日期: 102 年 9 月 20 日
一、參加會議經過
本人於執行計畫期間，受美國普度大學「中國宗教與社會研究中心」
(Center on Religion and Chinese Society, Purdue University)之邀，於 2013 年 7 月 10-14 日參加其主辦的「第十屆宗教社會科學研討會暨中國宗教與社會研
Religion, Spiritual Capital and Civil Society
發表題 目
Glossolalia and Church Identity: The Role of Sound in the Making of a Pentecostal-charismatic Church
兩位國際著名的中國宗教學者 Richard Madsen 和 Robert Weller 做專題演講，
內容緊湊而豐富。本人即在此會議期間發表英文論文，亦即是本人今年的研 究成果: “Glossolalia and Church Identity: The Role of Sound in the Making of a Pentecostal-charismatic Church.
二、與會心得
本人發表的論文，其旨趣在探討「聲音」與宗教的密切關係，一方面藉 由「聲音」思辨宗教的內涵，另一方面也觀察「聲音」在整合與建構一個基 督教團體所發揮的功能，此皆是本人在執行今年的研究計畫所累積的成果，
特別是包含過去幾個月來，在中國大陸所進行的田野觀察、問卷調查和訪談 成果。發表後的反應良好，尤其獲得楊鳳崗教授和 Robert Weller 教授的熱烈 回應，尤其後者係著名的人類學者，對於宗教中的 body or sensory experience 相當感興趣，對於本人所提，頗有心有戚戚焉之感。
本人在此會議中，也發覺社會科學的宗教研究在國際學界中方興未艾，
在楊鳳崗教授多年來的推動和鼓勵下，在中國和海外華人學界中，掀起一股 熱潮。本人認為這在表面上是與國際學界接軌，但是其中也透露出不少人對 於「科學」的誤解，造成忽略宗教的內涵，而以方法學為先導，簡化複雜的 宗教研究。此議題值得我們反思，值得今後做進一步的討論。
三、發表論文全文或摘要
Abstract (全文參閱附件)
Glossolalia or speaking in tongues has been one of the prominent features that characterize Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity. Some linguists, however, regard it phonologically illogical and semantically meaningless and thus invalid as a
communicative tool. Orthodox Christianity frowns on it because of its uncouth ritual manifestations or disruptive effect on the church order. My paper intends to
reinterpret this spiritual practice from a constructionist perspective. I argue that glossolalia plays a very crucial role in shaping the identity of a
Pentecostal-charismatic community. The tongue sound, acoustically jarring to the outsider but harmonious to the believer, functions to confer on the glossolalists a particular mode of existence and consolidate them as a homogeneous group. For this argument, I draw on Lawrence E. Sullivan’s interpretation of sound in contrast to language, and on Alfred Schütz’s theory about “tuning in” and “inner time.” For concrete illustration, I take the True Jesus Church, a Pentecostal-charismatic
denomination, as an example, referring to its publications, oral and written interviews I conducted with its members, and my participant observation.
四、建議
過去研究中國宗教的學者，以人文學領域的居多，大多從宗教經典、語 言、歷史、義理等層面著手，方法上不出文本詮釋或文獻分析。十多年以來，
楊鳳崗教授主導「中國宗教與社會研究中心」，提倡「社會科學的宗教研究」
(social scientific study of religion)，強調應從宏觀、社會科學的角度，採用更精 準的典範模式，重新審視中國宗教(特別是當代的華人宗教)的圖像和發展。
估不論此一理論和方法的主張是否正確，過去十多年以來，不少年輕學者在 其鼓勵栽培下，努力投入研究當代中國宗教，已經累積初步的成果。本次參 與會議的一百多位學者，或多或少皆與「社會科學的宗教研究」密切相關。
本人認為台灣的學術界，缺少聯合進行研究、創發風潮的魄力，因此雖 有個別的突出成果，卻很難形成具有國際影響力的集體格局，這與台灣的客 觀環境，例如學術人口薄弱、經費補助少而規範嚴格、教授教學負擔太重、
外語能力不強等因素有關。在此背景下，個人認為台灣仍須進一步國際化，
與外國學界頻繁交流互動，從外接收刺激，儘速鬆綁不合理的制度，擴大學 術視野，提昇國內的學術水平。 依此，楊鳳崗教授的「中國宗教與社會研究 中心」是個有利的平台，其所提倡的「社會科學的宗教研究」也是個可攻錯 的試金石，值得國內宗教研究學者與其密切交往。
五、攜回資料名稱及內容
本次會議主題「宗教、靈性資本與公民社會」，發表論文超過百篇，所探 討的子題皆與中國當代的宗教現象有關，議題豐富，內容多樣，頗具參考價 值，大會以 pdf 檔集結存於磁碟，分發給與會者。
六、其他 無
附件
Glossolalia and Church Identity:
The Role of Sound in the Making of a Pentecostal-charismatic Church
Yen-zen Tsai
Graduate Institute of Religious Studies National Chengchi University
The 10th Conference of the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China July 10-14, 2013, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
(draft only; please do not cite)
Abstract
Glossolalia or speaking in tongues has been one of the prominent features that characterize Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity. Some linguists, however, regard it phonologically illogical and semantically meaningless and thus invalid as a communicative tool. Orthodox Christianity frowns on it because of its uncouth ritual manifestations or disruptive effect on the church order. My paper intends to reinterpret this spiritual practice from a constructionist perspective. I argue that glossolalia plays a very crucial role in shaping the identity of a Pentecostal-charismatic community. The tongue sound, acoustically jarring to the outsider but harmonious to the believer, functions to confer on the glossolalists a particular mode of existence and consolidate them as a homogeneous group. For this argument, I draw on Lawrence E. Sullivan’s interpretation of sound in contrast to language, and on Alfred Schütz’s theory about “tuning in” and “inner time.” For concrete illustration, I take the True Jesus Church, a Pentecostal-charismatic denomination, as an example, referring to its publications, oral and written interviews I conducted with its members, and my participant observation.
Keywords: glossolalia, Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, True Jesus Church, Lawrence E. Sullivan, Alfred Schütz
I. Introduction
When we think of the relationship of music and religion, we tend to understand the former as a harmonious voice or “humanly patterned sound” that usually
accompanies the latter on occasions such as Sunday service, Christmas mass, wedding, funeral, and all types of festival celebrations. The music may be either solemn, sad, or joyous, its pitch, high or low, its tempo, fast or slow, and its volume, full or reduced, according to the different contexts in which a special atmosphere is meant to occur. In contrast, noise or discordant sound seems unfit to religious occasions. Voices that are harsh, screeching, and cacophonic, we naturally exclude from the realm that we consider sacred and ordered. (Ellingson 1987)
This may be the common case, but not universally true. Our aversion to noise and din might originate from human natural propensity, but, as Ter Ellingson frankly pointed out, this inclination could indicate our lack of understanding of the role sound plays in a religious community. It could also reflect the researcher’s lack of sympathy with the believer who may express his or her religious emotions through diverse ways, including sounds that are acoustically jarring to the outsider. (Ellingson 1987: 167) On a ritual occasion, music or sound is used to construct a “sonic frame” by which the believer distinguishes the sacred from the profane, both in the spatial and temporal senses. (Ellingson 1987: 169; Van der Leeuw 1967) It is a boundary marker that makes the religious group salient. As a symbol, it imparts a specific identity to the group’s members, guides their spiritual journey, and thus functions to consolidate the community as a whole. (Ellingson 1987; Béhague 1987)
To argue my point, I intend in this paper to examine the role of sound, as
manifested in the glossolalic phenomenon, in the making of a Pentecostal-charismatic church. I will first lay out the theoretical background in which current discussions of glossolalia are taking place and from which I derive my stance of argument. I will then take the True Jesus Church (TJC), an independent, indigenous Chinese Christian denomination, as an example of illustration. The data I draw on include TJC’s
publications, oral and written interviews I conducted with its members, and my participant observation.
II. Glossolalia and Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity
Many scholars of religion have long taken a great interest in the
Pentecostal-charismatic movements, regarding them as a world-wide phenomenon that has been rapidly changing our perception of Christianity as a world religion.
(Anderson, A. and Tang, 2005; Cox 1996; Hollenweger 1972; Martin 2002; Miller
2007; Synan 1997) Simply to review the history of this type of Christianity
commencing from the Azusa Street event in 1906, one sees numerous proliferations of Pentecostal organizations take place during its process of development. Along with it, one also discovers multiple features that characterize these movements, including their special views toward biblical interpretation, forms of worship, ascetic mores, social engagements, and polity and interchurch relations. (Anderson, R.M. 1987) One can, however, confidently single out glossolalia or speaking in tongues as the most common trait that runs through these movements. It is the most powerful spiritual experience almost all the charismatic Christians have shared and the defining feature that has congregated them into a group called Pentecostal. (Cartledge 2006; Kelsey 1981)
When speaking in tongues first appeared in the beginning of the twentieth century USA, it was looked at with suspicion from the society and treated with contempt from the mainline Christianity. As the glossolalists came primarily from the less educated, the poor, and the marginal minorities, they received biased appellations like heretics, schizophrenes, hysterics, and psychotics. It was not until the 1960s when many Christians from the orthodox folds engaged in charismatic prayers and
glossolalia became a widespread movement did scholars begin to seriously examine the contents and meanings of tongue speaking. (Martin, D. B. 1991; Poloma 2006) Opinions about or assessments of it varied, and perspectives that scholars applied to it have ranged from the conventional biblical, historical, theological to the innovative linguistic, psychological, and sociological. (Cartledge 2006) Among them, linguistic and sociological considerations are more relevant to our concern.
Some linguists confronted glossolalia with the problem of intelligibility. Because tongue speech was not an ordinary human language, hence incomprehensible to us humans, they questioned whence it could be generated. Felicitas D. Goodman, for example, based on her empirical study on charismatic communities in Yucatan
peninsula, concluded that “the glossolalist speaks the way he does because his speech behavior is modified by the way the body acts in the particular mental state, often termed trance, into which he places himself.” (Goodman 1972: 8; italics hers) She further elaborated:
I conceived of the glossolalia utterances as an artifact of a hyperaroused mental state or, in Chomskyan terms, as the surface structure of a nonlinguistic deep structure, of the altered state of consciousness. (Goodman 1972:8)
In this way she implicitly consigned at least two attributes to glossolalia. One is that it is a private product stemming from human abnormal mental state. The other is that, as
such, it is an isolated, nonsensical vocalization devoid of communicative effectiveness in the human world. (Goodman 1987) Following Goodman’s approach, other linguists found that glossolalia was non-syntactic and non-semantic and that it was
pseudo-linguistic or at most “remotely language-like.” (Hilborn 2006:113) They similarly ran into a negative evaluation caused by their insistence on the necessity of grammatical and semantic comprehensibility.
However, when semiotics was brought into view, some linguists started to see glossolalia as a series of signs to be interpreted more than as non-language that baffles the listener. This was supplemented by the speech act theory that moves beyond the narrow confines of syntax and semantics to the broader “total speech situation” that links together the locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary effect. In this context, as William J. Samarin was quoted, “glossolalia is not just sound produced in a certain way but sound used in socially meaningful ways.” (Hilborn 2006:122;
Samarin 1972) Henceforth linguists treated glossolalia no longer as a lone voice but a public discourse that concerns a church community. In a situation of tongue speaking, the glossolalists share their intersubjectivity, and their utterances constitute an
“ostensive sacramental act” that involves all the participants. As a human patterned vocalization, glossolalia may be “ideationally deficient,” but it is “communicatively effective.” (Hilborn 2006:139-140)
Social-anthropologists who are interested in the glossolalic phenomenon tended to reject the behavioral science models that regarded tongue-speaking as abnormal or extraordinary. Rather, they saw the manifestations of the charismatic prayers as a learned behavior resonant with social significance. Glossolalia in this connection is not activated in trance or induced from the altered state of consciousness. It could be a private act, but it exhibits its function more fully in the ritual context. When the glossolalists gather, they, on the personal level, regard their speaking in tongues “as a means of opening up one’s being to the supernatural ‘kingdom’ with a power to change lives.” (Poloma 2006: 161) On the communal level, this “expected and normative” ritual “helps to unite them emotionally and spiritually.” (Poloma 2006:
160, 170) Through the practice of glossolalia, the members of the
Pentecostal-charismatic church obtain “a sense of unity with God, which in turn contributes to action that sustains and nurtures community life.” (Poloma 2006:173;
Dodson 2011)
The current linguistic and social-anthropological approaches to glossolalia seem to converge at two points that are important to our present engagement. First, they confirm the role of glossolalic sound and relate it to the constitution of a religious community. Second, they agree that ritual context should be the arena in which glossolalia exercises its power and takes its effect and on which we should focus for
our investigation. These two points help direct my following exposition.
III. The Case of True Jesus Church
The True Jesus Church was established in 1917 in Beijing by “the Lord Jesus Christ,” as its official website states. (TJC, US General Assembly website 2013) Scholars of Chinese Christianity have designated it as one of the three indigenous churches, along with the Jesus Family and Little Flock, that had appeared in China before 1949. (Bays 1995, 2003; Deng 2001; Lian 2008; Tang 2006; Wang 2005) Today, TJC has memberships exceeding 1.5 million, the majority of whom live in China. It has been actively conducting evangelical ministry worldwide, and by now has reached 58 countries in 6 continents. (True Jesus Church, International Assembly website 2013; Wikipedia 2013)
TJC has a unique understanding of its own ecclesial status. According to its interpretation of the Bible, God sent down the Holy Spirit to some early Christians on the Day of Pentecost, hence their glossolalic experience, as he had promised through the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. The full manifestation of the Holy Spirit as recorded in the Book of Acts 2:1-4 was the early rain, which led to the establishment of the Apostolic Church. The descent and receiving of the Holy Spirit are a guarantee to enter the Heavenly Kingdom, a salvific event that marks the first climax of the divine economy. This early rain, unfortunately, did not last long due to the
degeneration of the Church. The Holy Spirit stopped descending in full scale after the apostles had passed away. What we witness in the following centuries were only some rain drops, merely representing the Holy Spirt’s lingering work. (Hsieh 2008:
136-175)
TJC explains that as the descent of the early rain had been prophesized long before it happened, the descent of the latter rain was also indicated in the Bible, particularly in the comforting prophetic oracles of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Micah, Zechariah, and Malachi. And if the early rain appeared in Judea, the latter rain would
“descend on humankind from the East.” (Hsieh 2008: 182) TJC admits that the latter rain or the second wave of Pentecostal movement started in the US around 1900, but its ensuing denominational divisions proved itself incomplete. The spreading of the Pentecostal message to China, as conducted, for example, by the Apostolic Faith Union (changed later to Assembly of God and then to Church of God), paved the way for the coming of the more perfect Church. TJC does not deny that its early workers had initial contacts with the Western Pentecostal missionaries, hence its successor or recipient status. It, however, insists that these TJC workers, notably Lingsheng Zhang, Barnabas Zhang, and Paul Wei, received the truth directly through divine revelations.