Tongues, Emotions, and Radical Pentecostalism

I had always been curious to hear what speaking in tongues sounded like. I had heard various views on it from my evangelical friends; that it was a gift only given to certain people, that it was only meant to be used in Bible times, or that it was just something “those crazy Pentecostals” did.

It was time to find out.

After our trip to the Eastern Orthodox church, Monica and I looked up all of the Pentacostal churches in town. There were plenty of Assembly of God churches and lighter charismatic denominations in town. I had been to an Assembly of God church before, and it seemed like it was just Baptist with a little more hand raising. But we wanted to find something a little more radical. (Maybe something slightly reminiscent of Benny Hinn.)
We found the perfect match: a wild, emotional, weepy, slightly cultish, 100% radically Pentacostal church just a few blocks from our house.

We walked apprehensively into the building, trying to be inconspicious but failing utterly. It is especially hard to go unnoticed when the worship leader loudly announces your presence to the entire congregation.

The Pentecostal service stood in complete contrast to the majesty and art of the Orthodox service. The worship was led by a man belting out lines from the pulpit, with a plunking out an accompaniment on an out of tune piano. It didn’t get long for the tongues to get started. Hand-raising, swaying, and streams of gibberish were all intertwined with the southern gospel style songs. In between songs, the worship leader would declare in a loud voice that the spirit was now filing the room, and would begin gasping, praying in broken fragmented sentences, or repeating IloveyouJesus, IloveyouJesus, IloveyouJesus, over and over again like an auctioneer. During these “spirit-filled” interludes, the people in the congregation would follow his lead. It seemed that “the spirit” could be turned on and off by command of the worship leader. When he wanted to make announcements he would go from gasping, emotion-filled tongue speaker to calm and collected orator in the snap of a finger. At one time, the worship leader called people up to be healed. A couple of people came up, and the rest of the congregation huddled around these people, placing their hands on them and shouting prayers all at once.

The preacher had no plan for his sermon whatsoever. He said he was preaching “as the spirit led”. I can’t remember much about the content of his sermon, except that he talked a lot about faith. He seemed to think that blind faith was the most important and obvious virtue you could possess. Once he said “faith is like your arms, you just have to have faith that they are there.” Monica and I still laugh over that one.

The whole service seemed like a combination of frothy emotionalism and bizarre rambling. It reminded me of a high powered version of Bible camp, were you were emotionally manipulated into a “spiritual high” that evaporated as quickly as emotions do.

I have some friends who are Pentecostal, and their churches just use the more charismatic singing and the speaking in tongues as a different form of worship. I have nothing against that. But this church took it to a creepy, extremist level. The entire service was centered around getting yourself worked up into a frothy-mouthed, screaming, wailing spiritual high. It was almost like “the spirit” was a drug that the worship leader and the pastor fed to the eager congregation.


-Carmen