Prayer and Tongues

In the previous post on public prayer, I mentioned that prayer is to be understood by all and if in a tongue it is to be interpreted. With that statement, I was in no way endorsing Pentecostalism or the Charismatic movement. I was just following Paul's injunctions in 1 Corinthians 14.

For the record, I am a Cessationist (I've always have been). At this point, I want to mention a hindrance to reformation among African Americans---the Full Gospel movement, especially the Full Gospel Baptist movement.

"Bishop" Paul S. Morton, formerly of New Orleans, spearheaded this movement in the early 1990s. As a result, a number of National Baptist churches left the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. to form this fellowship with Paul Morton, the presiding bishop. Some churches may have remained with the convention, I don't know. A National Baptist church has a right to embrace Pentecostalism and remain in good standing with the convention.

The emphasis on tongues-speaking and the "gifts" has set biblical worship a drift in African American Baptist churches, as younger pastors have grown up with this type of worship and re-form (or maybe it is proper to write "deform") the worship taking further and further away from biblical commands and precepts.

To place the tongues issue into Reformed confessional context, the Westminster Confession states that prayer must be in a "known tongue." Were the Westminster divines responding to proto-Pentecostalism? No, they responded to the Roman Catholic Church and its Latin liturgy. Let us give the divines credit for a good application of 1 Corinthians 14; drawing from that chapter, they knew that Paul commands that speech in worship is to be done in a language that is understood by all. Language in an element of worship edifies; therefore, the singing is to be in the common language, the preaching, and the praying also. The Roman Church had circumvented this commandment, and nowadays Pentecostals and Charismatics that practice what they call tongue-speaking abrogate this commandment as well, especially when men and women (usually preachers or worship leaders) break out spontaneously in "tongues." I see them on television, and they never interpret these "tongues," which is in clear rejection of Paul's commandment.

According to the Holy Scriptures, prayer is to be in the common language, or interpreted into the common language so all may say, "Amen."