Baptism in the Holy Spirit

The doctrine has roots in the Holiness movement's search for a definite, datable experience of entire sanctification, but Pentecostalism gave it a new shape. Charles Parham, teaching at a small Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, concluded from the book of Acts around 1900 that speaking in tongues was the biblical sign that a believer had received Spirit baptism, and one of his students, Agnes Ozman, reportedly spoke in tongues on January 1, 1901, an event Pentecostals mark as an early confirmation of the teaching.

William J. Seymour, a Black preacher who had studied briefly under Parham, carried the teaching to Los Angeles and opened revival services on Azusa Street on April 9, 1906. The meetings ran for years, drew a famously interracial crowd unusual for the period, and sent participants back out across the country and abroad, planting the doctrine of Spirit baptism with tongues as evidence at the center of dozens of new denominations that trace their founding directly to the revival.

The doctrine of initial evidence, that tongues specifically, not merely some manifestation of the Spirit, marks the moment of Spirit baptism, became the line distinguishing classical Pentecostal denominations from the broader Charismatic renewal that later carried similar experiences into Catholic, Anglican and mainline Protestant churches without requiring tongues as proof.

Classical Pentecostal theology treats Spirit baptism as logically and normally chronologically distinct from conversion: a believer is first born again through faith in Christ, and then, often later and sometimes much later, receives a separate empowering baptism in the Holy Spirit, sought through prayer, often at a revival meeting or an altar service set aside for the purpose. This differs from most other Protestant theology, which locates the gift of the Spirit at conversion itself and does not expect or require a later, separate experience.

The practical effect has been to give Pentecostal worship a structure built around expectancy: services regularly include extended prayer specifically for people seeking Spirit baptism, testimony from those who have received it, and instruction in what the experience should look like. Believers who have not yet spoken in tongues are, in classical Pentecostal churches, understood to be seeking a real and attainable further gift rather than something already fully theirs.

The doctrine spread from its Pentecostal denominations into the Charismatic movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which carried Spirit baptism and the associated gifts into Catholic and mainline Protestant congregations, generally while relaxing the specific requirement that tongues alone serve as its evidence, a modification classical Pentecostal denominations have not generally accepted for themselves.