Charismania is the term that some Christians use to denote the hype, sensationalism, and emotionalism within the modern Pentecostal/ charismatic movement. It is not to be confused with charisma, which is the practice of the miraculous Spiritual gifts kept under the strict regulations in 1 Corinthians 14. While I do believe that all of the miraculous Spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14 are still functioning in the Church today, I am very critical of the charismania that is often associated with them.
One popular form of charismania is the ritual commonly known as getting "slain in the Spirit." A pastor or an evangelist prays over a person when at some point the person falls into the arms of a catcher standing behind him. After being "laid out under the power," the person usually spends several minutes lying on the floor (doing "carpet time") until the Holy Spirit "dismisses" him. This ritual has absolutely no basis in God's Word! Although in Scripture we do see people falling down under the Spirit's power, they are always God's enemies, unbelievers experiencing God's wrath. Two prime examples of this are the Scribes and Pharisees in Gethsemane (John 18:3 6), and Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1 4). Furthermore, in these examples God was at work alone. There were no human agents (prophets, evangelists, etc.) praying or waiting to catch the persons while expecting them to fall down. Those experiences were sudden and totally unexpected. They are not even similar to the modern "slain in the Spirit" phenomena.
Another form of charismania is the "holy laughter" phenomena. It is often characterized by longlasting outbursts of hardly-controlled laughter consuming the congregation (but see 1 Cor. 14:39-40.) Sometimes it even replaces the preaching of God's Word and prayer! One popular South African evangelist told a woman, "This is not the time to pray" while he was trying to get her to start "laughing in the Spirit." See 1 Thessalonians 5:17 and 1 Peter 4:7 regarding that one. God's Word does not even have much to say about laughter, and most of those Scriptures that mention it forbid its misuse (Gen. 18:10-15; Prov. 14:13; Eccl. 2:2; 7:3; Jam. 4:9-10).
Another form of charismania that is closely linked to holy laughter is "drunkenness in the Spirit" (which involves people staggering around and sometimes fainting as if intoxicated). Practitioners of "Spiritual drunkenness" often cite Ephesians 5:18, which reads, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit" (NIV). They argue that getting drunk in the Spirit is God's alternative to getting drunk on alcohol. They brush over the fact that Ephesians 4 and 5 are filled with commands to abstain from ungodly behaviors and to pursue their godly counterparts which bear absolutely no similarity! The context of Ephesians 5:18 indicates that Paul was teaching that being filled with the Spirit is the opposite to getting drunk on wine, and not a type of sanctified alternative that bears some striking similarity (see 1 Thessalonians 5:22 in the King James Version)! Charismaniacs also cite Acts 2:13-15 where the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles at Pentecost, and some onlookers scoffed at them and said, "They have had too much wine." One pastor from Pittsburgh even said, "They [the apostles] were obviously staggering." That conclusion is at best disingenuous because v. 13 states that merely some (not all) of the people present actually said, "They have had too much wine" while scoffing at the apostles. Are we to conclude that the apostles were actually staggering around, behaving as drunkards simply because some of the people present made such an accusation?! Spiritual drunkenness has no biblical support (1 Thes. 5:6; 1 Pet. 5:8).
These man-made phenomena can be attributed largely to the power of suggestion. Popular stage hypnotists have been using very similar techniques for entertainment over a hundred years before modern pastors and evangelists started adopting them and wrongfully attributing them to the Holy Spirit.
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