THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 1, 1995 TAG: 9506300079
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 197 lines
LAUGHTER RIPS out of the corner of the room, a cackling crescendo of mirth, complete with gasps and loud snorts.
The red-faced woman in a T-shirt can't seem to get it under control. She is doubled over in her chair, wiping tears from her cheeks and even kicking her feet. As soon as one whoop falls, another rises.
She is splitting her sides in church - what's more, in the middle of a minister's sermon. The crowd of more than 200 at Episcopal Church of the Messiah, instead of icing her with stares, begins to join in.
``Don't need to wait for the Happy Hour to get here,'' says the Rev. Hugh E. ``Bud'' Williams, giving a high-pitched giggle. ``It's already started.''
All night, for five hours of revival meeting, waves of laughter crash through the church hall, taking many worshipers along for the ride. Some slide off their chairs. Others fall to the floor. By night's end, a few are crumpled in the halls and doorways, laughing so hard they can't stand up.
This is the sound of ``holy laughter,'' which believers consider to be a new manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The phenomenon has convulsed evangelical churches and revival meetings in the United States and around the world.
``It is totally spontaneous, the most awesome, funny, inspiring laugh you've ever had,'' said 47-year-old Tracy Wood, whose laughter opened the night. ``It comes from deep down inside of you.'' Once a nervous ``worry wart,'' Wood says the laughter has brought her a new inner peace.
``I go around with a smile on my face,'' Wood says.
Among religious leaders in the evangelical community, the laughter is cause for argument, both about its Scriptural basis and practical results. Is the laughter truly holy, a sign of worldwide religious revival? Or is it, as opponents argue, a worship fad that could lead believers astray?
``This can be a serious distraction to the American church just when churches need to be the most serious about the suffering of others,'' said the Rev. Paul Chaim Schenk, minister at 110-member Christ Covenant Church in Chesapeake. ``Is this of God? I can't find a Scripture that describes this.''
The Rev. Marty O'Rourke, the priest at Episcopal Church of the Messiah, said the holy laughter, and the other behavior that accompanies it, is a sign of God's work to invigorate churches.
``The Holy Spirit is like the wind, and you can't put it in a box,'' he said. ``I feel I'm in whitewater, rafting on a river I've never been down before. If God is manifesting to us in these incredible ways, what is he preparing us for? I have to believe it is for going out and ministering to people.''
O'Rourke and other Episcopal clergy invited Williams, an Episcopal priest, to conduct the weeklong revival in June. It drew 2,300 people, including 30 pastors, representing more than 100 churches. Some came from as far away as Washington, D.C.
Around the world, the laughter is apparently sweeping into churches that don't particularly want it. In Norway, the Lutheran State Church called it the devil's work. After laughter hit an evangelical Anglican Church in London, leaving members pounding their feet and waving their arms, a senior clergyman condemned it.
``It is an expression of mass hysteria for which there is ample historical precedent,'' wrote the Very Rev. Robert Jeffery, Dean of Worcester. ``There is a danger that it will lead to . . . the undermining of an intellectually respectable expression of faith.''
Pat Robertson endorsed the phenomenon last fall on his weekday TV show, ``The 700 Club,'' which boosted its credibility among American evangelicals. The movement's chief practitioner, South African evangelist Rodney Howard-Browne, has hosted conferences at the Founders Inn at Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network complex in Virginia Beach.
In a one-page report for the ministry's supporters, Robertson wrote: ``What this says to me is that revival is taking place in the world in a mass wave, and we look to the coming of the Lord. I think this is a very encouraging sign.''
But in his broadcast, he warned: ``You have to be careful that it doesn't go off into fanaticism. It can, because they say, `Well, if you don't laugh this way, you don't get saved,' and that kind of nonsense.''
Bishop Frank Vest of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, which includes Hampton Roads, said there's room for holy laughter in the Episcopal tradition, although he has not witnessed or personally experienced it.
``I value all of these expressions of God's revelation of God's self to us,'' he said. ``If our worship enlivens our servant ministry to the world, then we can be sure that God is present in our worship.''
For people in the pews, the encouragement comes from a feeling that the laughter mysteriously heals them of emotional wounds and even illness.
Sharon Pittman, who came from Newport News to attend the revival in Chesapeake, says she has suffered from emotional and physical abuse that she kept a secret, even from her family.
At 48, she has already spent years in counseling, but the intellectual therapy had not cured her emotionally. Holy laughter, she said, is helping her recover. ``It's like feeling little pockets of emptiness inside that get filled with Holy Spirit,'' she said. ``There is a river of life welling up inside me that is so powerful, so dynamic.''
``Nonsense,'' summed up Lou Lloyd-Zannini's early opinion of the laughter. Lloyd-Zannini, a professor at Regent University's school of education, decided after two nights of Williams' revival that people were ``getting hysterical.'' He told his wife, ``If the Lord doesn't touch me tonight, I'm leaving.''
Then laughter overcame him. He said he was cured of neck problems that had caused numbness in his hand. His wife, Linda, ended one evening session lying in the church's hallway, limp from laughter. ``I'm not one of those people prone to emotion,'' he said, glancing down at her. ``The laughter got me - I tried to avoid it.''
Williams, 48, who now tours the United States running laughing revivals, says he, too, tried to avoid it.
He trained at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, then became the priest at an affluent and traditional Episcopal church in Jacksonville, Fla. For years, he said, he accepted the teaching that the ``signs and wonders'' of the Lord died out at the close of the New Testament period.
``We looked down on the Pentecostals, the holy rollers . . . all the standard prejudices that people have,'' he said.
Although he eventually moved to a charismatic Episcopal church, he didn't get hooked on holy laughter until he went to a revival led by Howard-Browne, the South African evangelist whose antic and humorous delivery has given the movement its style.
Howard-Browne gathered thousands of adherents to a 1993 revival in Lakeland, Fla. As he walked the aisles and pointed at people, they fell to the floor in fits of laughter.
Williams, to his surprise and embarrassment, was one of them. ``Did he hypnotize me? Was this mass hysteria?'' Williams said he asked himself. ``It was a conversation between my head and my heart. My heart knew it was of God. My head had a lot of questions.''
His heart won. He began following Howard-Browne to revivals around the country and eventually resigned from his church to start his own on-the-road ministry. His revivals are marked by laughter. Unlike Howard-Browne, Williams doesn't tell many real jokes, mainly sticking to quips. But he spurs his listeners' laughter with a falsetto giggle, which punctuates even his serious speeches.
He always sends a letter to the bishop of any diocese he visits, but they don't always roll out the red carpet. In April, a bishop in Texas wrote to Williams' bishop in Florida: ``Who is this person passing himself off as an Episcopal priest?''
``Traditional churches have a fear of enthusiasm and emotionalism,'' Williams responds. ``It always rocks the boat. The lines between pastors and laity get blurred.''
For some people, it's enough to make them bail out. Brad Hill, a pastor at Calvary Chapel in Virginia Beach, says he's gained more than 20 congregants fleeing churches where the holy laughter erupted in services.
To Hill, the Biblical command that ``all things should be done decently and in order,'' puts the laughter phenomenon out of bounds. ``Holy laughter is not in the Bible. There are many gifts of the Spirit that are,'' he said. ``Many people say, don't put God in a box. I won't put him in a bigger box than he's put himself in - the Bible.''
Williams draws Biblical backing for holy laughter from Jesus' teaching in Luke 6:21: ``Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.''
Elizabeth Kotlowski was one who had wept, silently, for many years.
Her husband was a decorated war hero and doctor during World War II, but that experience left him with shattering nightmares and bouts of severe depression. Twenty-two years ago, the 60-year-old neurosurgeon took his life with a gunshot.
He left his much-younger wife to raise six sons, ranging from a toddler to teenagers. She had little time to mourn.
``I had a tendency in my life to stuff it down,'' the 63-year-old Kotlowski said. ``Sometimes we hurt so much, it's hard to go on living. But in order to be whole people, we have to be able to let go.''
When Williams called people up front for a healing service, Kotlowski stepped forward. A bright figure with red hair and a flowered shirt, she stood with a dozen others in a line before Williams.
He moved down the row, asking about ailments. A rash. Sore throat. Prostate cancer. He placed his hand on the forehead of each person and commanded, ``In Jesus' name.'' They toppled backward into the arms of volunteers.
Kotlowski did not fall when Williams touched her. He kept trying, pressing his fingers into her forehead, even playfully puffing up his cheeks and blowing on her: ``In Jesus' name! Receive it! Now.''
She began to cry. She whispered to Williams about her husband's suicide and allowed him to tell the crowd.
Then Williams told her: `` `I will turn your mourning into laughter,' Jesus said. You've mourned a long time, haven't you?''
She nodded, shaking.
``Time to switch!'' he shouted.
Slowly, Kotlowski began a soundless laugh. With her tears still flowing, her lips parted in a hesitant smile.
``What is this laughing stuff? It's Holy Ghost Draino!'' Williams said, followed by a huge clap of laughter in the room.
The revival picked up speed, with more laughter, prayer and fainting. People lay before the altar in a row, some laughing and murmuring, others in trance-like states.
Kotlowski remained standing, alone, shaking from her emotions. She was weeping and laughing all at once, her face wrenched in pained ecstasy.
After many minutes, she sat on the floor. She wiped her tears, rested her head in her hands.
``This was genuine - I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. The first thing the Holy Spirit wanted me to do was get rid of this grief that I needed to release,'' she said. ``God really speaks to me when I am laughing. When you relax like that, you hear. You listen to your intuitive voice.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Bill Tiernan, Staff
Linda Lloyd-Zannini lay limp from the effects of "holy laughter'
affter a revival at Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Chesapeake
Elizabeth Kotlowski reacts with tears and laughter to entreaties
from the Rev. Hugh E. "Bud" Williams
Photo by BILL TIERNAN, Staff
The Rev. Hugh E. ``Bud'' Williams floored his audience, including
Linda Lloyd-Zannini, with ``holy laughter'' at a Chesapeake revival.
by CNB