Chapter One - A ‘weird babel of tongues’: charisma in the modern world

Summary

I vividly remember my first encounter with a charismatic church. It occurred during my final year of studying for an anthropology degree. During a particularly boring undergraduate lecture, a fellow student slipped me a note enquiring if I believed in God. When I scrawled a noncommittal reply, she asked if I wanted to accompany her to a local church that Sunday. I agreed (in a spirit, I told myself, of intellectual inquiry), and a few days later found myself sitting not in the Victorian Gothic pile that I had envisioned but in a school hall on the edge of the city. The ‘altar’ of the church consisted of a microphone and the ‘organ’ was a battered and out-of-tune piano. I arrived at the hall intending to sit at the back, but was soon spotted as a newcomer by an usher and placed towards the front row of seats so that I would be directly facing the microphone. The sermon was preached by a visiting Welshman who had come to give a ‘revival’ talk, and, although I admired the force and eloquence of his oration (and was surprised by its humour), I recall being even more struck by his keen control of the choreography and tone of the service. At one point, we were singing a hymn in a lackadaisical manner, following the stumbling efforts of the congregation's pianist.