pastor if a majority of the congregation wished. Kessler writes that a young friend of Hoover had a church official call for three shouts of “Glory to God,” that the congregation gave them, and that Umaña later complained that this had swayed it. He has Umaña leave for Santiago before that sentence was signed. He writes that at the annual conference the next January the tribunal sat again and Hoover was made to repeat his confession. By four votes to two it excluded him from the superintendency and the pastorate. He adds that the conference voted him a pension and the title of Counsellor, against Umaña and Yáñez, and that its minutes never became valid.

Kessler also reports a letter of 1933 in which Hoover admitted his guilt in the matter of immoral relations. He writes that Hoover hid the truth for years to save the church and not himself. Kessler knew the letter from another man's letter of 1966 and did not print it. Alfred Cooper wrote in 2024 that the accusations “to this day have never been proved,” and Hoover's grandson Mario vouches for him. Kessler rests on church papers of those years and the recollections of Yáñez and Gatica, and Cooper rests on Mario Hoover's book.

The church divided that year, and about one hundred churches and groups stayed with the Methodist Pentecostal Church, by Kessler's count. Hoover died on 27 May 1936. Pew reports that a later bishop of that church helped organize a gathering of 2,500 Protestants in December 1974 to support the military junta. It adds that other Pentecostals demonstrated against the regime and were sent into exile or killed.

The census counts Protestants, and Sepúlveda writes of the 1992 figure that the large majority are Pentecostal. It gives 1.5 percent of Chile in 1930, 5.6 percent in 1960, and, among those over fourteen, 13.2 percent in 1992.

Kessler writes that Hoover gave the Chileans real freedom to build the only truly indigenous Protestant movement in Chile or Peru, and the Chileans led the first vigil and the officers chose the exit. David Bundy adds that those who make all Pentecostalism an American export must learn from Hoover. Hoover's own line answers them, since he names a booklet and papers from India and a letter from Oak Park, and the sixth specification names The Latter Rain Evangel.

Sepúlveda holds that the crux was more cultural than doctrinal. Kessler holds that doctrine itself was at stake, and the Board's report says the charges stood on doctrinal and administrative grounds.

Hoover says the exit was unplanned. Buell Campbell, his successor, wrote at the time that he had prepared his people for it. Kessler writes that the Chileans saw the break first.

Kessler judged both sides at the last: the Methodists forecast collapse, and he wrote that “Hoover was right in erring on the side of giving too much liberty.”