Thank You for Your Questions

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

If it's O.K. with you, I'm replying to two questions in Sharon Willoughby's entry on "The Holy Spirit and Affect Theory" (6/4/98): "Is the affective process in this type of religious experience [charismatic Pentecostal religious revivals] (and other mystical experiences?) the same process that occurs in mania but due to software rather than hardware?", and so how do some of these people "...become very susceptible to suggestion"?

The understanding one brings to these two questions depends upon the understanding one has of one's own affects and scripts. That, to me, is the hard part. It is easy to generalize and affix labels, part of the present technocratic-intellectual age's influence, and countertransferial. Early Greek philosophers thought to be rid of religious forms by condemning susceptibility to superstition. Yet frenzied dances of Delphic Oracle adherents, and centuries later Islamic Sufi whirling dervishes, continued, as well as human questions of basic meaning. My own experience has been that there is as wide, if not wider, variety of religious expressions of groups within denominations than between the latter. Some Pentecostals, for example, are deeply involved in programs for social justice.

I tend to think that many people find themselves in a search for meaning with religious symbols and groups at various levels of development, as James Fowler described (1987. "Faith Development and Pastoral Care." New York: Fortress Press.), whom Don Nathanson referred to in his bolforum "Shame and Religion" (8/22/96). Again, labels can be dangerous. It is all well and good to direct people into matters of social justice as long as some steps to get there are suggested, rather than using these matters chiefly to harangue people awares or unawares, as I heard, for example, Stokely Carmichael do often in a Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. before Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Concerning susceptibility to suggestion, especially in crowds, my experience has been that every person has some form and degree of this, which is tempered as s/he becomes more and more acquainted with her/his own scripts and affects. As attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time" (Alexander K. McClure. 1904. "Lincoln Yarns and Stories," 124.). Mine is only one perspective of this large matter. And with that, I think I can trust the direction of your wisdom in this.

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