LOUISVILLE, Ky. — American evangelical practices of prayer can train the mind to experience God, says the winner of the 2014 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford University psychological anthropologist, received the prize for the ideas set forth in her 2012 book, “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.”
UofL presents four Grawemeyer Awards each year for outstanding works in music composition, world order, psychology and education. The university and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give a fifth award in religion. This year’s awards are $100,000 each.
Luhrmann wrote the book after four years of fieldwork in Chicago and Northern California with Vineyard Christian Fellowship, a church whose members speak in tongues and pray for healing. She observed and interviewed church members and took part in prayer groups, Bible study and weekly worship.
After extensive research, she concluded that the evangelical experience of God involves a sophisticated use of mind cultivated through both individual practice and communal support.
Besides tracing the development of modern evangelical Christianity and showing how questions of belief have changed in contemporary times, Luhrmann applies important theories from psychology and anthropology to explain what happens when evangelicals pray, said award director Shannon Craigo-Snell, a theology professor at the seminary.
“Instead of asking ‘Is God real?’ she asks ‘How does God become real for people?’ Craigo-Snell said. “She offers a compelling exploration of religious experience in evangelical communities and a captivating account of prayer as a way of training the mind to experience God.”
For more details on the awards or to download Luhrmann’ photo, see http://www.grawemeyer.org/.