I went to a church service the other day and a man was running around the church screaming “I love you lord” at the top of his lungs and then he got on the floor and was shaking and crying and the rest of the people in the church were also running around, jumping, crying, dancing, etc and the preacher said “Keep on praising him…” then the preacher made all the “young people” in the back of the church come to the front because we were not doing anything and he said that we were the future and that “church isn’t a fashion show where you come to look cute but you got to get ugly sometimes”
After that he tried to get us to get more “excited” and we were but nobody wanted to do anything like run around or anything in front of their friends so it was pretty subdued for the younger crowd but the rest of the church praised God like that for about another 30 minutes.
I am used to it, that’s how pentecostal worship services get and I’m more likely to think that something spiritual is going on but for a person on the outside what would your thoughts be? I’m not even neccescarily referring only to athiests but even christians who are not used to this type of thing in church, is this something that you would laugh at, or would you think “look at those fools”, or would it make you nervous?
I consider myself quite hopelessly atheistic nowadays, but I too grew up in a Pentecostal extended family setting and am familiar with the screamers and the flailers and the tongue-talkers.
For the uninitiated, it can be quite a harrowing experience to witness all that goes on in a Pentecostal service. Not at all amusing though to watch people who you love and respect lose all semblence of self-control in the name of Praising the Lord, Hallelujah.
I don’t believe that “something spiritual” is going on. Mass-hysteria maybe?
I may not be the athiest, but I like to think of myself as one of the athier dopers .
I saw a few such displays, back in my church-going days. (My church didn’t condone such things, but I visited “those” churches with friends a few times.) Not exactly amusing, but extremely interesting. It’s a part of human nature, or at least a pretty good portion of humans’ nature, to let loose sometimes. Bibles, booze, tantric sex, long-distance running–there are all kinds of ways to reach that stage. Certain Pink Floyd albums have almost done it for me a time or two.
That wouldn’t happen in your average English Church.
(in fact there’s an amusing scetch on Little Britain where a Southern American-style preacher takes the service at an English Church)
I think these people are pathetic, and I think it’s really unlikely that they have similar experiences when they’re not “on display” in front of their fellow Pentecostals.
If these experiences were truly spontaneous, Pentecostals could never get a driver’s license. (Unlike epileptics, who can control themselves with medication.) :rolleyes:
I think that displays like that are weird, funny, and slightly disturbing. Of course, this is the same way I felt when I was a Christian and ended up in a church where someone started running and flailing all around in the aisles. Some people really do get caught up in the moment (with all the dancing, music, and shouting) and just sort of let go. I have a feeling that some others just like to over-hear people talking about how righteous they must be to have “caught the holy ghost” yet again.
Personally, I find that kind of stuff weird and creepy.
The last time I attended a church (for other than someone’s wedding) I was about 12. I was attending at the invitiation from some other kids from my neighborhood who were going mainly because they didn’t have anything better to do that day and there was a flier advertising a “fun day” at the church. This was a Baptist church and they were having some kind of mass baptism rally that day where they were dunking people into a pool of water that was built in to the stage area and other excitement such as games and snacks. They were calling for people to come up and get wet, and some lady I’d never even met grabbed my arm and started pulling me up to the stage area. She was telling me I was going to be saved and I might start crying.
I was thinking she was nuts and planning my escape.
As soon as she loosened her grip on me, I slipped into the crowd, headed for the nearest exit, and hoofed it home.
Even at that young age, I could recognize the inherant unfairness of roping a bunch of neighborhood kids into a “fun day” and then attempting to compel them (somewhat forcefully, in my case) to join up. At 12, I wondered if they weren’t concerned that my dad wasn’t there to approve or disapprove of what they were trying to do. My memoires of this even are somewhat fuzzy as it happened over 30 years ago, but somewhere along the line that day my name was written down somewhere and I’ve always been curious if that church has counted me as a member somehow. I hope that’s not the case.
Unfortunately for the religious, this is one of the major founding factors that set me on the road to being suspicious and mistrusting of any church activities.
Though I’m an atheist now, I was raised in the Church of England and I can assure you that such a carry-on would be looked on with abject horror and discomfort by the congregations of which I was a member.
Having met (Hindu) Saddhus in India and Nepal who indulged in similar oddness, I would say from experience that a) I would be fascinated in an anthropological level, and b) I would be rather disturbed on a personal level. Not amused at all.
If I saw a friend or co-worker do it, I don’t think I’d ever be able to respect them again, internally at least. I’d still treat them with respect of course, but it wouldn’t be authentic.
I’ve actually attended a somewhat more subdued vsn. of that in a little church waaay t.f. out in the woods of ME. Not a lot of flailing, but plenty of glossolalia. One woman rambled on especially loudly in pig-Hebrew, with her head lolling around, and her eyes rolled back into their sockets. Another woman “interpreted”; the gist of the speech we were getting was everybody should get themselves good and ready to roast in Hell unless blah, blah, blah. There was a fair amount of kneeling on the floor, arms waving above heads, voiced beseeching Jesus to save their pathetic souls; a general din of misery and self-reproach just a hair quieter than the woman speaking in toungues. Oh, I mustn’t forget the weeping. Not a dry eye in the house. Real inspiring, let me tell you. Someone I knew through school got me in for a project on charismatic worship; family connections, and all that. All the kids from Greenwich and Westchester county listened to my tape recording like I had gone on some anthropology expedition into deepest Siberia. I realised my mistake in feeding into their perception of Mainers as, collectively, a bunch if inbred lumberjacks and lobstermen committing all manner of grotesque acts in their cold hovels beneath the pines.
Anyhow, I found the experience unnerving in the extreme. Everyone in the place was worn-out and desperate looking, many clearly the victims of years of self-abuse. By their dress and manner I judged all of them to be of the lowest economic echelon, which for Maine means true abject poverty. The service struck me as a semi-controlled environment in which they were all allowed to let down their guard and do what felt most natural to them, which was to lose their minds. Certainly it was cathartic, but it was the catharsis of people with what I felt must be serious, serious emotional troubles, not the catharsis the averag suburbanite experiences when they get the sniffles over Bridgette Jones or other such tripe. After the whole wild-and-teary-eyed display, I just wanted to leave. Certainly not amusing. Depressing and frightening is how I would describe it.
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