What's the deal with "speaking in tongues"?

Factual Questions
21

I gotta say- that is cute L Unless of course you just blasphemed in Latin.

Polycarp (as frickin usual) said most of what I was gonna say & better than I could. I used to believe that Charismatic glossalalia was miraculous, now I believe the vast majority of it is a natural verbalization released in an enthusiastic mindset, which can be of the Holy Spirit or not. It’s not necessarily an irrational or ecstatic mindset or a trance state, but neither is it deliberately concocted.

I’ve “spoken in tongues” for 27 years now- it has helped me in emotionally releasing stuff I can’t deliberately verbalize in prayer & worship. I’ve never experienced a situation in which I or another has spoken in a recognized language. (I have heard anecdotal accounts of such happening- the father of
my former pastor came out of his Mennonite background into the Assemblies of
God after having heard “tongues” praising Christ in a German dialect he knew.) I
do think Pentecostal/Charismatic believers have erred in overemphasizing the importance & miraculous nature of speaking in tongues, even as I think non-P/C C’tians have erred in repressing them.

Being in some/many instances a natural phenomena, it’s not unusual that someone who has glossalated (that sounds dirty! G) can still do so after leaving the faith. Some can not, tho whether that be because God has removed the gift or they just have repressed it is up for grabs. I have also heard anecdotes of C’tians being convinced that their tongues experience is demonic & counterfeit, having ‘tongues demons’ cast out of them. Granted, I heard this from a C’tian & Missionary Alliance seminary prof who “invented” a technique for detecting & casting out tongues-demons, so I gotta :rolleyes: but then again, he’d :rolleyes: at all I just said.

22

Has anyone ever compared this to the symptoms of Tourettes Syndrome? Not to say that those engaging in this are afflicted with it, but such forceful outbursts of gibberish are often associated with same.

Oh yeah, and speaking in tongues strikes me as satisfying the same urge as any religious/spiritual practice which whips people into a frenzy; it intensifies the experience.

23

While I don’t speak in tongues myself, I was raised in a charismatic church (Calvary Chapel) and have mostly attended Pentecostal churches as an adult. Therefore, I have had ample opportunity to hear people speaking in tongues on a regular basis. My mother was/is a tongue speaker.

Because I usually sit near the same people from one Sunday to the next, I get to hear the same people speaking in tongues more than once or twice. I’ve been struck by the fact that, when these people speak, they are very consistent. What I mean is, they seem to be speaking the same thing every time they do it. Naturally, I’ve heard my mother more often than anybody else, and she seemed to be speaking the same ‘words’ every time she did it. I’m also of course quite familiar with my mother’s speech patterns, i.e. meter and rhythm, and I can honestly say that, while the tongues were spoken in my mother’s voice, the pattern didn’t fit her normal approach to speaking.

It would seem that, if a tongue-speaker were merely spouting gibberish, it wouldn’t be the same every time. I think it would be too much trouble to go to trying to memorize a string of made-up gibberish so as to be consistent when fooling other people. Maybe that would be practical for the occcasional con-artist, but not for the sheer number of people who have tongues.

24

I disagree.

Speaking consistant and unhesitant gibberish is pretty difficult. Anyone can make noises, but to get it to sound like speech takes some thought. Far easier to perfect, even subconsciously, a number of gibberish phrases and recycle them randomly. It’s no different to being able to learn and sing a song in another language. You’ve no idea what the sounds mean, but memorizing the sequence of them is pretty easy. Much easier than coming up with unique gibberish that sounds like speech every time.

25

I dunno. If you stand up in church and start speaking Coptic, having no prior knowledge of the language, that’s still kind of impressive.

26

Sha-na-na-na getajob. :smiley:

(Ah, I love Cartoon History of the Universe. The artist seems to have a slight beef with Christianity, but then, who doesn’t? ;p)

27

Okay, I’ll say it: The cromulent use of tongues embiggens us all in a subliminable way.

28

Sorry to resurrect this thread, and for an off-topic question to boot, but I missed a few of the last answers, and have a request to make of Phase42:

Since you were raised as a Calvary Chapel member, and presumably got Sunday Schooled reasonably thoroughly on their beliefs, would you be so kind as to explain to me, remembering that I’m a passably intelligent man reasonably well grounded in traditional theology, exactly what the heck is the Calvary Chapel teaching on the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I gather that it’s not strict Athanasian-Creed Nicene Christian orthodoxy, but for the life of me I cannot make any sense out of either CC-ites or those calling them heretical in their explanations of what the CC belief is – and that’s very strange for me!

29

Maybe this reply deserves it’s own thread but later as for now… I believe in speaking in tongues and one lady who I know and do not consider a liar told me that she was speaking Italian and someone heard her and knew she didn’t know Italian and they became a believer.

30

Well, that sure does it for me… :rolleyes:

31

Polycarp:

First, let me explain that I haven’t attended a Calvary Chapel church in more than 20 years. My family moved in 1983, and so, lacking a CC in our new town, we settled in with the local Foursquare church. My own time with CC was between the ages of 11 and 17, so my memories of CC doctrine are pretty vague now.

With that said, Calvary Chapel was considered a “non-denominational” church. However, that was in the early years. The CC has been around long enough now that I suppose it could be considered a denomination in its own right. But at the time I was there, as far as I know there was no strictly defined statement of doctrine. I think the point of being non-denominational was that there wouldn’t be divisive doctrinal differences within the church. Any “official” doctrine was kept to the most rudimentary statement of faith, ala acknowledging Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and His sacrifice and resurrection, etc.

Pastors were fairly autonomous. My own pastor was originally ordained by the First United Methodist Church, so that’s what his background and training were. We actually started out attending his Methodist church. He eventually split with the Methodists over doctrinal differences, though I don’t know the specifics - I was only about 10 or 11 at the time. What actually happened was that his superiors in the denomination were surprised to discover that he actually had a full church every Sunday, and was running three or four services every Sunday morning to accomodate the crowds. This was apparently a Bad Thing™, so they sent people to investigate. The investigators discovered that he was not adhering strictly to Methodist doctrine, and reprimanded him. So, he resigned and established his own independent church.

The whole Jim Jones/Guyana thing happened about the same time, and so my pastor decided that, in order to avoid Jones’ mistakes (i.e. too much power and being the unltimate authority within his church) he would submit himself to the oversight of a larger organization. And I think, at least at the beginning, that was the main reason for our affiliation with Calvary Chapel. We got the benefit of being part of a larger organization, and the pastor was free to preach on his own topics and in his own style.

I guess the basic idea behind Calvary Chapel was to preach straight from the Bible, with a literalist approach, without attempting to embellish or squeeze out minute details of doctrine. Another factor was the desire to take Christianity out of the traditional box and allow people to worship in whatever way they felt moved. As for my Sunday-Schooling, there was no formal teaching of doctrine in the manner of Catholic Catechism school. Again, the teachers were fairly autonomous, within reason - they were of course subject to the oversight of the pastor.

I was mostly in junior high and high school while I was there, so my Sunday-schooling was more “youth group” oriented, and mostly dealt with issues affecting teenagers. In other words, I spent most of the time learning about the evils of rock & roll and sex and drinking and drugs, essential topics that should obviously be at the forefront of any Christian youth group discussions :smack: Seriously, I spent more time learning about all the things that would send me to Hell than I did learning about Jesus Christ and God and salvation. However, I can’t say for sure if this was because of Calvary Chapel, or simply because of the particular youth leaders I had.

Anyway, I’ve spent all this writing to say that I simply don’t know what Calvary Chapel says about the Trinity. I remember at some point learning One God in three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which I still believe.

If you’d like, I do have my former pastor’s e-mail address around here somewhere - I could ask him to give me a plain-English explanation. I think he will remember who I am…

Where are you talking to CCers? Locally, or via Internet? If local, than it may be just an issue with the local pastor. Though it sounds like you’re talking to people from around the country. I remember seeing some threads about Calvary Chapel on Christian board, things like “Is Calvary Chapel a cult?” but I don’t remember seeing anything about the Trinity.

Maybe you could tell me what you’ve heard, and I could see if I can make any sense of it. E-mail, or a new thread might be a better place for that, though.

32

If someone has to tell you what language a person is speaking, then the phenomenon you are observing is not “Speaking in tongues.” If you can’t understand it, they are speaking in a language you don’t know. If it was speaking in tongues, they could not speak a language you don’t know, since any language they spoke would sound to you exactly like your own native language, and so, no translation would be necessary. It might be the case that speaking in tongues is commonplace. The actual miracle is less noticeable than the pretend stuff, because everyone will assume that the person is speaking a familiar language.

Pretending you are speaking in tongues is attempting to make yourself appear important, in your own right. Claiming that it is the Word of God has its own downside.

Tris

33

Email sent, Ronk.

34

Isn’t Ashcroft a tongue speaker?

35

Yep.

So’s the Pope (although he doesn’t advertise the fact).

36

Sorry to be so late speaking up. I’ve been angsting far more than going on line the last couple of weeks.

Here are links to earlier threads specifically on this subject (as opposed to ones that tangentially discuss this phenomenon) that I was able to find:

from Great Debates

from this forum

I don’t have anything sufficiently different to say about it now from what I did 3.5 years ago to be worth my effort or your time, sorry. :slight_smile:

37

And yet you memorized their sounds, at least enough to know that they were consistent. Surely it’d be easier for the person uttering such sounds to memorize them?

Or look at it the other way. Suppose it’s genuine inspiration? Well, then, maybe the speech is consistent because the person is always saying “Glory to God in the Highest” in tongueish every time. But then, why wouldn’t everyone make the same sounds? If some particular phrase of worship is so common that a given person always utters it, why does nobody else ever say that same phrase?

Oh, and Ronk-S, were you deliberately trying to make that sound Latin? Because I can’t make any sense of most of it, but the patterns seem consistent with Latin, and at least a few genuine words sneaked in there (“dolores”, for example).

38

It’s from the ancient script sometimes called “Three Columns With Header”