4 Speaking in tongues

2021 ◽  
pp. 103-132
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Jon Bialecki

What is the work that miracles do in American Charismatic Evangelicalism? How are miracles something that are at once unanticipated, and yet worked for? Finally, what do miracles tell us about Christianity, and even about the category of religion? A Diagram for Fire engages with those questions through an detailed ethnographic study of the Vineyard, a Southern-California originated American Evangelical movement known for believing that biblical-style miracles are something that all Christians can perform today. This book sees the miracle a resource and a challenge to institutional cohesion and human planning, and as an immanently-situated and fundamentally social means of producing change that operates through taking surprise and the unexpected, and using it to reimagine and reconfigure the will. A Diagram for Fire shows how this configuration of the miraculous shapes typical Pentecostal and Charismatic religious practices such as prophesy, speaking in tongues, healing, and battling demons; but it also shows how the miraculous as a configuration also ends up shaping other practices that seem far from the miracle, such as a sense of temporality, music, reading, economic choices, and both conservative and progressive political imaginaries. This book suggests that the open potential of the miracle, and the ironic constriction of the miracle’s potential through the intentional attempt to embrace it, has much to tell us not only about how contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity both functions and changes, but about an underlying mutability that plays an important role in Christianity and even in religion writ large.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 414-430
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Coleman ◽  
Christopher F. Silver ◽  
Jonathan Jong

Abstract The ritual handling of serpents remains an unnoticed cultural form for the explanatory aims and theoretical insights desired by cognitive scientists of religion. In the current article, we introduce the Hood and Williams archives at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga that contains data culled from Hood’s 40-plus year career of studying serpent handlers. The archives contain hundreds of hours of interviews and recordings of speaking in tongues, handling fire, drinking poison, and taking up serpents by different congregants and congregations. The archive remains a rich but untapped source of data for building, testing, and refining cognitive theories of ritual in general, and serpent handling in specific. We connect Hood’s work to current cognitive theories and engage critically with research on the social functions of ritual. Finally, we discuss several further reasons to pay more attention to SHS communities and practices in cognitive theories of ritual.


2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-552
Author(s):  
STEFAN SCHÖBERLEIN

This essay examines an underexplored aspect of Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland – namely its German–Indian context – and reads it through the story's main plot device: ventriloquism. Using some of Brown's manuscripts as well as journalistic pieces, the essay brings together the more puzzling aspects of this central US American gothic tale into a study of colonial violence and transplanted voices. Following Sarah Rivett's recent claim of a “spectral presence of American Indians” in the story, this essay argues for a rereading of the character of the “bioloquist” that brings to the surface a deep history of the dispossession of Native peoples (especially the Lenape) carefully interwoven into the novel's subtext.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-21
Author(s):  
Sarwono Sarwono

The gift of speaking in tongues is a message to the body of Christ which is given in tongues and is not understood by the user. Therefore, it must be followed by an interpretation by the language understood by the congregation. The gift of tongues is usually news of a prophecy for the Lord's church and must be followed by an interpretation. If the gift of tongues is not followed by an interpretation, it cannot build up the church. Therefore, the author will discuss the apostle Paul's perspective on tongues based on 1 Corinthians 14.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-22
Author(s):  
Julianus Zaluchu

The profile of God's servants is a very important teaching that God has entrusted to His church on this earth. God's servants often face enormous challenges in delivering the teachings of God's Word. Such as offers to compromise, participate in committing crimes, unhealthy ambitions to gain a position, engage in the business world and materialism.    In the use of wisdom it is not uncommon for God's servants to make their own decisions without involving God. In terms of ethics, God's servants experienced a fall by the temptation of wealth, throne and women. There is even a servant of God directly involved in business and politics so that it deviates far from the teachings of God's Word. Many of God's servants consider it more powerful and pretend to know because they have many congregations, and have spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues.    To get maximum results, in this study the authors used qualitative research methods, historical research methods and descriptive research methods. Qualitative research methods by distributing questionnaires to congregants and to several servants of God who serve in the GPdI Rungkut church. This study collected data from the results of the distribution of questionnaire sheets to 175 eligible congregations to fill them.    The conclusions of this research are 1) The Apostle Paul is a servant of God who was called by God to carry out His mission, which is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people; 2) First Corinthians describes the profile of the apostle Paul as a servant of God; 3) The Apostle Paul as a servant of God should be emulated by God's servants in Indonesia in general and in particular God's servants in the GPdI Rungkut Surabaya church; 4) God's servants must have knowledge about the profile taught by the apostle Paul so that they have a humble attitude, that is, an attitude that is not defensive when faced with resistance and a sincere attitude to help others; 5) Servants of God serve willingly and not accentuate their ministry so that praise is given from God not from humans; and 6) Servants of God have integrity and strict adherence to the spiritual laws contained in God's word.


Pneuma ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.J. Francis ◽  
William K. Kay

AbstractThis article reports on a survey of young men and women training for Pentecostal ministry. The survey was designed to test the relationship between glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, and personality. Personality theory, briefly outlined below, is complex and divided into several schools. For this reason it is necessary to show how findings derived from one school may be interpreted differently by another. Nevertheless, the general outline of previous work is clear. Most critically important for young men and women preparing for Pentecostal ministry is the fact that some research has questioned the mental health of those who speak in tongues. This article is able to show that, on the contrary, those who speak in tongues in the current sample under study are less neurotic than the general population. In order to demonstrate the validity of this thesis, this article will first outline the optional psychological theories of personality with their explanations of mental health and mental illness, then delineate the findings of various psychological studies of glossolalia, and finally present the results of our study of Pentecostal ministry candidates from a data analysis of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.


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