Tanya Luhrmann is a psychological anthropologist and a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She received her education from Harvard and Cambridge universities, and was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. In 2007, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Praise for T. M. Luhrmann's When God Talks Back:
“The most insightful study of evangelical religion in many years. .
. . When God Talks Back is remarkable for combining creative
psychological analysis with a commitment to understanding
evangelicals not merely as scholarly specimens, but on their own
terms.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Tanya Luhrmann is a very sensitive participant-observer and a
beautiful writer, with a deep background in her subject, and her
exploration of evangelical religion in America is at once
empathetic and objective, as all good anthropology must be. When
God Talks Back is one of the most provocative and enlightening
books I have read this year.”
—Oliver Sacks
“Luhrmann is a well-qualified guide: an anthropologist specializing
in esoteric faiths. . . . She has addressed a subject that most
other people would never touch.”
—The New Yorker
“Ambitious, even audacious. . . . We can thank Luhrmann for
describing evangelicalism as it has always been: a potent means for
awakening a personal sense of the reality, power and mercy of God.
. . . An industrious undertaking [that] produced fascinating
results.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Evocative, often brilliant. . . . Luhrmann is a fine writer.”
—The Boston Globe
“[When God Talks Back] will reshape the study of American
spirituality for years to come. . . . This book is here to stay,
and every scholar, church leader, and pundit who cares about
American evangelical culture is the better for it.”
—Books and Culture
“A simultaneously scholarly and deeply personal analysis of
evangelical communities in America. . . . An erudite discussion
both profoundly sympathetic and richly analytical.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Resistant to the scornful stereotypes of the New Atheists,
evangelicals who shared their spiritual lives with [Luhrmann] come
across as complex men and women whose faith reflects intense
emotional and mental commitment. . . . 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.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Yet again T. M. Luhrmann investigates a puzzling phenomenon and
illuminates it brilliantly. Whether you are a determined
rationalist or a dedicated evangelical, you’ll be enlightened by
Luhrmann’s synthesis—a worthy successor to William James’s The
Varieties of Religious Experience.”
—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education,
Harvard University
“T. M. Luhrmann’s gift is the ability to observe and report with
the eyes of both an anthropologist and a novelist. This
alchemy is so evident as she makes this most extraordinary
narrative exploration of faith and its manifestations in everyday
American life. A lovely book and a wonderful read.”
—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
“A refreshing approach to this polarizing subject. . . . [A]
scholarly but deeply personal investigation.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Anthropology—ready enough to discourse about religion—has never
managed a thick description of prayer. This is the ground that T.
M. Luhrmann breaks with a deeply engrossing, first-ever, thick
anthropological description of prayer in two American evangelical
congregations. A remarkable intellectual venture.
—Jack Miles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of God: A
Biography
“What if nonbelievers could understand how people come to
experience God? What if believers could come to understand just how
difficult the process of coming to experience God is for all of us,
here at the end of modernity? When God Talks Back is a chance
for our divided nation to stop talking past each other about our
national preoccupation: God.”
—Ken Wilson, senior pastor of Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor and
author of Mystically Wired: Exploring New Realms in Prayer
“So readable, so informing, so scholarly, and yet so winsome. . . .
This is religion writing at its best—a masterful examination that
is a candid, humble, clear-eyed, and affirming record of what faith
looks like and how it operates.”
—Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence and founding editor
of Publishers Weekly’s Religion Department
“Rarely have I encountered a book that succeeds so admirably in
exploring the interior lives of America’s evangelicals. What makes
this book so remarkable is not only the author’s exhaustive and
empathetic fieldwork but that her conclusions emerge from a deep
understanding of the history of evangelicalism.”
—Randall Balmer, author of The Making of Evangelicalism
“How can one live a life at once wholly modern and fully engaged
with the supernatural realm? Many books aim to explain how
American evangelicals pull this off, but this is the one that will
actually change the way you think about religion going forward.
Writing elegantly and sympathetically about evangelical lives
while at the same time developing a profound theory of the learning
processes by which human beings come to inhabit religious worlds,
Lurhmann has produced the book all of us—believers and nonbelievers
alike—need to put our debates about religion and contemporary
society on a truly productive footing. People will be
learning from When God Talks Back for a very long time to
come.”
—Joel Robbins, Professor of Anthropology, University of California,
San Diego
“A compelling account of how evangelical Christians come to
experience God as intimately and lovingly present in their lives.
Drawing on two years of field work, supplemented by extensive
knowledge of evangelical literature and innovative scientific field
experiments, Luhrmann’s demonstration of the role of both training
and individual abilities in the shaping of religious experience
breaks important new ground in the cognitive science of
religion.”
—Ann Taves, author of Religious Experience Reconsidered
“[Luhrmann] has entered into the world of her subjects with
extraordinary empathy and impressive humility. . . . I find
Luhrmann’s description of the Evangelical experience highly
plausible as well as an admirable intellectual achievement.”
—Peter L. Berger, First Things Magazine
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