{"id":4728,"date":"2015-04-23T18:11:02","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T01:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=4728"},"modified":"2015-04-23T18:11:31","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T01:11:31","slug":"living-in-different-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/living-in-different-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Different Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our previous book we read this semester Global Evangelicalism<\/em> edited by Lewis and Pierard, provided a large overview of this culturally diverse and polycentric movement known as Evangelicalism. Yet there are other books such as Colonel Doner\u2019s book The Late Great Evangelical Church <\/em>that challenges and debunks many of the so called evangelical teachings that many within the movement hold dear and almost dogmatically. It is interesting to note that Doner\u2019s book was written in 2011, When God Talks Back by <\/em>Luhrmann in 2012, and Noll\u2019s precedential work The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind<\/em> was first published back in 1994! A plethora of other books were written in-between these mentioned, documenting the \u201cproblems\u201d with Evangelicalism. Granted, Noll\u2019s work primarily focused on American Evangelicalism which we have unfortunately, exported a lot of around the world. Nonetheless, it seems that the Evangelical movement could ask the question, \u201cWhy is everyone picking on me?\u201d It\u2019s a wonder why those in the Evangelical movement do not take on katagelophobic tendencies. But rather than shrieking back from the tsunami of assaults, criticisms, secularization hypothesizing, and the Karl Popper\u2019s philosophical ramblings of an open society with its science and religious pluralism, Evangelicalism has managed not just to stay afloat in the wake of it all, but to explode around the world.[1]<\/a> Could this \u201cexplosion\u201d of growth around the world be brought about by one of the things that Evangelicals do right in emphasizing a strong focus on having a personal relationship with God, including listening for His guiding voice?<\/p>\n

Luhrmann\u2019s thesis is not an attempt to prove whether God exists or not. She admits that she is a social scientist and her field – the study of social life of humans – cannot answer such questions.[2]<\/a> As an anthropologist, or more precisely a psychological anthropologist, she enlisted her skills of careful observation and even participant observation that she describes as a \u201ckind of naturalist\u2019s craft in with one watches what people do and listens to what they say and infers from that how they came to see and know their world.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Luhrmann\u2019s findings regarding our allegiance to the God of the Bible and of Jesus as God\u2019s incarnate reality, is not a phantasmagoria of our own psychoses. As Luhrmann investigates the phenomenon of Evangelicals hearing the voice of God, she admittedly writes that those who say they hear the voice of God are not in the same category of those with either schizophrenia or other psychosis.[4]<\/a> Rather than being a sign of psychiatric vulnerability, those who heard \u201ca voice\u201d are typical individuals who are considered normal in every other way. Of course there are psychiatric illnesses that show up in the general population including church. I had my fair share in my church as a pastor. (At times I thought that the main one stood behind the pulpit.) This theory of psychiatric illnesses distributed widely within the general population is brought up by psychiatric epidemiologists when they speak of the \u201cpsychotic continuum.\u201d[5]<\/a> Regardless of whether individuals who indicate hearing a voice as truly internal or external, the voices or \u201cthe voice\u201d focused on immediate issues. There was no grand metaphysical theology but perhaps practical direction given and received during emotional turmoil.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Regarding this entire topic of hearing the voice of God we as believers, and even more so as Evangelicals, must return back to the inspired Word of God. In John 10:27\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus, standing on Solomon’s porch in the Temple says, \u201cMy sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.\u201d It is for us to take Him at his word and believe, even in the midst of our clay-feet-earthbound condition and clothed in our earth suit we ought to expect to hear from our Lord God Almighty who’s sheep we are. In doing so we come to the same conclusion that Luhrmann does when she states that \u201cas people acquire the knowledge and the practices in which they come to know God, the most intimate aspects of the way they experience their everyday world change. Those who learn to take God seriously do not simply interpret the world differently from those who have not done so. They have different evidence for what is true. In some deep and fundamental way, as a result of their practices, they live in different worlds.\u201d To this I say, Yes and Amen!
\n_________________________<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> T.M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God<\/em> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 302.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., xv.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., xx.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 231.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 235.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 234.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our previous book we read this semester Global Evangelicalism edited by Lewis and Pierard, provided a large overview of this culturally diverse and polycentric movement known as Evangelicalism. Yet there are other books such as Colonel Doner\u2019s book The Late Great Evangelical Church that challenges and debunks many of the so called evangelical teachings that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"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":[628],"class_list":["post-4728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-luhrmann","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4728","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4729,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4728\/revisions\/4729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}