Blue Tongues

Glossolalia has come to Yale. The ability to "speak in tongues," possessed by the Apostles at the first Pentecost, has long been claimed by fundamentalist Protestant sects. In the last three years, glossolalia has also been tried out by a number of Lutheran and Episcopal churches in the Middle and Far West. Now 20 students in the secular, skeptical confines of Yale University report that they can pray in the spontaneous outpouring of syllables that sounds like utter babble to most listeners, but has a special meaning to the "gifted."

The GlossoYalies are far from being Holy Rollers. One is a Roman Catholic, and most of the others are Protestants who belong to the sobersided Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship--Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists. Five have Phi Beta Kappa keys, and six plan to enter the ministry after graduation. They date their experience to two campus visits last October by the Rev. Harald Bredesen, pastor of the First Reformed Church of Mount Vernon, N.Y., and a prominent advocate of glossolalia as a means of heightening the spiritual life of churches. His formula for speaking in tongues: put the vocal cords in motion, then prayerfully turn them over to God.

The students regard their "gift" as a sacrament and as a means of expressing their faith. They argue that any religious phenomenon approved in the New Testament--St. Paul, in I Corinthians, regards it as a special gift to Christians like prophecy--clearly has a place in the life of the modern church. In practicing glossolalia, the students do not fall into any mystical seizures or trance; instead, onlookers report, they seem fully in control as they mutter or chant sentences that sometimes sound like Hebrew, sometimes like unkempt Swedish. "I don't care what language it is," says one of the tongues-speaking students, "so long as it helps me live a Christian life."

Yale's opinion of the gift is mixed. The university chaplain, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., regards glossolalia as a genuine religious experience and as a natural way for students to gain "emotional release" from the tensions of college life. Another New Haven cleric rejects the phenomenon as "a gentlemanly fad." Students mostly take a dim view. "My grandmother had her Ouija board," says one. "My mother had her Bridey Murphy. Now they have this. It's all the same to me." The glossolalists expect skepticism, and respond with a rueful joke: "Maybe this is what St. Paul means by being fools for Christ's sake."

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