ABSTRACT
Pentecostalism is a Christian movement that stresses the immediate and compelling presence of the Holy Spirit in worship. Its adherents believe that the Spirit produces extraordinary mental and physical transformations among the faithful. Ministrations of the Spirit include otherwise unexplainable healings and the transport of those graced into ecstatic spiritual states. Religious ecstasy, in turn, often produces unusual behavior, one example of which is the utterance of long streams of generally unintelligible sounds which mimic human language.
