{"id":4687,"date":"2015-04-21T18:01:45","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T01:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=4687"},"modified":"2015-04-21T18:01:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T01:01:45","slug":"believing-the-unbelievable-or-hearing-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/believing-the-unbelievable-or-hearing-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Believing the Unbelievable….or Hearing Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe vengeance with which religious issues have again entered the public arena illustrates what pollsters long have known: the United States contains more citizens who value religion than other western industrial societies. This odd combination of modernity and religion defies conventional wisdom, which suggests that secularity and socioeconomic development are positively related. Such manifest religiosity in an advanced industrial and technological society raises interesting questions about the nature of popular religious movements in the United States and about the contrast between American popular culture and that of other western industrial nations.\u201d[i]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

From: Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity\"images\"<\/em><\/p>\n

It must be aggravating for modern intellectuals when faced with American\u2019s continued love affair with Christianity. What should<\/em> be happening here is what happened in Europe over the last two centuries: the mass exodus of people from church. At least Europeans are enlightened about religion (opiate of the people, mindless superstitions, and the cause of all the bad in our world). But, strangely, in America, people aren\u2019t leaving the church. One has to wonder if this strange phenomena–of enthusiastic allegiance to God and spirituality in modern America– might be the real reason researchers, such as T.M. Luhrmann, to spend so much time trying to figure out what makes supposedly educated and normal people not only claim to hear God, but dedicate their lives to His serve.<\/p>\n

I found When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God <\/em>an uncomfortable read. Examined where these feelings came from, I came to several conclusions. First, I felt offense, that \u201cmy people\u201d were being studied like lab rats in an anthropologists experiment. It just seemed a little awkward to have an outsider scientifically dissect important concepts like faith, prayer, and intimacy with God. It felt like Masters and Johnson had entered my bedroom with a clipboard in hand. It didn\u2019t feel comfortable.<\/p>\n

My second reason for feeling uncomfortable was the strange disconnect I felt with Luhrmann\u2019s interpretation church and faith. This may be due to the particular groups she studied, but her conclusions are far different from my Christian experience and understanding. The believers she described sought above all else to convince themselves that God actually spoke to them. This involved \u201cplay\u201d or \u201cmake believe.\u201d It also involved a great deal of mind games to give the believer a sense that God is real. She suggests that to the \u201canthropologist, the central principle was identifying the \u2018not-me\u2019 experience: a thought or image or sensation that one felt was not one\u2019s own. If a thought felt spontaneous and unsought, it was more likely to be identified as God\u2019s.\u201d[ii]<\/a> Faith becomes a mental game or exercise. \u201cIn effect, people train the mind in such a way that they experience part of their mind as the presence of God. They learn to reinterpret the familiar experiences of their own minds and bodies as not being their own at all-but God\u2019s\u2026.They construct God\u2019s interactions out of these personal mental events, mapping the abstract concept \u201cGod\u2019 out of their mental awareness\u2026.\u201d[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Third, is the assumption that ultimately these believers are trying to convince themselves to believe something that they know to be patently untrue. \u201cThey know that they are pretending to talk to God\u201d[iv]<\/a> and this is why it is such hard work. \u201cThis is play, but it is a serious play: a play that cultivates the imagination for a serious end, precisely because congregants presume the basic claim of Christianity to be unbelievable, even foolish, in modern, secular society.\u201d[v]<\/a> She further suggests that it \u201cis a fragile process, because what they are doing is so hard, because it violates so much of what we take for granted. It takes an enormous amount of work.\u201d[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, I am uncomfortable with her conclusion that this kind of Christianity thrives because it lacks any real solid foundation. \u201cIt is a truly \u2018new American Christ\u2019 who is just as raw, both concretely present and curiously untheologized. His churches emphasize intimacy not historical understanding. They care that people know Jesus, not that they know and memorize the scriptural text, and they want their congregants to feel as if church is meeting in the upper room in Jerusalem, with Jesus at the table.\u201d[vii]<\/a> This untheologized, unscriptural, unhistorical Jesus is what Luhrmann suggests modern American Christians are finding. That must be her conclusion, since this Christianity has no basis in anything other than the mind or imagination. But, is this what Christianity is really all about? I hope not!<\/p>\n

So, what are we left with? We are left with one anthropologist\u2019s perspective and interpretation of a small group within evangelicalism through which she seeks to answer the allusive question of how in the world can supposedly smart people possibly believe today in any religion, especially Christianity? What I believe we can take away is a clear understanding of how an intellectual section of modern American society might explain away the large and dedicate Christian community in American today. Or, to put it another way: How very smart people might explain why so many Americans believe in something that has long been discredited?<\/p>\n

One point she does get right: \u201cthere is evidence that the quality of someone\u2019s relationship with God has consequences. In a study of the relationship between prayer and mental illness\u2026. when God was experienced as close and intimate, the more someone prayed, the less ill they were.\u201d[viii]<\/a> Hummm\u2026there might be something good here after all, even if it might all be just \u201cmake believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [i] Nathan O Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity <\/em>(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 210.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [ii] T.M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God <\/em>(New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 67.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [iii] Ibid., xxi.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [iv] Ibid., 99.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [v] Ibid.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [vi] Ibid., xxii.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [vii] Ibid., 38.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [viii] Ibid., 288.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe vengeance with which religious issues have again entered the public arena illustrates what pollsters long have known: the United States contains more citizens who value religion than other western industrial societies. This odd combination of modernity and religion defies conventional wisdom, which suggests that secularity and socioeconomic development are positively related. Such manifest religiosity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,628],"class_list":["post-4687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlpg","tag-luhrmann","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4689,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions\/4689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}