Alfred Garr’s Failed Missionary Tongues
No, the man in the picture above isn’t the Gestapo agent Arnold Ernst Toht who tried to find the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones: Raiders of Lost Ark. The Windsor glasses and hat may belong to a religiously inspired person but certainly not a villain. The man in the picture is Rev. Alfred Goodrich Garr (1875 -1944), an early Pentecostal missionary. Garr’s biographer Steve Thompson celebrates him as “a 20th-century apostle.” But before Garr became a Pentecostal pioneer, he was an important leader of The Burning Bush, a radical Holiness group that was critical of the rising Pentecostal movement.
The Burning Bush was well known for their polemics and vicious attacks on anyone who disagreed. After Garr had left the group to join the early Pentecostals, the following was reported about him by his former co-workers:
From a close study of the man [Alfred Garr] and his experience, we are forced to inform our readers that, instead of having an advanced experience and more powers as he thinks he has, the light has left the eye, the fire is gone, and we can see clearly that he has lost the Holy Ghost. It now remains for the devil to give him more “light” and further “blessings,” etc., until the poor man will wake up and find his bark wrecked and his soul lost.¹
Some might accuse The Burning Bush of being early 20th-century “heresy hunters.” Nevertheless, I believe many of their articles are helpful, and I will use them. (It is actually difficult to get access to the articles of the Burning Bush magazine but an extensive collection can be found in Larry E. Martin’s Scoffers & Skeptics.)
Garr and the Tongues Wildfire
Early Pentecostals all believed the gift of speaking in tongues consisted of the supernatural ability to speak in previously unlearned intelligible human languages (xenolalia). From 1901–1907, no Pentecostal believed that “tongues” consisted of unintelligible utterances, sometimes referred to as “heavenly language” or “tongues of angels” (in academic circles, this view of speaking in tongues is called glossolalia). But how did the understanding of the gift change? Let’s unwrap that step by step.
Charles Fox Parham is the founder of Pentecostalism, which started on January 1, 1901.² Agnes Ozman was the first of Parham’s students who received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit along with the gift of tongues. According to Parham, this happened on New Year’s Eve of 1900 (Parham says it happened on New Year’s Eve while Ozman says it happened on New Year’s Day).³ Allegedly, Agnes suddenly spoke in Chinese after Parham laid his hands on her. In the following days, other students were reported to have received the gift as well, which initiated the Topeka Outpouring. Parham immediately bragged in numerous newspapers that his students would have no need to learn foreign languages anymore when going on missions.⁴
After the Topeka Outpouring, Pentecostalism gained global attention during the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California. At that point, Alfred Garr was still a leading figure of the Burning Bush. In order to resolve a conflict in one of their congregations, Garr and his wife moved to California as mediators. However, not long after that, Garr visited the Azusa Street Revival, which was led by William J. Seymour, a student of Parham. Garr was moved by what he witnessed and eventually helped his congregation to accept and support Seymour’s ministry. This is when Garr unexpectedly received his own Baptism in the Holy Spirit on June 16, 1906. Only three weeks later, he claimed God called him to bring the Pentecostal message to various countries in the East.⁵ Garr’s missionary endeavors were stimulated after a man from India allegedly understood Garr’s xenolalic tongues and identified different Indian languages (e.g. Hindi and Bengali).⁶ In 1907, The Burning Bush wrote:
Rev. A. G. Garr… claimed to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost and several languages, one of these being a language spoken in India. He said that a native of that country was in Los Angeles, heard him speak and interpreted for him; also that he prayed him through at the altar, so that he got saved through understanding Mr. Garr’s God-given (?) gift of tongues.⁷
The Rev. A. G. Garr reported praying a man through in Hindustani, in Los Angeles, California, …⁸
Garr in India
Alfred and Lillian Garr then went to Calcutta (India) with the first wave of Pentecostal missionaries. After Garr’s arrival in December 1906,⁹ a residential missionary by the name of Mary Johnson reported the following:
He [God] has sent three of his witnesses from America, filled with the Holy Ghost, to show forth His power and proclaim this wonderful Gospel which we and many others have been hungering for so long. Praise His dear name! It is Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Garr and Miss Gammon. God is working in mighty power in our midst. Several have received the baptism with the Holy Ghost and speak with tongues, and many have been saved.¹⁰
The religious excitement presses through every word of Johnson’s report. Garr must have been buffered in his self-esteem. This is only normal, considering all the affirmations he received. Garr believed to be part of a small religious elite that rediscovered the Divine ability to speak in previously unlearned languages. He believed to belong to a special unit of missionaries that was sent overseas with high expectations. He was convinced his xenolalic giftedness was confirmed by a local man from India whom he led to the Lord. And so, he saw himself as superior to the common missionaries who lacked the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Did Garr ever envision his first evangelistic encounter before traveling overseas? Did he ever practice how to present the Gospel message in the different Indian languages? I cannot answer these questions with certainty. But what I can say is that Garr’s herculean confidence was eventually hit hard by the fist of reality. This is what The Burning Bush reported on April 4, 1907:
Rev. A. G. Garr and wife, late of the Burning Bush and now connected with the “Tongues” wildfire, have arrived in India with their languages with which they were expecting to preach to the natives, and, as predicted, nobody can understand their “tongues;” neither do they themselves know what they are saying; so they are now praying for the gift of “interpretation.” In other words, their boasted “gift” with which they were going to outshine our real missionaries by talking directly to the natives without having learned the language is no good whatever, … In the meantime they can only preach to the English speaking people, awaiting the arrival of the “interpretation gift.¹¹
In another article, a good friend of Garr’s adds some more details. This is what he writes:
Mr. Garr who ridiculed the idea of missionaries having to study the language of the heathen two years before preaching to them has found out that his Hindoo [Hindi] is not Hindoo; and they are longing for the missionaries who have studied the language, to get the power and preach to the Indians.¹²
Oops! All the Pentecostal claims turned out to be false as soon as they were tested outside of a controlled environment. But Garr is not the only one who is known for this type of failure on the mission field. S. C. Todd, who was a missionary from the Holiness Movement, personally investigated the claims of Pentecostal missionaries. The historian Robert Mapes Anderson summarizes Todd’s findings well:
S. C. Todd of the Bible Missionary Society investigated eighteen Pentecostals who went to Japan, China, and India “expecting to preach to the natives in those countries in their own tongue,” and found that by their own admission “in no single instance have [they] been able to do so.” As these and other missionaries returned in disappointment and failure, Pentecostals were compelled to rethink their original view of speaking in tongues.¹³
Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance
How do religious fanatics respond when reality and belief crash with one another? The theory of cognitive dissonance was based on the observations of religious group behavior. In 1956, social psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter published the book “When Prophecy Fails.” But what has this to do with the failed missionary tongues of the early Pentecostals? Everything. Let me explain.
Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter compiled a thorough study of a small UFO cult called The Seekers. This cult convinced its followers that a massive flood would destroy large portions of the world, and only they would survive in a UFO. When the alien spaceship did not arrive, the cult followers experienced the uncomfortable psychological consequences of worldview disconfirmation. But instead of acknowledging their mistake, they overcame the cognitive dissonance by either reinterpreting the prophecy, downplaying its significance, or adjusting their own actions. These are the coping mechanism observed in the study. The Millerites/early Adventists applied the same adaptive strategy after the Great Disappointment when Jesus did not return as prophesied in 1844.¹⁴
Garr and other early Pentecostal missionaries suffered a similar kind of disconfirmation. This is why I like to label this crisis The Great Pentecostal Disappointment. Garr’s cognitive dissonance might be depicted as below:
Garr had several options to ease the dissonance:
Option 1: Honestly acknowledging that he did not possess the genuine gift of tongues.
Option 2: Claiming to speak an exotic language other than Hindi.
Option 3: Redefining the gift of tongues and claiming it is a mysterious heavenly language that only God understands.
This is how Garr must have reasoned. Option 1 required too much humility. Option 2 could easily be falsified again. Option 3 seemed to be just right. This option was more difficult to falsify, and Garr was able to continue in his spiritual pride. This is what The Burning Bush reported on September 19, 1907:
…but after arriving in India, it was acknowledged that neither himself nor his wife could speak any language understood in India, but claimed it was a “heavenly language,” which no one understood.¹⁵
The Redefinition of Tongues
Philip Blosser and Charles Sullivan are two scholars who published tremendous research regarding the gift of tongues in their book “Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues.” While I do not agree with all their beliefs, I absolutely love their research (I am a conservative reformed Baptist, Blosser is a Roman Catholic, and Sullivan is a skeptical Pentecostal [I hope that’s correct]). Sullivan also delved into ecclesiastical writings, including those that have not been translated into the English language. This is what they write regarding the redefinition of the gift of tongues:
…the unanimous tradition of the Church and of ecclesiastical writings before the nineteenth century is that the noun “tongues” in the expression “the gift of tongues” always refers to nothing more than ordinary human languages.¹⁶
Pentecostal missionaries such as Alfred and Lillian Garr were sent abroad to India and China between 1906–8 without any linguistic training, in the confident expectation that their baptism in the Spirit would divinely empower them to preach the Gospel by using a miraculous gift of “missionary tongues.” Their disappointing discovery that they were unable to communicate in the Bengali and Chinese languages led to a crisis in which Pentecostal leaders began to quietly accept a redefinition of the “gift of tongues” as something other than actual human languages.¹⁷
Based on solid historical evidence, Blosser and Sullivan argue that the redefinition of tongues happened in response to the missionary crisis of which Alfred and Lillian Garr were part. In their redefinition, Pentecostals unwittingly made use of the theory of glossolalia, which 19th-century Higher Criticism popularized. Blosser and Sullivan also provide a lot of quotations for how Pentecostals redefined the gift of tongues after this crisis. However, they leave out Garr’s own rationalizations. Because of that, I would like to provide a portion of Garr’s response to the failed missionary tongues. This is what The Burning Bush reported on October 28, 1907:
We received a copy of his paper, printed in India, and we see by it that he has discovered the fact that he had no such language as the man in California told him he had, but that, just as the Burning Bush said, no one could understand him. This has proven the fact, and in his paper he makes his explanation, from which we quote:
Vol. 1, No. 1, Page 3: “14th chapter, First Corinthians, second verse, reads like this: ‘For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the Spirit he speaketh mysteries’ … Why? Because the one speaking is not speaking an earthly language that can be understood by anyone on this earth, unless the interpretation is received from God.”¹⁸We had certainly hoped that when Garr got to India and found that he had no language he would awaken and come to his senses, but, alas! now we see he is taking another way out of it and says that the man speaking in “tongues” is speaking the language of angels and uses for his proof what we will here quote: “We read in the Old Testament also of men eating angel’s food; in further proof of this, we will quote 1 Corinthians 13:1, ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.” … This is nothing better than the Mormons, for the Mormons have jabbered for years, claiming the “gift of tongues,” and many others from time to time throughout the country have had the “jabberings” that nobody could understand, claiming that it was some language.¹⁹
First Corinthians 13:1 and 14:2 are also the favorite proof texts of today’s Pentecostal and Charismatic tongue-speakers. However, the idea that the gift of tongues in 1 Corinthians includes unintelligible utterances (or free vocalization) is historically novel. Blosser and Sullivan observe:
It is also true that a few Church Fathers and later ecclesiastical writers interpreted the tongues of 1 Corinthians 12–14 differently from the tongues referenced in Acts 2. Their only disagreement, however, was over whether the tongues in question were miraculous or not, not whether they were intelligible human languages.²⁰
Garr’s biographer, Steve Thompson, adds a few more important details regarding Garr’s re-interpretation process of the gift:
Alfred discovered that although the apostles had spoken in other languages on the Day of Pentecost, this ability did not continue with them throughout their lives. He also discovered the various passages about speaking mysteries (see I Corinthians 14:2); edifying yourself (see I Corinthians 14:4); and building yourself in faith thorugh praying in tongues (see Jude 20).
His understanding of tongues from the Scripture was published in a pamphlet he printed and distributed in March 1907, while in India. This pamphlet, Pentecost Power, was distributed widely in the United States and in India. Historian Gary McGee credits Alfred and his pamphlet, with formulating the classical Pentecostal position on the purpose of tongues in a believer’s life.²¹
So, the exact date of the Pentecostal redefinition of tongues was March, 1907. It was just shortly after Garr and his wife arrived in Calcutta, India. I will not deal with Garr’s misinterpretations of 1 Cor. 14:2, 4 and Jude 20 in this article. But I would like to add that Garr was a theological layman. He never finished his theological training. Thompson explains:
[Garr’s] academic training came to an abrupt halt when he married Lillian Anderson on March 12, 1899. Alfred and his new bride left Asbury two months later since the school was designed for single students only.²²
In addition to Garr’s lack of theological training, his reinterpretation of the gift was motivated by a desperate situation. So, he neither approached Scripture with the necessary mental clarity nor with the necessary exegetical skills.
All of that leads us to the following shocking conclusion: the early Pentecostals’ need to overcome cognitive dissonance and avoid public embarrassment let millions of other Pentecostals and Charismatics embrace a counterfeit gift. What modern tongue-speakers practice is not the Biblical gift of tongues.
Xenolalia Or Gibberish?
There is one crucial question that remains. If Garr did not speak in any of the Indian languages, what did he speak? The critics of that time all considered the alleged xenolalia of the Pentecostals to be mere gibberish.
The testimony of S. J. Riggins is one of the best to demonstrate that early Pentecostals confused ecstatic gibberish with xenolalia (the supernatural ability to speak in a coherent human language which the individual has not learned). Riggins was one of Parham’s students but eventually left Bethel Bible School as a fiery critic. This is what Riggins told the Topeka State Journal in 1901:
After studying at the school the last time things came to a pretty pass. They began to claim the gift tongues and the gift of discernment, and each talked a different kind of gibberish, claiming to be inspired by God, and that they talked one of the foreign languages. I was not under the influence, and could see that the students of the school had been led to this extreme through their fanaticism, and finally decided to leave the school. Accordingly, last Saturday morning I went away but before going I called the inmates of the building together and explained to them my reasons for leaving. I told them they were under the influence of the evil one and that the best they could do would be to leave the school, as I was doing. They all laughed at me, and I left the school, and do not intend to return.²³
Parham Ignores Missionary Crisis
After the tongues crisis, Pentecostals succesively accepted the new understanding of the gift. The redefinition (or second category of tongues) included an unintelligible language (e.g., angelic language, spiritual language, or private prayer language). However, Charles Fox Parham, the founder of Pentecostalism, remained steadfast in his convictions despite the disillusionment of Pentecostal missionaries. Robert Mapes Anderson explains:
As these and other missionaries returned in disappointment and failure, Pentecostals were compelled to rethink their original view of speaking in tongues. A very few, like Charles F. Param, stood steadfast against the evidence. While conceding that “to my knowledge, not a single missionary in the foreign field speaks in the tongue of the natives as a gift of God,” Parham nevertheless insisted that, “All the early missionaries for five hundred years spake in the languages of the natives … [and] if God ever gave this gift he can today and that it should be proof of the calling of everyone going on the foreign fields that they should be thus equipped by God with the gift of tongues.²⁴
How to Interpret 1 Corinthians?
So, if modern glossolalia is not the Biblical gift of tongues, how should we understand 1 Corinthians then? If you are desperate to know, I would like to refer you to the video below, in which I go through all the Bible verses on tongues.
[1]: Unknown author, “A. G. Garr,” The Burning Bush, July 19, 1906, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers (Pensacola, FL: Christian Life Books, 2004), 33–34.
[2]: Vinson Synan writes: “The first Pentecostals, in the modern sense of the word, can be traced to Parham’s Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901. In spite of the controversy over the origins and timing of Parham’s emphasis on tongues, all historians agree the movement began early in 1901 just as the world entered the 20th century. As a result of the Topeka Pentecost, Parham formulated the doctrine that tongues were the “Bible evidence” of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.” See Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012), Kindle-version.
[3]: John MacArthur explains: “Parham… claimed that Ozman’s experience occurred on New Year’s Eve, while Ozman insisted it happened on New Year’s Day.” See John MacArthur, Strange Fire (Nashville, NT: Thomas Nelson, 2013), 21.
[4]: For example, The Hawaiian Gazette reported: “Charles F. Parham of the “College of Bethel,” at Topeka, and his followers are preparing to give the people of the churches some new work along the line of missionary endeavor. His plan is to send among the heathen, persons who have been blessed with the “gift of tongues”—a gift which, he says, no others have ever had conferred upon them since apostolic times. His missionaries, as he points out, will have the great advantages of having the languages of the various peoples among whom they work miraculously conferred upon them, and will not be put to the trouble of learning them in the laborious way by which they are acquired by other prospective missionaries” See The Hawaiian Gazette, May 31, 1901; online source: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025121/1901-05-31/ed-1/seq-8/
[5]: Thompson writes: “In January 1906, Harvey and Farson asked the Garrs to relocate across the country to Los Angeles. Significant problems had emerged with the Burning Bush congregation there and they Asked Alfred to troubleshoot for them. … Alfred was humble enough to encourage his congregation toward the Azusa Street Mission, … As soon as the issue was settled Alfred Garr was baptized in the Holy Spirit in the bell tower of the Burning Bush facility. It was June 16, 1906” (Steve Thompson, A 20th Cenutury Apostle: The Life of Alfred Garr (Wilkesboro, NC: MorningStar Publications, 2004), 49, 60, 61); Wikipedia: “Garr himself was baptized in the Holy Spirit on June 16, 1906, … Three weeks after Garr’s experience, he said God called on him to take Pentecostalism to India and China. In congruence with this, Garr was taken off of the editor list for the Burning Bush magazine and was denounced by other leaders of the Burning Bush movement” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Goodrich_Garr); also see Philip E. Blosser and Charles Sullivan, Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications), 143.
[6]: Blosser and Sullivan write: “While speaking in tongues in church on one occasion, Alfred believed that a man from India understood him to be speaking Bengali, as well as some other languages of India.” (Blosser and Sullivan, Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues, 143)
[7]: R. L. Erickson, “The Language of Angels,” The Burning Bush, November 28, 1907, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers, 291.
[8]: F. M. Messenger, “Counterfit Gift of Tongues,” The Burning Bush, September 19, 1907, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers, 279.
[9] McGee: “Arriving in Calcutta, the capital of British India, in late December 1906, they prayed for three weeks for a door of ministry to open” (Gary McGee, “The Calcutta Revival of 1907 and the Reformulation of Charles F. Parham’s “Bible Evidence” Doctrine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:1 (2003), 126); Vinson writes: “Alfred G. and Lillian Garr, the first missionaries to leave Azusa Street, arrived in Calcutta at the turn of 1907” (Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit, Kindle-version).
[10] The Apostolic Faith, Vol. 1, №06, February-March, 1907; online source: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=apostolicfaith;
[11] Unknown author, “Garr in India,” The Burning Bush, April 4, 1907, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers, 167.
[12] F. M. Messenger, “Garr in India,” The Burning Bush, April 18, 1907, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers, 181.
[13]: See Robert Mapes Anderson, Visions of the Disinherited (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 90–91; online source: https://archive.org/details/vision-of-the-disinherited. Anderson further writes: “Parham was reported to have “preached in different languages over the U.S., and men and women of that nationality have come to the altar and sought God.” Alfred G. Garr and his wife went to the Far East with the conviction that they could preach the gospel in “the Indian and Chinese languages.” Lucy Farrow went to Africa and returned after seven months during which she was alleged to have preached to the natives in their own “Kru language.” The German pastor and analyst Oskar Pfister reported the case of a Pentecostal patient, “Simon,” who had planned to China using tongues for preaching. Numerous other Pentecostal missionaries went abroad believing they had the miraculous ability to speak in the languages of those to whom they were sent” (Robert Mapes Anderson, Visions of the Disinherited, 90).
[14]: “The message commanded the group to assemble at 6 P.M. on the 24th on the sidewalk in front of the Keech home and to sing Christmas carols. The group would be visited there by spacemen, the message continued, who would land in a flying saucer. … (p. 186)” For more details, see Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails; online source: https://ia802802.us.archive.org/4/items/pdfy-eDNpDzTy_dR1b0iB/Festinger-Riecken-Schachter-When-Prophecy-Fails-1956.pdf; Wikipedia: “Martin claimed to be receiving messages from superior beings from a planet she referred to as Clarion. These messages included a prophecy that Lake City and large portions of the United States, Canada, Central America and Europe would be destroyed by a flood before dawn on December 21st 1954. … Some left or lost their jobs, neglected or ended their studies, ended relationships and friendships with non-believers, gave away money and/or disposed of possessions to prepare for their departure on a flying saucer, which they believed would rescue them and others in advance of the flood” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails).
[15]: F. M. Messenger, “Counterfit Gift of Tongues,” The Burning Bush, September 19, 1907, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers, 279.
[16]: Philip E. Blosser and Charles A. Sullivan, Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues, 301.
[17]: Ibid., 23.
[18]: R. L. Erickson, “The Language of Angels,” The Burning Bush, November 28, 1907, quoted in Larry E. Martin, Skeptics & Scoffers, 291–92.
[19]: Ibid., 294–95.
[20]: Philip E. Blosser and Charles A. Sullivan, Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues, 24.
[21]: Steve Thompson, A 20th Century Apostle: The Life of Alfred Garr, 87–88.
[22]: Ibid., 29.
[23]: Unknown author, “Row at Bethel,” The Topeka State Journal, January 7, 1901; online source: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29432599/agnes-ozman/
[24]: Robert Mapes Anderson, Visions of the Disinherited, 91; online source: https://archive.org/details/vision-of-the-disinherited
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