ways did they not fit the congregations expectations? It is these illegitimate
expressions in details and their treatment that provide a deeper understanding
of the constitutive character of local orders of practice.
We identified inappropriate expressions of the spirit by the presence of
negative sanctions and the absence of positive confirmation and interpreta-
tion. The timing, location, tone, and content of the messages that were neg-
atively sanctioned differed from those that were accepted as appropriate.
While we were told about inappropriate spiritual expressions which had
occurred at both churches, we were able to witness these only at the Suburban
Church because the process of prescreening had eliminated them at the Urban
church. Thus, we were able to learn about previously rejected spiritual expres-
sions at the Urban Church only in generalities, through interviews with
pastors.
Two pastors at the Urban Church explained that the prescreening process
had been adopted because this congregation had a history of publicly spoken
spiritual gifts that had to be rejected because the messages contained state-
ments against the church’s leadership and consequently did not uplift the
congregation. The pastors held that people who were not living truly Christian
lives had been delivering these messages. True messages would have been
uplifting (i.e., any criticism is illegitimate). The pastors responded to this sit-
uation by discerning the spirit of messages prior to their delivery, using the
content and tone of the message and the spiritual character of its messenger
as the primary factors in their decisions. When asked if a person would be
able to speak authentically in tongues after waiting to do so they replied that
God was a God of order and that he would not force a worshiper to give his
messages at a time that contradicted His Holy Spirit directed leadership (i.e.,
the pastors).
Because of this screening procedure, every public spiritual message that
was heard at the Urban Church was accepted and was delivered at the appro-
priate time, in the appropriate space, and using the appropriate tone and con-
tent as we have described it.
According to pastors who were interviewed, illegitimate spiritual expres-
sions of the spirit always had a personal and private origin, either stemming
from “the flesh,” meaning an individual’s desires, or from demonic forces
oppressing (i.e., surrounding and influencing) or possessing (i.e., inhabiting
and acting through) an individual. It was the pastor ’s job to discern which
expressions originated in the individual and which were true expressions of
the Holy Spirit filling the individual. The distinction between demonic and
274 • Bonnie Wright and Anne Warfield Rawls