Speaking in Tongues - Glossolalia

Glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues,” refers to “utterances approximating words and speech, usually produced during states of intense religious experience.”¹ The phenomenon usually appears to be unconscious or trance-like and is often associated with Pentecostal or Charismatic Christian groups, although it also occurs in nonChristian settings.² 

Christian glossolalics relate their experience to the Pentecost, when Jesus’s followers “were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”³ When people speak in languages that they should not know, the term to use is “xenoglossy” or “xenolalia,” about which Wikipedia says: “there is no scientifically admissible evidence supporting any of the alleged instances of xenoglossy.[5][6][7][8]”⁴

Britannica online says that Pentecostals believe that their emotional response to Jesus Christ and his message results in a “baptism of the Holy Spirit, one sign of which is speaking in tongues. Tongues was one of the nine gifts of the spirit described by St. Paul.⁵ Many Pentecostals also believe that faith healing, prophecy, miracles, and exorcism are other supernatural gifts that those baptized in the Holy Spirit receive.

Videos

I found several videos that illustrate or explain aspects of glossolalia:

• The first video is a church service in which a woman on stage, with musicians behind her, speaks in tongues for a minute or two, followed by a minister who appears to be interpreting her tongues speech, while the audience shouts in exaltation. They go through three cycles of tongues-interpretation before the six-minute video ends.

• Nightline (July 27, 2015) has a 10-minute video that gives examples of glossolalia and reports on a neuroscientific study of the phenomenon. According to the transcript, a congregant, Donna Morgan, says: “We say things and [in?] our own English language, but speaking in tongues is a heavenly language, that we’re going to God, and Jesus intercedes for us.” The narrator interviews neuroscience researcher, Andrew Newberg. Pastor Jerry Stolz Foose, who is quite willing to engage with skeptics, undergoes a brain scan for the program. The pastor says: “I don’t think faith is anything to be afraid of from science. Science validates faith, so bring it on.” He prays in English, then in tongues. The frontal lobes were active when he spoke in English, but much less active when he spoke in tongues. Ms. Morgan was also tested and tellingly said: “When I heard about the study, I already knew was in my spirit that it was going to be proven that there’s a part of our brain that we have no control, that when the Holy Ghost is interceding for us we’re out of control.” Newberg also did brain scans on Buddhist monks and Franciscan sisters praying. Their frontal lobes increased in activity, lending some support to the claim that tongue speakers are “out of control” with regard to speech.

• In this short video, a woman speaks in tongues and then calls an old man to the stage to interpret her glossolalia. One wonders, how do they know the interpretation is correct?

• I found this video to be creepy. A woman “teaches” a group of children, who appear to be between the ages of 5 and 12, to speak in tongues.

• Allen Parr posted a 20-minute video on why he stopped speaking in tongues. He grew up in a Baptist church, but attended a charismatic church in college. The emotion grabbed him. Viewing others speaking in tongues, he “felt like a fish out of water.” He believes that peer pressure influenced his getting deeper into this group. His becoming aware of that pressure, however, was the first step in leaving the charismatic group. Future steps resulted from his independent, detailed biblical analysis of speaking in tongues and praying in tongues.

Scientific Analyses

Newberg’s neuroscience research, described in the Nightline video, is consistent with linguistic analyses of glossolalia because brain areas normally associated with speech are comparatively inactive during glossolalia. A Wikipedia article⁶ says that the linguistic analyses of William Samarin⁷

found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. . . [but] glossolalia is “only a facade of language.” [18] He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts.

Spanos & Hewit⁸ challenge trance, or dissociation, explanations of glossolalia. Their abstract states:

Tested 3 hypotheses concerning glossolalia: that glossolalia (a) results from a “hyperaroused trance,” (b) is associated with high levels of hypnotic susceptibility, and (c) is symptomatic of psychopathology. Contrary to the “trance” hypothesis, 12 experienced glossolalics (aged 18–23 yrs) performed glossolalia with eyes open and without accompanying kinetic activity (e.g., trembling, shaking) or residual disorientation. Moreover, memory deficits following glossolalic speech occurred to the same degree following nontrance control activity. Glossolalics and 36 nonglossolalic control Ss matched for age, sex, and level of education did not differ from one another on hypnotic susceptibility, absorption, or measures of psychopathology (e.g., Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, Eysenck Personality Inventory). Findings are consistent with nontrance formulations that conceptualize the acquisition and maintenance of glossolalia in terms of social-learning variables.

The video of a woman “teaching” very young children to speak in tongues and the video testimony of Allen Parr clearly support social-learning explanations of glossolalia. The children were in a noisy “class” where they were learning to speak in tongues. Parr, like the lady in the first video cited above, can turn glossolalia off and on at will. Dissociative trance states, then, may invite glossolalia, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient.

Pentecostal Movement⁹

The Pentecostal movement has its origins in the nineteenth century, when formerly fervent denominations became more staid and structured. Many church goers yearned for a more “heart religion.” Pentecostalism, which appealed especially to the disaffected, fulfilled these needs.

In the early 20th century in Topeka, Kansas, Charles Fox Parham, director of Bethel Bible College, “believed that the complacent, worldly, and coldly formalistic church needed to be revived by another outpouring of the Holy Spirit.”¹⁰ He encouraged students and ministers to pray for the blessings of the Holy Spirit.

On January 1, 1901, Agnes Oznam became the first of Parham’s students to speak in an unknown tongue. Others soon had the same experience, and Parham claimed that glossolalia was the “initial evidence” that one had been truly baptized with the Holy Spirit. Parham and his students understood these recurrences of Pentecost prophetically, interpreting them as signs of the imminence of the last days, or End Times. Imbued with this sense of urgency, they set out on an evangelical mission.¹¹

Although the movement initially was ridiculed, Parham began to practice faith healing, which became a hallmark of Pentecostalism and contributed to its growth. The movement was successful in the American South and Southwest, and had tens of thousands of followers by 1905.

A turning point event was the Azusa Street revival that began in 1906 at William Seymour’s Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles. The old building on Azusa Street “attracted rich and poor from Black, white, and Latino communities, as well as many preachers whose own ministry had become staid.”¹² Spiritually energized evangelists from Azusa and other Pentecostal churches reached out to other churches, including established Protestant churches, and extolled the benefits of speaking in tongues. Many saw the Pentecostal revival as a sign of the end times. Many traditional churches, however, expelled Pentecostals and even passed resolutions of anathema against them.

As a result, Pentecostals began to form their own churches and denominations, including Assemblies of God, Church of God, Christian Church of North America, and Pentecostal Holiness Church. Some Pentecostal churches adhere to a nontrinitarian theology, including Apostolic, Oneness, United Pentecostal Church, Inc., and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith.

Despite mainstream dismissal and even accusations of heresy, the Pentecostal movement spread throughout the world during the 20th century. To try to heal divisions that had arisen during the movements’ explosive growth, Pentecostal churches formed the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America (PFNA) in 1948. In 1994 the PFNA dissolved and was replaced by a new interracial organization, the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America. More than 100 Pentecostal denominations exist today.

In the late 20th century, many members of mainstream Protestant and Roman Catholic churches were influenced by Pentecostalism and formed charismatic fellowships in their denominations and churches.

There were an estimated 279 million classical Pentecostals (12.8 percent of the world’s Christian population) in 2011.¹³ If Charismatic Christians are added, the number jumps to over 644 million.¹⁴

Can 644 Million People be Totally Deluded?

Whether one is an atheist, an adherent of a nonChristian religion, or a Christian who is dubious about Pentecostal practices, one must admit that good people who function quite well in the world belong to Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Many years ago, for example, I worked with a high-ranking business executive. He was smart, balanced, and had a good sense of humor. He was also a member of the Assemblies of God. He wasn’t at all crazy. Yet he participated in church services that many Christians and I would find off-putting to say the least. Similarly, Pastor Jerry Stolz Foose in the Nightline video was willing to engage with skeptics, and he seemed quite sincere in his belief that speaking in tongues offered a special connection to God.

What benefits do people get from attending church services in which there is much shouting, singing, raising of hands, and speaking in tongues?

Obviously, if one believes in Pentecostal or Charismatic theologies, one will conclude that such church services are imbued with the Holy Spirit, regardless of neuroscience or other scientific findings. Providing physical or psychological correlates of a perceptual or mental experience does not necessarily mean that the object of the experience is illusory.

Even if one takes a secular stance, however, there are reasons to believe that glossolalic and other spirit-filled experiences may have genuine benefits for at least some practitioners. The human mind is like a deep lake resting on geologically unstable ground. Rumblings in the deep may affect what happens at the top. That is why depth psychologies have been meaningful and useful to many people. And that is why in my first Substack post I quoted D. H. Lawrence’s poem, “Terra Incognita”:

There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of

Vast ranges of experience, like the humming of unseen harps,

We know nothing of, within us.

In the depths of the mind are “the humming of unseen harps” – what I call the “harp world.” Words such as I use in these essays may enable us to make sense of at least some of that humming. But there are many methods that one may use to receive messages from the depths, including but not limited to:

• Rational verbal analysis

• Lyrical prose or poetry

• Music

• Visual arts – painting, architecture, sculpture

• Dance

• Religious rituals

• Natural beauty

• Fasting and other forms of asceticism

Poet Robinson Jeffers, for example, lived on the northern end of Big Sur. He was inspired by the natural beauty before him and wrote lyrically about what would normally be considered scientific ideas, in this case evolution:

But certain assassins among them

Discovered that it was easier to eat flesh

Than feed on lean air and sunlight: thence the animals,

Greedy mouths and guts, life robbing life,

Grew from the plants, and as the ocean ebbed and

Flowed many plants and animals

Were stranded in the great marshes, along the shore,

Where many died and some lived. From these grew all

Land-life,

Plants, beasts and men, the mountain forest and the

Mind of Aeschylus

And the mouse in the wall.¹⁵

Jeffers poetic lines express much more than a scientific narrative on evolution. He takes an idea that may seem self-evident in today’s world and makes us realize that there is much more depth to this idea than we realize. He hears the humming of unseen harps.

Music can also connect us to mental and spiritual depths. I once watched a video of conductor Leonard Bernstein marveling at the perfection of Beethoven’s musical form. According to Google Gemini, Bernstein said: “...it is always the right next note, as though he had some kind of private telephone wire to heaven, which told him what the next note was to be.” Gemini also tells us that Handel completed The Messiah in 24 days, and at the end said, “I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself.” Are we to dismiss such intimations of a God, of a beyond, because they are not expressed in rational, scientific language?

When I first glimpsed Venice from a vaporetto, the beauty of the scene filled my eyes with tears. I was similarly moved when I first beheld Yosemite Valley after exiting the Wawona Tunnel. I’m sure that many millions of people have had the same experience with objects of natural and man-made beauty. These experiences tell us important things that are not easily put into words, unless one is a poet like Jeffers.

The “harp world” communicates to us through such experiences. Or, if one believes in God, the Divine, which is far beyond our understanding and our words, reveals a small yet blazing part of its mysterious magnificence through means other than words.

We must keep in mind, however, that even when our experience of the depths comes with a powerful feeling of knowing, our perceptions may be distorted, misleading, or inaccurate. That is why in my post, “Hallucinations, Delusions, and Religious Visions,” I extensively quoted Father Benedict Groeschel, who, though having a deep faith in the supernatural, recognized that our imperfect nature can distort messages from beyond, i.e., private revelations can be wrong, no matter how right they feel.

I think, then, that I can answer the question posed by the title of this section with “no, but.” Speaking in tongues and other manifestations of what believers say is the Holy Spirit are ways to receive messages from the deep, from God, if you will. They can be added to my bulleted list above. Such messages, however, are not infallible revelations, no matter how much shouting, singing, and hand-raising accompany them. That is, perhaps, why so many mainstream Christian denominations distance themselves from the exuberant enthusiasm of Pentecostals and Charismatics.

The Catholic position on manifestations of the spirit probably concurs with many Protestant denominations:

The Catholic Church recognizes glossolalia (the “gift of tongues”) as a genuine charism of the Holy Spirit, but it places it under strict theological and pastoral limits. . . .

The Catholic Encyclopedia on the “Gift of Tongues” notes that in the later Church the charism degenerated into “meaningless inarticulate gabble” and caused scandal, especially when presented without interpretation. Consequently the Church teaches that the gift is rare today, not a normative requirement for the faithful, and must be exercised with discernment, always aimed at the building up of the whole community.¹⁶

I recall something a Protestant minister once said to me, something like: “Compared to others, liturgical churches put more emphasis on God the Father, Evangelicals on God the Son, and Pentecostals on the Holy Spirit.” Irrational exuberance leading to pride and error can occur in all three, and perhaps more often among Pentecostals. But sincere piety occurs in all three as well. There is mystery in the depths, to which we should remain open, but not so open that our brains fall out. Hence, though you will never find me shouting enthusiastically and speaking in tongues at a Pentecostal service, I nonetheless respect those who do, for I am not the measure of all things.

1 https://www.britannica.com/topic/glossolalia.

2 May, L. C. (1956). A survey of glossolalia and related phenomena in non-Christian religions. American Anthropologist, 51(1), 75-96.

3 Acts of the Apostles 2:4

4 Xenoglossy. See Wikipedia article for references. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy.

5 1 Corinthians 12

6 Speaking in Tongues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_tongues

7 Samarin, William J. (1972). Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism. New York: Macmillan. OCLC 308527.

8 Spanos, N. P., & Hewitt, E. C. (1979). Glossolalia: A test of the “trance” and psychopathology hypotheses. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(4), 427–434. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.88.4.427

9 This section relies on https://www.britannica.com/topic/glossolalia.

10 https://www.britannica.com/topic/glossolalia. Section: Pentecostalism.

11 https://www.britannica.com/topic/glossolalia. Section: The Origins of Pentecostalism.

12 https://www.britannica.com/topic/glossolalia. Section: The Origins of Pentecostalism.

13 Spirit and power: A 10-country survey of Pentecostals. (2006, 5 October). The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Archived from the original on 2019-01-31. pewforum.org. Cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism

14 Zurlo, G. A., Johnson, T. M., Crossing, P. F. (2019, July). World Christianity and mission 2020: Ongoing shift to the global South. International Bulletin of Mission Research, 44 (1), 16. doi:10.1177/2396939319880074. ISSN 2396-9393. Cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism

15 Not man apart: Lines from Robinson Jeffers, photographs of the Big Sur coast. (1969). New York: Sierra Club and Ballantine Books, p. 42.

16 Quoted from 9/23/25 query to the AI of Magisterium.com. Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia. For an in-depth report on problems in charismatic groups, see: Tydings, J. (1999). Shipwrecked in the spirit. Cultic Studies Journal, 16(2), 83-179. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Km0WIxmsm8OnElRxy1HtaebNLFaALZeA2zXbiqKcBqY/edit?tab=t.0