The Rev. Dennis J. Bennett, for one, is sure the explosion is on the way; last week he took up new duties in Seattle at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church as the direct result of his interest in glossolalia. London-born Father Bennett, 42, a graduate of Chicago Theological Seminary (Congregational) who later became an Episcopalian, was assigned to St. Mark’s Church in Van Nuys, Calif, in 1953. Last October he agreed to meet with some members of a fellow minister’s church who had found themselves beginning to speak in tongues. First he was surprised to find that they were neither far-out types nor emotionally unbalanced; then he discovered that he had the “gift” himself and that the experience was “enriching.”
Father Bennett brought the idea into his own parish””and began to run into trouble. Of his 2,000 parishioners, he says, some 700 developed a positive, sympathetic interest”””they included the junior warden and the chairman of the women’s guild. They were about equally divided between men and women, and there was a large number of couples. The group included a Ph.D. and a brain surgeon.” But conservative Episcopalians were shocked. In April the vestry asked Pastor Bennett for his resignation, and Bishop Francis Eric Bloy of Los Angeles sent St. Mark’s a new priest and a pastoral letter banning any more speaking in tongues under church auspices.
Father Bennett has no plans to get glossolalia going again in his new post, a small missionary church, but he “mentions” it privately to people he thinks could benefit. “The gift of tongues is a freeing of the personality in expressing one’s self more profoundly, particularly toward God, even though the symbols are not understood by the speaker. It does not happen in a trance. The person is releasing something deeper than the ordinary symbols of language.”
Doyosi Ki-i-yeno. One evening last week, in an apartment motel in Van Nuys, seven Episcopalians of Father Bennett’s former flock met together to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. Bursts of laughter from a television set across the courtyard invaded the reverent silence, but the two men and five women paid no attention, praying aloud from time to time for individuals in sickness or trouble and for “those who are resisting the out pouring of the Holy Spirit….
California’s Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy dismisses the movement. “In the past there have been movements of this sort, but they never did the church any good.” But Seventh Day Baptist Paul Henry, a lawyer of Fontana, Calif., speaks for many of the “spirit-filled” when he says: “It’s only my guess, but I think it may be an outpouring just before the termination of this age.”
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