Slain in the Spirit
[1] According to anthropologist Thomas Csordas: In Charismatic ritual life, resting in the Spirit can serve the purposes of demonstrating divine power; of exhibiting the faith of those who are "open" to such power; of allowing a person to be close to, "touched by," or "spoken to" by God (sometimes via embodied imagery); of preparing a person to receive and exercise a spiritual gift; or of healing.
He compared the practice to hypnosis, writing that participants "merely engage in a form of role-playing that is prompted by their strong desire to receive divine power as well as by the influence of suggestion that they do so [...] In short, they behave just as if 'hypnotized.'"
Supporters of the revivals within various denominations including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists argued that trembling, groaning, screaming and falling to the ground "as dead" were signs of divine power in those who were becoming aware of their own sinfulness.
During the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, Peter Cartwright and Charles G. Finney also recorded similar behavior.
The term "slain in the Spirit" was used in this context as early as 1920 by American healing evangelist Maria Woodworth-Etter, whose ministry was often accompanied by this phenomenon.
[8]Historian Grant Wacker argues that early Pentecostals replaced the liturgies and sacraments of traditional churches with the "disciplined use of ecstasy", including the regular occurrence of slaying in the Spirit.
Regarding the sacramental undertones of slaying in the Spirit, Wacker writes: In those situations Christ's physical death and resurrection was re-embodied—not just reenacted but literally re-embodied—night after night, before the very eyes of believers and nonbelievers alike.
The stories sometimes stated and often implied that no one was left standing, which suggests that prostration gained a ritualistic significance comparable, perhaps, to kneeling or genuflecting in liturgical church traditions.
[2]: 84 In 1989, Margaret Poloma noted that some pastors and even high ranking leaders within the Assemblies of God USA, a Pentecostal denomination, were critical of the practice.
[2]: 272 Slaying in the Spirit saw a resurgence during the 1960s and 1970s due to the influence of the charismatic movement, which disseminated Pentecostal beliefs and practices among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics.
