Theology Today - Vol 30, No. 3 - October 1973 - BOOK REVIEW - Tongues of Men and Angels & Pentecostals: The Charismatic Movement in the Churches

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Tongues of Men and Angels
By William J. Samarin
New York, The Macmillan Company, 1972. 277 pp. $7.95.

Pentecostals: The Charismatic Movement in the Churches
By Walter Hollenweger, translated by R. A. Wilson
Minneapolis, Augsburg Publishing House, 1972. 572 pp. $9.95.

Tongues of Men and Angels is based upon interviews with glossolaliacs from all over the world. Samarin worked within the ranks of long-established Pentecostalism as well as in neo-Pentecostal circles and even with tongue-speaking, non-religious occultists. He describes here the various forms of "anomalous" speech and compares them to children's speech, bebop, jazz, poetry, et cetera.

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It is interesting that Samarin, who examines glossolalia and "charismatic" religion from the outside as a social scientist, is also able to evaluate these movements from the inside because of a lifelong association with the Christian tradition. Quite unashamedly, he categorically relegates glossolalia to the ranks of a "pseudo-language" long used by millions of traditional Pentecostals and currently by hundreds of thousands of "neo-Pentecostals," but he does not believe that Pentecostals are "devian" in any way. This is indicative of a new approach being taken to the study of glossolalia. In chapter four, for example, Samarin describes with the pedantry of a true linguist the "form," 'meaning," and "varieties" of tongue-speech. The chapter is complete with tables and graphs and phonetic symbols, a far cry from the privately printed tracts of yesteryear which related glossolalia to a "holy ghost language."

The book contains three appendixes. The first is a description of the questionnaire that Samarin used among the various groups he examined. In addition, he monitored hours of tape recorded samples of tongues. The second appendix is a published testimony about the conversion of one of these Christians. The last consists of the various samples of the different types of glossolalia, including literary glossolalia, religious glossolalia, occultic glossolalia, and "nonsense swearing." There is an eleven page bibliography.

The book will make a significant contribution to the field of comparative religion, since it will have appeal to psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and linguists alike. In fact, in the new field of "sociolinguistics" this is the first in-depth examination of the language of religion that employs as a method the basic concepts of the social science discipline. That factor alone will make the volume a significant one. Speaking in Tongues by Felicitas Goodman (University of Chicago Press, 1972) treats the subject from the neighboring discipline of ethnography but without Samarin's Christian orientation.

But whatever contribution the social scientist or the psychologist can make to the study of religion will be limited severely in the instance of tongue-speech since biblical terminology is being applied to a present day phenomenon, even though it is not yet clear exactly what the nature of the Pentecostal experience was in the New Testament.

R. A. Wilson has translated the 1969 encyclopedic Enthusiastisches Christentum by Walter Hollenweger, which traces the history of the Pentecostal movement from its inception to the end of the last decade and provides a theological analysis of Pentecostal thought. Hollenweger, himself a Pentecostal, wrote this volume about the fastest growing segment of Christendom to encourage dialogue between the World Council of Churches and "the Third World." The dialogical nature of the book can be seen, for ex-

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ample, when he patiently addresses himself to a non-Pentecostal constituency and seeks to help it understand the third force or when he turns to his own brothers of like belief and exhorts them not to reject biblical criticism a priori.

The present volume (572 pages) is but a "synopsis" of his massive ten volume doctoral dissertation entitled "Handbuch der Pfingstbewegung" which actually numbers several thousand pages. Having served as Secretary of the Division of World Mission and Evangelism for the WCC, Hollenweger is presently professor of missions at the University of Birmingham, England, and because of his own background, education, travel, and experience, is well qualified to opt for new openness and ecumenism between Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals.

In the first part (pp. 1-287), Hollenweger tackles the sticky problem of definition. The perplexing diversities within the ranks of Pentecostalism have long plagued scholars, including those who are themselves within the movement, and there is by no means agreement upon definition. In the present volume, the author includes all groups who teach at least two post-conversion crises in the life of the believer. The first is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the second is usually-though not always-characterized by glossolalia.

The author rejects the older sociological definition of "sect" and proposes that "a person belongs to a sect if he has excluded himself from the fellowship of the saints, that is, if he asserts that in his own ecclesiastical organization, in his own theology, and in his own experience of faith, God's will is infallibly 'incarnate'" (p. 504).

The second part of the book (pp. 291-511) is devoted to a theological analysis of Pentecostal thought with special emphasis given to the role of Scripture, spirit, and eschatology. The final two chapters are particularly interesting since they afford Hollenweger the opportunity to evaluate the Pentecostal movement both theologically and sociologically. He asserts that the strength of the movement-regardless of its varied forms-is that it is a genuinely indigenous Christian experience meeting the sometimes unexpressed and complex needs of mankind. Thus, the real challenge of these "enthusiastic Christians" is not a doctrinal one but rather one which is experiential at the community level. It relates to the experience of participating in a community which is alive, expressionistic, and communicative. Will the mainstream churches hear the Pentecostals or will there be more shallow rejections replete with righteous theological condemnations?

Watson E. Mills
Averett College
Danville, Virginia