Word: glossolalia
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Herbert Mjorud off the church's evangelical staff. His offense was one that appalls, embarrasses and deeply worries church leaders: promoting glossolalia, the practice of praying in "gibberish...
Without question, glossolalia is the fastest-growing fad in U.S. Protestant churches. Once a peculiarity of Pentecostals, "speaking in tongues" has caught on with Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians, and there is now a national association of glossolalists, the Blessed Trinity Society in Van Nuys, Calif. At least 260 of the 5,239 American Lutheran churches have glossolalia cells; many of them took up the practice after Pastor Mjorud stopped by to preach at revival meetings...
...measured, courteous and utterly lucid words. Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike last week denounced the excesses of glossolalia, the prayer practice in which the worshiper's tongue wags on and on in what seems like gibberish to skeptics. Once chiefly confined to members of pentecostal denominations, glossolalia has lately gained hundreds of adherents among Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, and even Yale students (TIME. March 29). To practitioners, "speaking in tongues" is good for ending alcoholism, repairing broken marriages and furthering the work of Christ. To California's Bishop Pike, it is "heresy in embryo" when there is an overemphasis...
...sacrament and as a means of expressing their faith. They argue that any religious phenomenon approved in the New Testament-St. Paul, in I Corinthians, regards it as a special gift to Christians like prophecy-clearly has a place in the life of the modern church. In practicing glossolalia, the students do not fall into any mystical seizures or trance; instead, onlookers report, they seem fully in control as they mutter or chant sentences that sometimes sound like Hebrew, sometimes like unkempt Swedish. "I don't care what language it is," says one of the tongues-speaking students...
Yale's opinion of the gift is mixed. The university chaplain, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., regards glossolalia as a genuine religious experience and as a natural way for students to gain "emotional release" from the tensions of college life. Another New Haven cleric rejects the phenomenon as "a gentlemanly fad." Students mostly take a dim view. "My grandmother had her Ouija board," says one. "My mother had her Bridey Murphy. Now they have this. It's all the same to me." The glossolalists expect skepticism, and respond with a rueful joke: "Maybe this is what...