Speaking In Tongues Is A Form Of Black Resistance

Speaking in tongues happens when someone “catches the Spirit” and enters a trance where they communicate in languages they don’t speak.  Speakers mix earthly and heavenly languages sent from Spirit. 

In Black Pentecostal Breath, Ashon T. Crawley argues that all forms of embodied Black spiritual practices, including speaking in tongues, are acts of resistance. 

The physicality of speaking in tongues actively disrupts space, place, and time, causing friction between new and known languages. Crawley argues that speaking in tongues resists western normativity by interrupting it. 

Through this lens, speaking in tongues becomes a form of prayer with infinite possibilities and modes of resistance. 

Acts 2 describes Jesus’s disciples being filled by the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Even though the disciples were from all over and spoke different languages, speaking in tongues united them in God’s message.

Being Black is not a monolithic experience. We come from different places, speak different languages, and even have different understandings of what it means to be Black. But our collective resistance unites us in God’s message.

Let’s let liberation drip from our tongues, fueling our prayers with resistance and the sacredness that is Black unity.