Speaking in tongues

http://www.endtimes-ministry.com/tracts/thetruth.html

Also secondary query: Has anyone heard of something called the "Ammaeus Conference"? I've googled but not found it.

Thanks for the link winterland - I'll go and check it out now.

Hope this helps. Never heard of that confernce though.

All I know is that on some occasions, interpretations of tongues have been spot on and some times they have been complete crap. When you're speaking in tongues you usually have some idea of what or who you are praying for, as that's the point of it - a language between you and God for prayer. Interpretation of tongues is rare really.

It's interesting that you think you can do it, because it could mean that you CAN do it. But as I said, it's for prayer, so if you are praying for something and find yourself slipping into it, don't be worried. Go for it.

Traditionally this meal is the first ever celebration of Holy Communion.

(What this in particular has to do with 'speaking in tongues' is well beyond my grasp of theology.)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Emmaus+conference%22

Back when I was 20-21 I was a member of a charismatic church, where many people spoke in tongues (me included) - I can testify that it was sincerely done. It's weird to look back on that all these years later...

Modernly, the term is used to describe what happens when a believer in one of the fundamentalist sects is seized with spasms of religious fervor and starts to spout gibberish - literally making weird gibbering noises, rather than speaking any recognizable words in any known language. This fashion started among Pentecostals, but has since spread. It's showy, impresses the impressionable, and its lots less dangerous than snake handling - all of which account for its growing popularity.

The Wikipedia or Catholic Encyclopedia articles might be better than the one I just listed.

OHNA KOHNDA KA BA SAHNTA

Success 'n Life was probably one of the funniest shows on TV, in a sad way, of course. He was the guy who would ask you to hold your hand up to the TV screen and then make a "vow of faith" (i.e. send him lots of money to solve your problems - and also get a prayer cloth that Robert Tilton himself has prayed upon, boy howdy). I have his Christmas special (a horrible, horrible musical) on VHS, somewhere. We're talking worse than community theatre bad. Worse than amusement park musical bad.

Not to make fun of the religions of people who practice this, but don't be thinking it's something special... it isn't. You work yourself into a frenzy or a trancelike state, which most people can if they put their mind to it and then you shout random syllables. Only in terms of human language they aren't random at all, they're restricted to the subset of syllables that occur in your native tongue.

I think there's also a distinction between speaking in tongues now and the people in the Bible who did it. The bible stories involved xenoglossy, or being able to understand and speak foreign languages instantly (for the purpose of religious conversion). I don't think anybody nowadays is making that claim.

Anyway, I like Lisa Gerrard and Liz Frasier quite a lot.

Anything that brings Christian worship into this manmade (or supposeable God inspired) territory of something very physical seems to be going against the 2nd commandment.

I don't know, I think worship and the matters of the spirit are things that are unchanging across all time. God will always and has always been God. Why does man need to progress away from just simply recognising that and try to make a seeable "real" representation of that to try and convince themselves and others that God is real. There should be no need for that kind of convincing. And basing a faith in God on something as changable as man's emotions of man's senses seems to totally "dumb down" it and be unreliable.

old-fashion ways work better, because man in general is slowly becoming more Godless.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/a75cf54da673cc68c6201a1b60e1a873/tumblr_oqo4t21EdB1ql7xb0o2_500.gif
https://78.media.tumblr.com/42bae2eb579cf4d42a01680a2ffe7a96/tumblr_oqo4t21EdB1ql7xb0o4_500.gif

i have been trying to work through some of my shit recently relevant to growing up in a pentecostal church and seeing many unbelievably strange things happen on a weekly basis. i have a hard time reading Rob M's posts above. I want to scream "BULLSHIT". i wish i didn't care anymore, and i've been trying to work toward showing respect and understanding for fundamental/evangelical/glossolaliac christian beliefs and practices in the same way that i sincerely DO feel about any other religion. i don't like this anger that wells up in me when i see someone speaking in tongues or exhibiting PDA with the holy spirit. but speaking in tongues isn't just a curiosity, it's fucking manipulative on many levels. it is a collective psychological mind game that some people use against others. it is a disturbing thing for children to witness, and confusing for them. it is a means of gaining power over (some) other people.

not that i'm thinking about doing it, but just curious: has anyone ever tackled someone speaking in tongues, football-style, while they were still speaking? just wondering if part of the message would still be transmitted to the interpreter or if the football tackle would completely cancel it out before it could be translated.

Happened to see a play last night by recent MacArthur genius Sam Hunter, called The Harvest and set in an evangelical church basement in Idaho.

The show opens with a prayer / speaking in tongues session. Later in the play, one character has a good explanation, saying that it isn't so much about channeling a spirit or possession as it is abandoning language to find another intense path toward prayer and praise. Made sense.

Hahaha xpost

That makes more sense Eazy for sure but the ruse of speaking in tongues is that Pentecostals often claim they are speaking an actual foreign language that they didn't previously know rather than the Billy Madison-esque gibberish that actually comes out their mouths.

The Pentecostal scene in Borat terrified me!

Not that I've ever seen it in the flesh, but I always imagined that the genuine experience of speaking in tongues was like accessing a part of unintegrated, pre-verbal psychosis, linked to what Eazy was saying about abandoning language. That it's a kind of personal healing that expresses some violent or ecstatic primal feeling unavailable to adult language. Though I am sure that it is falsified and manipulated by many, under the right circumstances it could be cathartic. Those circumstances are not in the company of children, or in a hierarchical setting however.

If speaking in tongues grants the speaker even small amounts of prestige within a pentecostal congregation, or failure to speak in tongues lowers the status of a congregant enough to be noticeable, then I can guarantee that people will observe this and join in with 'speaking in tongues' as best they can, just to fit in and do what is expected of them. Who wants to be pegged as insufficiently blessed with the spirit?

At first, they might feel a bit sheepish about the falsity of it, but if they stay on, I'm sure they'll get over it and probably even believe all their own lies after a time as easily as they accept the strange tales told by everyone else.

I remember thinking the same would be true of Quakerism, with everyone feeling ‘moved to talk by the spirit’, but I went to a couple of services a few years back and everyone was just silent throughout. I guess it was the opposite of a community that esteems ‘prestige’ though.

Who doesn't want to grace the cover of Quaker's Digest

Think I remember a linguist analysing recordings of people speaking in tongues and without exception the "languages" they were speaking had the same phonemic sets as their mother tongue. I mean, obviously this is the case, but interesting that whatever subconscious process produces these sounds doesn't lead them to exercise anything more than the absolute minimum of creativity.

this is the closest thing i've ever seen to the church my parents made me go to my entire childhood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ4114XO-Xo

Wow, Karl. That is amazing. Glad you survived (hopefully) intact.

The church I went to from the time I was born until about 12 years old (70s and early 80s) was a non-denominational church in Southern Illinois that was started by a bunch of ex-hippies who found Jesus. By the time I was sentient and could remember what church was like, the speaking in tongues had been phased out, but there was still a religious intensity and *belief* that was so wild as a kid. It was so weird to be told by all the adults around you that God was real and Jesus was coming back real soon. This life is meaningless except for what it means to your other, real life that begins in heaven. We had services THREE days a week, plus, for 4th-6th grades I left public school and attended a private school essentially run by our church, so this was omnipresent in our lives.

We left the church before it fell apart and joined a Southern Baptist church, which was so normal and staid in comparison.

Watching this as an adult, it is such obvious bullshit, and as a kid, on some level, I think I always knew that. But as a kid it is so hard to describe what this kind of indoctrination is like to someone that hasn't experienced that. My wife grew up catholic and even though that is its own trip, she just marvels at some of the things I tell her.