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Book Salon
When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God

  • This month we're reading When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T.M.Luhrmann. Our faculty host is Tanya Luhrmann.

    Listen to an interview with our Book Salon host.

    "I describe the way that I saw people change. So, one of the things that the book does is to recount the fact that people change as they begin to pray. We know that that is true from the theological perspective, that makes sense. But what I saw, that psychologically people began to change."

    Tanya Luhrmann, Howard and Jessie Watkins University Professor in Anthropology and psychology (by courtesy)

How to Participate

Read the transcript from the audio interview with Professor Tanya Luhrmann

Participate in this month's online discussion and interact with Stanford alumni around the world

About this quarter's book selection

‘How does God become real for people? How are sensible people able to believe in an invisible being?’ Anthropologist, Tanya Luhrmann, uses her background in psychology to help her understand these questions, and shares her findings in her book, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.

Professor Luhrmann conducted countless interviews, and attended a number of services and small group meetings to learn about the personal relationship evangelicals hold with God. Some members of the congregation reported receiving discernible feedback from God through visions, or even hearing the voice of God himself.

Follow along with Professor Luhrmann as she test her hypothesis, that the practice of prayer could train a person to hear God’s voice—to use one’s mind differently and focus on God’s feedback. 

The Stanford Book Salon [Seriously Unstuffy]