Tongues of Fire: How Charismatic Prayer Change Evangelical Brains and Inpires Spirit-Filled Activism

due out from Bloomsbury Press in January 2026.

It tells this story: In the autumn of 2005, Josh Brahinsky began a study of the mind-body practices of the charismatic evangelicals, a group of Christians well known for their practice of speaking in tongues--prayer that involves non-semantic utterances and an altered state of mind. Immersing himself in churches, missionary training schools, and revivals, he sought the story behind the vitality and expansive growth of this community, which had burgeoned from a few thousand to nearly half a billion adherents in the preceding century, profoundly influencing U.S. culture and politics.

Over the next decades through extensive interviews and even brain imaging using MRI scans during prayer, Brahinsky delved into practitioner descriptions of a profound submission to God's presence, encompassing moments of both absolute stillness and electrifying activity as their mind and body yielded control.

He wondered: What do charismatics mean when they describe their practice as submission or letting go as God takes over? What do charismatic worship and other contemplative practices have in common? How do they differ? And how does this comparison help us explore the immense cultural and political power of the evangelical community? Then also, how does a seemingly heartwarming practice generate such severe political activity?

For 20 years Dr. Josh Brahinsky has studied charismatic evangelicals, first as a doctoral candidate at UC Santa Cruz and then as a postdoctoral researcher in Anthropology at Stanford University, in Psychology at UC Berkeley and in Transcultural Psychiatry at McGll University. He has published in anthropological journals, such as Cultural Anthropology and JRAI, and shared his psychological findings in PNAS and Nature Human Behaviour.