I just finished reading T. L. Luhrmann's _When God Talks Back_ which is about the Vineyard and related new style evangelical churches. The main thing she studied was the way in which they taught prayer as a technique and a skill that required work and practice. I was amazed to learn that these evangelical Protestants have started using the Spiritual Exercises devised by Ignatius Loyola (founder of the Jesuit Order). These exercises involve concentrating on imagining oneself into Scripture scenes, seeing, touching, hearing, smelling. Luhrmann then devised an experimental study of the effects of different prayer training: passive listening to pink noise, active imagining scenes and a control group that just listened to a taped lecture on Scripture. Really interesting work.
Luhrmann's first work as an anthropologist was among magicians and Witches in England, leading to the book _Persuasions of the Witch's Path_. Warning, the book is quite dense with anthropological terminology that may be fairly opaque to the outsider.
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branchandroot
Re: Communicating with gods.
Date: 2017-12-26 12:41 am (UTC)Luhrmann's first work as an anthropologist was among magicians and Witches in England, leading to the book _Persuasions of the Witch's Path_. Warning, the book is quite dense with anthropological terminology that may be fairly opaque to the
outsider.
Rita