The best analysis I’ve ever seen of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) is a 1960 book by Felicitas Goodman, “Speaking in Tongues,” that examined four congregations in the US and Mexico that practiced it. The result was that glossolalial behavior tends to become regularized and conforms to cultural tradition. In short, there’s more sociology than divinity about the whole thing, which is characterized as a cross between mass hysteria and self-hypnosis. I’m not surprised her church practices it, but let’s call it what it is: a belief in magic, not in God. Or maybe a belief in a magical God. It’s still an extension of human desires rather than divine blessing.
