‘When God Talks Back’ To The Evangelical Community

While attending services and small group meetings at The Vineyard, an evangelical church with 600 branches across the country, anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann noticed that several members of the congregation said God had repeatedly spoken to them and that they had heard what God wanted them to do.

In When God Talks Back, which is based on an anthropological study she did at The Vineyard, Luhrmann examines the personal relationships people developed with God and explores how those relationships were cemented through the practice of prayer.

“The way I think about it as an anthropologist, I don’t have the authority to pronounce on whether God is real or whether God is not real,” she tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I don’t feel like I have a horse in that race. I don’t feel I have the authority to say whether God showed up to somebody or did not. I do think that if God speaks to someone, God speaks to the human mind. And I can say something about the social, cultural and psychological features of what that person is experiencing.”
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