A Gloss on Glossolalia

Many posts on this blog have their origins in conversations between Brigitte and me—certainly all those that deal with language. The context of this one may illustrate how that works. We were actually talking about what are known as the Left Behind novels—and films—by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The novels, which deal with the End Times, have achieved amazing sales. But the cultural meaning of their popularity is not really remarked upon—because the secular culture regards these books/movies as attacks on itself by a residue of resistant elements of the population, which alas, resistant to conversion to the modernity. That, of course, is deplorable, from that perspective, indeed embarrassing when the residue seems much greater than the new faith. Sixty-five million copies? Multiple, long-time disfigurements of the New York Times best seller list?

That reminded me of Tolkien’s view that in cultural decay the three responses to it are futurism (read pro-freedom, rights, and technology), archaism (nostalgia for past times, return to former customs, disgust with modernity), and the transcendental view which sees the solution in the religious dimension, which has room for the supernatural. The Left Behind phenomenon is, therefore, a recognizable indicator that at least part of the population belongs to this category. The novels, surely, are a popular presentation of that view—but is not taken seriously because the dominant culture considers such people of a kind of lower class.

This then suddenly made me think of a very close friend of ours, particularly Brigitte’s, once a neighbor, still a close friend, who, after her husband absconded leaving her to fend with children still in the home, coped magnificently and made a brand-new career for herself at an age where most people start getting ready for the slow fade out. A life-time Catholic, this lady joined a charismatic Catholic church in which (Woe! we thought at the time) some people engaged in glossolalia. So finally we get to the word.

Now here is the curious fact. Because of our friend—and the really wondrous qualities she suddenly began to show forth when pressed by circumstances—my view of an ecstatic or semi-ecstatic religious behavior began to change. Until then I’d viewed it with a great deal of caution. It’s not class, region, education, or even culture that really matters. It is the inner quality of individuals. And our friend has qualities.

Now for the word itself. It comes from the Greek glossa or glotta in usage meaning an obscure or foreign word (but literally meaning tongue) combined with lalia, meaning to speak or to prattle, babble. Hence, also, a “gloss,” in English, is an explanation of a word because it is obsolete or foreign. And a “glossary” is simply a collection of those glosses. The explanation of what people mean when they are speaking in tongues, alas, is not translatable into language—except by something like faith. Which, if the popularity of those novels is an indication, may be on the rise.

Slow-Mo Fracture

Based on copies sold, the sixteen novels that comprise the Left Behind cycle, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, represent something of a literary phenomenon at the kick-off of the twenty-first century. The series is based on interpretations of prophetic books of the Bible under which, in End Times, the faithful will undergo rapture and be instantaneously taken up to heaven. The unbelieving are…left behind. The books appeared in the period 1995-2007; seven became best sellers; total copies sold have topped 65 million. Three movies were made from this series as well, also popular. But this series, while remarked upon by the mainstream, which cannot help but admire a commercial tour de force, has been ignored because it belongs to an alien culture, so to speak.

Two recent mass killings (at a movie house showing a Batman film, at a Sikh Temple) taking place within 19 days of one another made me think that these are symptoms of cultural break-up—and curiously brought to mind the “left behind”—those individuals and groups who feel left behind in some sense of that word. Massive, rapid change always produces such individuals and groups; the KKK represented one kind of reaction to the outcome of the Civil War. And that war, in the fullness of time, also produced the last major social movement where unity, thus integration, was at the center of the great effort: the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn’t very long after its successful implementation that  we suddenly developed a fascination with rapidly-branching ethnicity. Soon after came multiculturalism on the left and fundamentalist activism in politics on the right. The Michigan Militia formed in 1994—and will here be a stand-in for other similar groups that have sprouted since.

LaHaye and Jenkins brilliantly turned a perception, deeply felt by many traditionalistic, religious people on its head. They were not the left behind. That label belongs to the major culture as the kingdom comes. From  my perspective all this signals the slow-motion fracture of Western Civilization. Parts of it are breaking off. Cracks appear in the denuded landscape deprived of water and burned by the merciless rays of commercialism. The mass killings are, as it were, the visible sparks that fly as this breakup is taking place.