Last week, in my discussion of what evangelicals can learn about themselves from T.M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back, I mentioned our approach to suffering. Originally, I wasn’t going to write another post on the book, but I wanted to come back to this important topic. Luhrmann discusses suffering in a chapter titled, “Darkness,” along with […]
When God Talks Back
Talking Amongst Ourselves (When God Talks Back)
Last week, I shared a few lessons on talking with non-evangelicals that I had taken away from T.M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back. This week, I’m going in the opposite direction. What are some things that evangelicals need to do better? Accept our creatureliness. When describing Luhrmann’s work to evangelical friends, one of the main questions […]
Talking with Non-Evangelicals (When God Talks Back)
A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading T.M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. As I mentioned then, please read Mark Noll’s review, which is much better than what I could have written. This week, I’d like to share a few things that I learned from Luhrmann about […]
When God Talks Back by T.M. Luhrmann
For the past several weeks, I’ve been reading T.M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. The book addresses a simple, but profound, question from the perspective of a nonbeliever: how can seemingly rational, otherwise normal people claim to discern God’s will, to hear God’s voice, and, sometimes, to even see or feel […]
What Do Academics Think of Evangelicals?
During the past few weeks, one of the darlings of the book review circuit has been T. M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Luhrmann, an anthropologist at Stanford, spent several years attending Vineyard Churches around the country — not out of spiritual interest, but as an anthropological study. Here […]