possession and trance, can be found in other religions. Joe Nickell, writing in the Skeptical Inquirer, observed the use of slaying in the Spirit during a Benny Hinn healing crusade in 2001. He compared the practice to hypnosis, writing that participants "merely engage in a form of role-playing that is prompted by their strong desire to receive divine power as well as by the influence of suggestion that they do so ... In short, they behave just as if 'hypnotized. According to Nickell, a professional hypnotist stated that "This is something we do every day". History Beginning with the First Great Awakening that impacted Protestant Europe as well as Britain's American colonies in the eighteenth century, bodily movements became a prominent and controversial part of Protestant revivalism. Supporters of the revivals within various denominations including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists argued that trembling, groaning, screaming and falling to the ground "as dead" were signs of divine power in those who were becoming aware of their own sinfulness. This bodily agitation, as well as the problem of sin and guilt, was resolved through a conscious conversion experience, which was marked by peace and joy. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, considered falling down and other bodily movements to be natural (not supernatural) human responses to the supernatural "testimony" or "witness" of the Holy Spirit in conversion. Occasionally, Wesley attributed bodily movements to Satan's attempt at disrupting the conversion process, but at other times, he described bodily movements as natural human responses to God's love. Wesley, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards all record instances of people falling during their ministries. During the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, Peter Cartwright and Charles G. Finney also recorded similar behavior. In the twentieth century, "prostrate trance" became chiefly associated with Pentecostalism and its offshoots. The term "slain in the Spirit" was used in this context as early as 1920 by American healing evangelist Maria Woodworth-Etter, whose ministry was often accompanied by this phenomenon. In her book The Holy Spirit, published in 1920, she wrote: Historian Grant Wacker argues that early Pentecostals replaced the liturgies and sacraments of traditional churches with the "disciplined use of ecstasy", including the regular occurrence of slaying in the Spirit. Regarding the sacramental undertones of slaying in the Spirit, Wacker writes: The frequency of slaying in the Spirit and the importance that Pentecostals placed on it decreased over