Affect in Pentecostal Worship

• The Holy Spirit and Affect Theory by Sharon Willoughby, 6/4/98
  
  

Sharon, as Don Nathanson has replied, the subject is very broad and my attempt here to reply will be very inadequate to your well stated comments.

My own upbringing, experience, and lifetime membership and professional leadership has been in a sector of Protestantism which eschews excitement and is suspicious of wild emtionality in religious practice.That very emotional sterility may be a cardinal reason why Silvan Tomkins' affect/script theory has been so appealing to me.

I have attended a number of Pentecostal worship services with keen interest, and with approbation for the obvious enhancement of positive affect which the large majority of worshippers manifest at the conclusion of the service. However, my own religious ideology is offended by the apparent narrowly personal, self-concerned focus of the services and the worshippers.

In Tomkins' script theory the religious ideological script fulfills three functions: 1.Orientation (one's ul

• David, part of your post got lost by Sharon Willoughby, 6/12/98