On the TV screen, a man with a goatee speaks in a very southern accent. He talks about his re-conversion to Christianity after a time in jail. "I wondered about the tongues, see," he spoke into the camera, "because without the evidence of speaking in tongues, why, we ain't got it." (from Holy Ghost People) What is this "tongues" he speaks of? Described alternately as a gift of God, a form of regression, a hysteric state of being, or even demon possession, "speaking in tongues", as glossolalia is commonly known, is a hot issue today in the Christian church. Is it a language? Where did it come from and who speaks it? What are the psychological and religious implications of this phenomenon? Though there isn't any evidence showing glossolalia is related to any known or comprehensible languages, one cannot disprove the idea the glossolalia is a spiritual language.

Christians have never had a monopoly on glossolalic phenomena. Glossolalia was used by the Thracian Dionysus cult, the Delphic of Phrygia and the Cybeles, all groups which existed around the time of the early Christian church (Jividen, 25). Even today, some members of the Sufi sect of the Muslim religion practice glossolalia, as do members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints and other religious groups (Jividen, 76). However, the most well-known and the most studied use of glossolalia is in the Christian church.

The Bible records the first use of glossolalia by Christians in Acts 2:

"On the day of Pentecost, seven weeks after Jesus' resurrection, the believers

This practice of speaking in languages not previously known to the speakers is mentioned elsewhere in the book of Acts, but within a relatively short time another form of glossolalia appeared in which neither the speaker nor the listener understood what was being said without divine assistance. In 1 Corinthians 14:2, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that this shift had occurred: "For if your gift is the ability to speak in tongues, you will be talking to God but not to people, since they won't be able to understand you. You will be speaking by the power of the Spirit, but it will all be mysterious." (NLT)

Glossolalia occurred sporadically through church history. In the second century, a man named Montanus, who had formerly been a priest of Cybele, would reach an ecstatic state and begin giving utterances that were supposed to be oracles of God. In the fourteenth century, Vincent Ferrier is reported to have spoken in his native dialect of Valencia, but was understood by Greeks, Germans, and Hungarians. In the sixteenth century, Louis Bertrand reportedly converted 30,000 South American Natives through the gift of tongues (Jividen 69). Period outbreaks of glossolalia in the 17^th and 18^th centuries usually coincided with spiritual revivals.

The first widespread and well-documented use of glossolalia began in the early part of the 20^th century with the Pentecostal movement. The Pentecostal church emerged from a split in the Holiness movement (itself a breakoff from the Methodist church) over what constituted "proof" for baptism by the Holy Spirit (Mills, 6). The Pentecostal movement began in Topeka, Kansas at the church of Charles Parham in 1901 and quickly spread around the world. Even in its earliest stages, glossolalia characterized Pentecostal experience.

A major development in the history of glossolalia occurred in 1960, when an Episcopalian priest named Dennis Bennett prayed to receive baptism in the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues. This caused quite a stir in his congregation, and in an effort to explain what was happening, Father Bennett preached a sermon on his experiences in April of that year. Immediately after the service, he resigned from his post to prevent division in his church. The wire services picked up the story and soon many mainstream churches were experiencing outbreaks of "Neo-Pentecostalism" (Sherrill 64). Where glossolalia had previously been practiced by poor and uneducated people, it was now being experienced by wealthy and educated professionals around the world (Hinson, Oates, and Stagg, 70) There was a strong glossolalic movement at prestigious universities like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard early in the 60's. Today Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal churches continue to grow.

Several different types of glossolalia exist. Lombard defined three major categories: 1) Inarticulate vocalizations and related phenomena, such as animal noises. 2) Glossolalia as articulated sound simulating discourse, but which is incomprehensible to others. 3) Xenoglossia - using languages the speaker has never before studied (cited in Lovekin and Malony, 17). May expanded on Lombard's categories, but muddied the issue by adding categories not directly related to the issue, such as priestly language and even interpretation of tongues (cited in Lovekin and Malony, 19). Of the three, xenoglossia has captured the most attention and been the subject of the most research. A discovery of a xeneglossolalic would create the most direct connection between glossolalia and language.

Reports of xenoglossolalia are widespread. There are stories of Tibetan monks who quote Shakespeare in English and of missionaries who find they don't need an interpreter. Charles Parham, founder of the Pentecostal movement, reported that students at their meeting spoke in twenty-one known languages (Lovekin and Malony, 24). For almost all of these claims there is no independent verification of the facts. The search for certifiable xenoglossolalics began in earnest in the early 1900's through research into spiritistism. One researcher studied a spiritist called Madam X who, in a trance, could speak Greek, but when not in the trance could not recall any Greek at all. Eventually it was discovered that the woman had seen the Greek she was speaking in a book, but did not retain conscious memory of it. She was diagnosed with cryptomnesia, or forgotten memory. Analysis of many glossolalics who believe they are speaking in a foreign language has turned up no real foreign language use. Converted glossolalic John Sherrill presented forty samples of glossolalic speech to linguists and no more than a few words of any language could be identified. However, the linguists could identify two samples of plain gibberish that Sherrill slipped into the presentation as a control (Lovekin and Maloney, 28). One scientist reports of two Englishmen claiming to speak Temne, an African language spoken in Sierra Leone, but when they met a native Temne speaker he rejected their claim (28). In fact, the only clearly documented case of xenoglossia is from a study done by Stevenson from the University of Virginia, who found a Jewish housewife from Philadelphia who, when in a trance, seemed to channel the spirit of a Swedish person named Jensen Jacoby. While in the trance she could fluently converse in Swedish, in spite of the fact that when she is not in a trance she cannot remember any Swedish at all. This case of non-religious xenoglossolalia still baffles scientists (Lovekin and Malony, 28).

If glossolalia cannot be found to be directly related to any known languages, can the properties of the language be analyzed to determine its structure? To a degree, yes. In 1969, Goodman examined glossolalia in several cultural settings and found some interesting similarities. He found that all "pulse" (smallest sound) units begin with consonants, and that "bars" (groups of pulses separated by pauses) were of roughly equal duration. He also found that the accent was usually on the first pulse of each bar and that when someone began speaking in tongues there was an "onset in medium [speed] range, a peak, and then a sloping gradient with a precipitous decay." Goodman even found some "words" which appeared in all four settings he observed: kálomahala and pálomalalaya (Lovekin and Malony, 34).

In 1972, Samarin also found some similarities in the glossolalic speech of different people. There was repeated use of a "word" with the initial /s/ or /sh/ sound, then a vowel, followed by a /nt/ or /nd/ and another vowel, such as shunda or sonta. However, Samarin concluded that glossolalia did not form a language because it failed to meet up to five of sixteen of Hockett's "universals of language design". These supposedly-broken universals were:

1. semanticity - Samarin says that glossolalia cannot be a language because it does not contain vocabulary. However, just because the vocabulary is not understood does not mean there is no vocabulary.
2. arbitrariness - Samarin says that since there is no semanticity, there is therefore no arbitrariness. Again, the argument stands that just because we don't understand a language doesn't mean it fails to have arbitrariness.
3. displacement - He adds that glossolalia has not shown an ability to refer to things distant in time or space. Many who say they have interpreted tongues would take issue with Samarin here. If we accept that divinely inspired interpretation could be legitimate, then we must discard this objection. Oftentimes the interpretation does have to do with things distant in time or space, as in John Sherrill's claim that an interpretation of tongues given to him was, "Do not worry. I am pleased with the stand you have taken [reference to past]. It is difficult for you but will bring much blessing to another [reference to the future]." (Sherrill 96)
4. prevarication - Prevarication is the ability to be logically meaningless while maintaining grammatical structure. Again, the reasoning is circular. To assume that prevarication is impossible because we don’t understand how the language works is to deny the title "language" to any communication system we don't understand.
5. reflection - This is the ability to communicate about communication. As with the others, it can be discarded since lack of understanding doesn't mean lack of intended meaning. (cited in Lovekin and Malony, 37)

Some suggest that since the duration of a message in tongues and the duration of its "interpretation" is often very different, then the interpretation (or the glossolalia itself) is not real. However, to say this assumes it is possible to apply rules of known languages to glossolalia. See Appendix A for a sample of a message in glossolalia and an interpretation of the message given by the speaker himself. It could be noted that some of the words this speaker claims to frequently use in glossolalic prayer (especially savadore and masadore) are cognates for religious words in English, but of course that doesn't rule out the possibility they are real. However, it does cast a somewhat dubious light on their origin.

Additional support for the idea that glossolalia could be a language is that meaning can be conveyed. When patients were given a sample segment of glossolalic speech by a Rev. D'Esprit, they could discriminate the topic (Lovekin and Malony, 38). This of course could have to do with the pitch, volume and speed of presentation, but nonetheless a variation in these factors indicates that meaning can be conveyed in glossolalic speech and adds weight to the argument that it is a language in which people can communicate.

Many psychological theories exist on the issue of glossolalia. Shumway, an observer of Pentecostal activity in the Los Angeles revival, reported six characteristics of speaking in tongues. First, according to the observer, there was a complete loss of rational control. Second, there was a defiance of emotion that leads to hysteria. Third, there was a feeling of prayer and praise with an accompanying absence of thought or will. Fourth, there was an automatic functioning of speech organs in the form of gibberish with some foreign phrases thrown in. Fifth, there was an absence of memory after the event. And finally there were occasional spasmodic physical manifestations alongside the glossolalia. Shumway classified this type of activity as evidence of hysteria (cited in Lovekin and Malony, 46). Morton Kelsey makes a good argument against the theory that glossolalia is a result of hysteria when he writes, "…[H]ysteria is a sickness which puts the mind and often the body as well out of commission, while tongue speaking is a religious experience which, from the evidence we have, seems to lead to a greater ability to function in the world." (Kelsey 209)

Others hypothesize that glossolalia is a form of regression that is meant to lead to reduction of internal conflict in the speaker. In his 1927 book, Cutten suggests that some are glossolalic because they aren't mentally developed enough to express strong emotions in words. More articulate people, he writes, have a more difficult time becoming glossolalic because they can express themselves without using regression (cited in Lovekin and Maloney, 64). Freud's friend Oskar Pfister studied a 24-year old Simon, who was glossolalic. Pfister concluded that Simon was confused about guilt feelings associated with masturbation and suggested that glossolalia was an expression of these feelings. In the end, Pfister suggests, glossolalia is a symptom to be healed (cited in Lovekin and Maloney, 46). To clarify this idea, Laffal wrote in 1967 that "…[S]ince the specific social tokens are lacking, the shame, guilt, despair, or anxiety that might accompany the appropriate labeling are avoided while the person feels that he has expressed the ineffable." (quoted in Lovekin and Maloney, 48) In an attempt to add gravity to Cutten's theory, a researcher named Smith found in 1977 that non-glossolalics had average IQs of 112.3 while glossolalics had an average IQ of 107. However, in a 1979 study Bradfield found that neo-Pentecostals are more highly educated than the general populace, seeming to ruin Cutten's theory that glossolalia is a result of inexpressiveness (cited in Lovekin and Maloney, 66). Additionally, since glossolalic prayer is often used to pray for others, it is difficult to believe this is an expression from within the person of strong feelings rooted in the past.

After examining many other studies, Lovekin and Maloney conclude that "…a tendency towards extroversion, intrinsic religious orientation and suggestibility [in glossolalics] can be affirmed." (77). The evidence does seem to point to this conclusion, but what of it? This conclusion says nothing about the question of whether tongues is a legitimate language, it merely states that those who use it are those who would be most receptive to it.

Lovekin notes that "There is no way for the skeptic to see in behavior anything more than the limited element of physical existence…[T]he elements of a natural event embody meaning beyond themselves and incorporate a reality that is not apparent. It should be added that science would not disagree with this to the extend that research always involves seeking the reality beneath appearance." (251) So what are people who do claim to see a deeper reality behind glossolalia saying? Unfortunately, their conclusions are just as different from one another as the psychologists'.

On the one side are those who say that glossolalia is not from God, but from Satan. For many years the Catholic Church included "use or knowledge of an unknown language" as a sign of demon possession (Jividen 16). Others are less quick to call it outright evil, but say that it is primarily a product of human imagination. Says Jimmy Jividen, an anti-glossolalic, "Glossolalia is not a sign of Divine favor and spirituality but the fruit of self-centeredness, pride, doubt, and immaturity." (196)

Others say that glossolalia is a gift from God. Most people who view the issue from this perspective quickly add that it is not the most important spiritual gift (as love is), but that it has its place in the roster. John Sherrill, a reporter who began to speak in tongues after researching it, said that "Once men and women have touched this dimension, once we have been in contact with this current of power, we can not be happy without it." (168) Sherrill points out four major benefits of glossolalia. The first is an enhanced ability to praise God. The second is added physical strength and resiliency. The third advantage is the ability to pray when one doesn't know what to ask for in a given situation. The fourth major benefit Sherrill lists is that together with interpretation, it provides a way for God to communicate directly with a group of Christians assembled for worship.

In the end analysis, I agree with Morton Kelsey when he writes:

"Whether tongues is viewed as a psychological anomaly or a religious experience of real worth will not depend so much upon the facts as upon the way we look at the world in which we live, whether our world view has a place for such experiences or not."

Evidence does not prove that glossolalia is a language, but evidence does show some similarities to language and the belief that it is a spiritual language has not been disproved by linguists or psychologists and cannot be tossed aside.

Hinson, E. Glenn, Oates, Wayne E., and Stagg, Frank. Glossolalia: Tongue Speaking in

Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1996.

Holy Ghost People. Videocassette. Thistle Films, 1999. 52 min.

Jividen, Jimmy. Glossolalia: From God or man?. Fort Worth: Star Bible Publications,

Kelsey, Morton. Tongue Speaking: The History and Meaning of Charismatic

Lovekin, A. Adams, and Malony, H. Newton. Glossolalia:Behavioral Science

Mills, Watson E. Glossolalia: A Bibliography. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985.

Sherrill, John L. They Speak With Other Tongues. Old Tappan: Chosen Books, 1985.

APPENDIX A

In an Internet chat on December 7, 1999, C.V. of Vancouver, Canada demonstrated typing in tongues. He reports first speaking in tongues when he was 21 (he is now 22) soon after conversion when he prayed to "receive the Holy Spirit". He says he had never heard tongues before speaking in it himself. He reports using these words frequently in his prayers:

mataya

toniyay

deeyaivu

chuniyaweh

savadore yehsu

masadore yehsu

He proceeded to type what came to his mind in a prayer to God:

Sanaiyawhe beetoniyeh si vatore vasaniyaweh batanio wey si ya va masaniaweh lamateeyveh yachaniyaweh amen

He then translated what he thought his prayer meant, "Bear with me, Lord, for I am tired, and I hope this is good in Your eyes."

He reports singing in tongues and praying in tongues daily.