Lutherans: Taming the Tongues

In Minneapolis last week, the 47-member American Lutheran Church Council voted to throw the Rev. A.

Herbert Mjorud off the church's evangelical staff. His offense was one that appalls, embarrasses and deeply worries church leaders: promoting glossolalia, the practice of praying in "gibberish."

Without question, glossolalia is the fastest-growing fad in U.S. Protestant churches. Once a peculiarity of Pentecostals, "speaking in tongues" has caught on with Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians, and there is now a national association of glossolalists, the Blessed Trinity Society in Van Nuys, Calif. At least 260 of...