2012/09/25

Review: When God Talks Back

When God Talks Back:
Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God 

T. M. Luhrmann 


I read this book soon after the last one I reviewed - The Bible Made Impossible.  Bible and Prayer are truly central parts of the Christian story - so these two together represent something of a rationalist onslaught against traditional approaches to faith.

That's not to say that Luhrmann has set out to undermine faith as such.  I'd say that the book could be read without blushes by both thinking Evangelicals and atheists alike. This is no small achievement.  That's not to say that her analysis is not quite close to the bone: the dispassionate observation of the behaviour of believers is striking in its precision, and in a sense devastating because it strips away much of the mystical component often associated with prayer and hearing God's voice.

The author is an anthropologist and psychologist.  Her approach to her topic was, I guess the classic technique modelled by countless researchers: just as some will embed themselves with remote jungle tribes in order better to understand them, she joined herself to Vineyard Fellowships over a period of several years.  She worshipped and socialized with her subjects, attending study groups, retreats and courses as well as the main public services and gatherings.  She describes - without side or any sense of disparaging - the way that believers are taught and practice their prayer life, and how they describe what they have heard and done.

The work is scholarly and well-footnoted. It manages detachment without becoming impersonal: we hear the voices of the subjects under study, and the author's own reactions and reflections, too.  She began the process as an agnostic [or that is the impression I formed - I can't find a reference for this], but in a note in the last chapter describes her own journey to a form of faith: not to the point of calling herself a Christian, but certainly to understanding God in much the same way as those she has worshipped amongst. This may detract from the objectiveness of the narrative sustained throughout - but is some testimony to the strength of the common life she experienced among the Vineyard folks.

The core of the book is a narrative of her Vineyard experiences, and reflection upon them.  But it is leavened with well-researched histories of relevant topics, and considerations of other spiritualities - within Christianity and beyond - and how they may be compared with the material she is documenting first-hand.

The conclusion?  I suppose the over-arching conclusion would be that there is much learned behaviour, and that genuinely altered states of consciousness are achieved through classical spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation.  She even undertakes an experiment where participants are given different spiritual exercises to follow for an extended period - and document their spiritual responses and experiences. She observes along the way that her subjects are not idiots - well aware of the scepticism of those around them about their interactions with an invisible being whom they believe has a real impact on their lives.  Nor, she says with professional judgement, are they suffering from mental illness or showing any classical signs of psychosis.  Mental disorder, she notes, is almost always troubling and disturbing; prayer is at worst neutral and more commonly  positive experience for the participants.

There is much more to the book.  I do not claim to have summarised the results, nor even necessarily detailed the most important observations - just some of those that struck me.  I have argued elsewhere that the Christian community needs a new theology of prayer for the 21st Century.  T. M. Luhrmann's analysis robs prayer of none of its depth, yet strips away a lot of the overlaid and (to my mind) unwanted narrative: it's a big step in the right direction.