Steps Toward a Neurophenomenology of Speaking in Tongues

Abstract

Abstract This chapter aims to show that working back and forth between neuroscientific methods and ethnographic phenomenology can inspire us to think differently. We discuss a neurophenomenological project to improve our understanding of the evangelical Christian practice of speaking in tongues. After several years of ethnographic participant observation in tongues-speaking churches, we interviewed tongues-speakers carefully. As we developed a neuroimaging experiment to try to capture what we heard from them, our interdisciplinary approach pushed us to notice shifts in the experience of speaking in tongues, which we came to call “dropping in.” The combination of ethnographic phenomenology and neuroscience brought us a deeper understanding of tongues prayer in ways we did not expect.