Research On Glossolalia

I just read about some cut­ting-edge research about speak­ing in tongues (you may have also seen this referred to as “glos­so­lalia”).

Sum­ma­ry quote:

“We noticed a num­ber of changes that occurred func­tion­al­ly in the brain,” com­ments Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tor Andrew New­berg, MD, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Radi­ol­o­gy, Psy­chi­a­try, and Reli­gious Stud­ies, and Direc­tor for the Cen­ter for Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the Mind, at Penn. “Our find­ing of decreased activ­i­ty in the frontal lobes dur­ing the prac­tice of speak­ing in tongues is fas­ci­nat­ing because these sub­jects tru­ly believe that the spir­it of God is mov­ing through them and con­trol­ling them to speak. Our brain imag­ing research shows us that these sub­jects are not in con­trol of the usu­al lan­guage cen­ters dur­ing this activ­i­ty, which is con­sis­tent with their descrip­tion of a lack of inten­tion­al con­trol while speak­ing in tongues.”

I pass this along because we so often focus on research find­ings which seem to chal­lenge the faith (or more fre­quent­ly on research find­ings which chal­lenge our inter­pre­ta­tion of the faith), it’s always inter­est­ing to spot those that cor­re­spond to exact­ly what we would expect based upon a straight­for­ward read­ing of the Bible.