“Speaking In Tongues Involves No Hysteria”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31177, 29 September 1966, Page 4

“Speaking In Tongues Involves No Hysteria”

“Speaking in tongues” was not complicated nor frightening, and involved no emotion, auto-suggestion, or hysteria, said the Rev. D. J. Bennett, vicar of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Seattle. He was addressing a group of clergymen, including the Bishop of Christchurch (The Rt. Rev. W. A. Pyatt), at Knox Presbyterian Church Centre. Father Bennett was formerly rector of St. Mark’s Church in Van Nuys, California, and gained wide publicity because of the nature of his ministry. Describing his first experience of “speaking in tongues.” Father Bennett said his mode of praying changed, and the language changed. In his church, though, there were 200 people who prayed in this way. “Nobody interrupts me; nobody swings from the chandeliers,” he said. "Used to Situation” The people were, however, used to the situation, and understood what it meant. God was renewing experience of these things in the Church, and the way for clergymen to approach them was not with fear and prejudice, Father Bennett said. “And I can’t imagine, anyway, the Anglican Church being swept with uncontrollable emotionalism,” he added. When “speaking in tongues” he was rational, was in a state of consciousness, and was not under compulsion,. and everything he did was under his control. Father Bennett said. The only thing he did not control was the form of the words. It was not “baby talk” but a highly inflected, syntactical language. A Russian Orthodox priest in America had expressed interest, and had in receiving the gift expressed no surprise. “There is no problem here for Roman Catholics,” Father Bennett said. “Many receive these gifts, especially the Jesuits.” He said that he became aware he was addressing the Father, and the Holy Spirit was giving him the words. He was expressing, with fluency and adequacy, things that had to be expressed. He described it as an “outpouring of my heart,” and he prayed “in tongues” either silently, Intellectually, or out loud. The manifestation was a most valuable gift for private devotion. He was happy not to have public manifestation, because people did not understand it. Father Bennett said “speaking in tongues” became perfectly natural, and in seven years there had been no incident, nor had there been any disturbance, in his church. Those who experienced it were afterwards filled with God’s power and freedom, and |a feeling of freshness.

Father Bennett, in outlin- . ing his experience as an Episcopalian priest, said he had found many people depending on the clergy to “give reli- . gion to them.” The average Christian did not read the Bible—he was 1 so busy discrediting it. Christians these days, he said, kept wondering whether they would make it. There was a tendency in the United States for the Episcopalian Church to become a liberal; modernistic church, although he understood this was not happening to the Anglican Church here. Father Bennett said that after his experience of “speak-' ing in tongues” he began to see more frequent healing.