Faith can be a helluva drug.

Mass group hypnotsis works on a greater scale and more dangerous like Nationaism also.

When I was a kid I attended a Pentacostal church for years. It didn't really standout to me how odd all the antics were until I was around 12. Speaking in tongues, spastic dancing. That's the point I started to think long and hard about the "why this is all happening". The only thing that makes any sense and that I can compare it too is when you get into a group of people, you're comfortable, like minded that there is some deep sense of doing fun/crazy shit. Some sort of connection. Almost like when your at a concert, you can feel an energy in the room. Either way, I thought it was all nonsense.

Mostly, it's shills. Some people feel peer pressure to fall in with the program and do it because they think they are supposed to.

Google Marjoe Gortner

It is called Shock induction technique, a trick used both by psychologists, hypnotherapists and stage hypnotists.
The idea being to cause a sudden panic that opens the mind up suggestion for survival.

Mixture of paid actors and desperate people

They have plants.

I think it has something to do with smell. He gets some kind of horrible smell and they are trying to get away from it.

My story is similar to @mordant ‘s. I was taken to some giant pentecostal youth revival in Virginia as a kid and went up to try to “receive the gifts of the spirit” too, except by speaking in tongues. An elder from our church was with me and I began trying to fake it quietly to prime the pump n see if i could get it rolling, and when he said “see youre doing it!” I suddenly realized oh yeah, so everyone is just faking it. Cool.” and stopped. Im sure some of em are getting swept up in an involuntary hysterical action from an ecstatic experience, but Ive never felt anything like that from a religious meeting. Ive had ecstatic out of body spine tingling experiences on stage, at concerts, on psychedelics, during sex or hot yoga but sorry. Benny Hinn is never gonna make me weak in the knees.

To the other comments, I'd also add peer pressure, doing what was expected so not to appear to be a non-believer to others. (Emperor has no clothes syndrome.)

P.T. Barnum could tell you...also mass hysteria data.

The same way as hypnotism does a bunch of gullible people willing to fall for a bunch of b***

The power of suggestion coupled with ppl so desperate to believe that they'll make it happen coupled with hired plants.

Being raised in a ''holy roller''backwoods ky church i believe it's the music,the shouting,the need to conform to recieve .... The whole thing.... Mass hypnosis

I have seen evidence that these people are planted in the audience.

You are describing being "slain in the Spirit". It's pretty standard-issue group hysteria.

Once upon a time, my first wife developed an interest in the charismatic movement and dragged me to a televangelist crusade where this was going on. I was in one of my rare "fuck it" moods and said, what the heck ... I'll go forward to see how this works.

I was at the altar with about two dozen other people. There was a "catcher" behind each of us, into whose arms each of us was supposed to swoon. I was about two thirds of the way down the line. Everyone before my swooned. I did not. The evangelist pressed harder, suggestively, on my forehead ... nothing. I looked at her, she looked at me. She shrugged and moved on to the next person.

At the end I was the only person left standing. I never have, still don't, and never will know how to surrender to hysterics.