Word: glossolalia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...descriptive splurges seem old-fashioned at a time when most writers are still either in thrall to Hemingway's ideal of verbal simplicity or overflowing with a new kind of personal, revival-meeting combustion that lies somewhere between caterwauling and glossolalia. But prose style is one of the minor differences between Updike and his contemporaries. The larger fact is that however valid his own objectives and achievements, he has ignored the mainstream of contemporary Western fiction. The French, in the roman nouveau, have reduced the novel to a random series of received sounds and images; the English are tearing...
Pioneered by a turn-of-the-century Kansas Methodist preacher, Charles F. Parham, Pentecostalism asserts as its basic tenet the need for baptism by the Holy Spirit, the supreme manifestation of which is glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. Dissatisfied with the institutionalized quality of Methodist worship and spirituality, Parham took as his inspiration the message of Acts 2: 1-4, which tells how, as the disciples assembled on Pentecost, "there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues." Hoping to receive the spirit...
...membership: 572,000). Traditionally strong in the rural South, Pentecostalism has made notable recent gains among urban Negroes and Puer to Ricans, and has even taken root on U.S. college campuses. For those who have received the gift of speaking in tongues, it can be an ecstatic occurrence. Glossolalia usually happens at the climax of a Pentecostal service, when the revivalist "lays on hands"-places his hand on the head of a believer, who frequently enters a trance-like state, begins to utter a stream of glottal syllables that Pentecostalists regard as prophetic speech...
Even a Bar Mitzvah. Lanky "Long John" Phillips, 37, had started digging into Burros' background after Rosenthai got a tip from a Jewish organization. A Times feature writer for the past ten years, with a special interest in such phenomena of evangelical Christianity as glossolalia, or "speaking in tongues," Phillips soon confirmed that Burros' parents had been married in a Jewish ceremony. Another Times reporter, who speaks Yiddish, canvassed synagogues in Queens, learned that Burros had attended a Hebrew school and had celebrated his bar mitzvah...
Spiritual Need. An A.L.C. committee investigating glossolalia last year warned that it has led to "divisions and tensions" in many congregations; tongues advocates often tend to slight regular worship services, force the practice on doubters, and develop into an ecstatic spiritual elite. But Lutheran leaders have little hope that the tongues will now be silent. Admits Dr. Schiotz: "Perhaps it is a reaction against the tendency to over-intellectualize the Christian faith. Speaking seems to fill a spiritual need for simplicity and emotional attachment...