Episode Details

A close look at the history, science, and theology behind this strange practice, and what it all means for us today.

image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay

Most Evangelicals will have encountered the phenomenon of “speaking in tongues”, if only through reading about it in the New Testament. But I’m guessing very few of them are well-informed about the practice, even though they might actually do it (I’ll even say especially those who do it!). I’m also guessing that many of our listeners — Recovering Evangelicals — are embarrassed and even traumatized about it.

So we took a deep-dive into this controversial practice. And to help us with that, we brought in a guest who was a tongues-speaking Evangelical who became an atheist playwright and actor … who still regularly speaks in tongues in order to tap into his inner psyche, and recently ran work-shops for his theatrical colleagues teaching them … how to speak in tongues!?

After hearing Gary Kirkham’s amazing, hilarious, and provocative story, we looked at some of the science behind speaking in tongues.

Scholars of literature and of history will point out that the ancient Greeks and Romans were speaking in tongues in their own religious rituals many centuries before the New Testament Church took it up. And speaking in tongues is practiced in many other religions around the globe today. [And don’t jump too quickly to the common response that those are “counterfeits”, we address that too].

Anthropologists and linguists make it their careers to study humans making and using language. Despite being able to decode the languages of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian artefacts, and learning the languages of living aboriginal tribes who have never had contact with the rest of the world, those experts find nothing meaningful in recordings of Pentecostals and Charismatics speaking in tongues. The sounds, syllables, vocabulary, cadence