When God Talks Back

February 13, 2012
Psychological anthropologist Luhrmann (Of Two Minds) offers an extended case study examining how believers come to have faith in an active, present God despite secular pressures in contemporary America. Drawing on extensive interviews and personal experience among Vineyard Movement members, Luhrmann focuses on the use of prayer among charismatic evangelical Christians. Her work combines personal narratives and excerpts from bestselling evangelical how-to guides with theories and data from psychology. While maintaining a stance both sympathetic to the evangelical position and scientifically rigorous, these different modes of writing do not always mesh well. For instance, the largely narrative mode gives way in the middle to an extended description of methods and data from her psychological research. In addition, Luhrmann opens and closes with a brief sketch of the history and politics of the evangelical movement, although her focus is on personal belief, not the political engagement of evangelicals. Such material partially distracts from the clear, extensive view into the prayer life and interior world of evangelicals. Luhrmann’s intended audience is skeptics attempting to understand the evangelical approach to God. Her work will also appeal to believers curious about psychological research on prayer. Agent: Jill Kneerim.

February 15, 2012
A simultaneously scholarly and deeply personal analysis of evangelical communities in America. Luhrmann (Anthropology/Stanford Univ.; Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry, 2000) entered the Vineyard Christian Fellowship openly--declaring herself an anthropologist who wanted to understand the evangelical way and mind--and she was both welcome and eventually somewhat transformed. Near the end Lurhmann writes that although she's not sure she'd call herself a Christian, she has "come to know God." She begins by describing the current evangelical movement--how widespread it is, how God has become an intimate friend rather than a harsh judge and how evangelicals largely avoid theodicy. She sketches the history of the Vineyard and attributes to the 1960s counterculture some of the spiritual energy that animates the evangelical movement. As the title suggests, the author devotes much of her discussion to the conversation between believers and their God, a conversation facilitated by specific techniques of prayer. She spends many pages talking about the problem of hearing God's voice, and attempts to cover all bases. For example, she includes major passages about the long history of the phenomenon, schizophreniaand skeptics' reservations and disdain. Lurhmann underwent extensive prayer training, and her research is substantial--years of commitment, countless interviews, extensive endnotes and a vast bibliography. She accords deep respect for those whose religious experiences are scientifically unverifiable, and she concludes that evangelicals have, to a great extent, reprogrammed their brains and that they and skeptics live in alternate universes. One topic she does not raise: the economics of the movement. Who's getting rich in the evangelical world? Does it matter? An erudite discussion both profoundly sympathetic and richly analytical.

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October 1, 2011

Stanford psychological anthropologist Luhrmann truly throws herself into her studies. To understand the depth of evangelical belief and its consequences for believers, she not only conducted experiments to determine how extended prayer affects the mind but also joined an evangelical congregation. The result is reportedly a fair and balanced study on why people believe and what religion can do. I'd like to push this toward thinking folks.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2012
In the astonishment of a typical California evangelical at receiving a direct message from the Lord ( Whoa, the voice of God spoke to me ), Luhrmann identifies an emotional experience central to a new paradigm in American Protestantism. In that paradigm, readers learn, evangelical believers school their minds to defy a culture of doubt and so feel God as a living, speaking presence. Writing as a fascinated outsider, Luhrmann gives unbelievers an anthropological perspective on this new mode of religious belief. Extensive fieldwork, chiefly among worshippers at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, endows this new mode of belief with compelling human faces and stories. Resistant to the scornful stereotypes of the New Atheists, evangelicals who share their spiritual lives with the author come across as complex men and women whose faith reflects intense emotional and mental commitment. Readers listen, for instance, to Jane, a sober yet engaging university graduate who follows the divine voice to the scene of an accident, where a prostate woman needs her intercessory prayers. In this sympathetic yet probing analysis, the evangelical spiritual dialogue with the deity emerges as the consequence of a surprisingly self-conscious strategy for finding meaning in a whirlwind of postmodern uncertainty. Much here for curious skeptics to ponder.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)