THE BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT AS PARADIGM SHIFT1

In 2006, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Azusa Street revival. A revival that not only was important in establishing the modern Pentecostal movement in North America, it also was influential in the expansion of the movement worldwide. The Azusa Street revival had the international influence in establishing the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a corporate tradition, as opposed to either as purely an individual experience or as a theological rationality. As such, I will look at the role of the baptism in the Holy Spirit as foundational to the formulating of the ‘Pentecostal Paradigm ’ that is distinctive, yet part of the broader Christian orthodoxy. In this essay, I will argue that rather than a set of ‘doctrines ’ per se, in one sense it was a ‘spirituality’2 that was a ‘shift ’ from a previous paradigm indicative due to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In this essay, by ‘Pentecostal, ’ I am referring to the Classical Pentecostal and those of the Neo-Pentecostal or Charismatic classification who uphold Classical Pentecostal beliefs and practices in relation to the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the concomitant glossolalia.3 It is not within the parameter