Luhrmann wins Grawemeyer religion prize

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Dec 05, 2013, 10:00 ET

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Dec. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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."

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 Louisville Presbyterian Theological 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."

Luhrmann, the Howard and Jessie Watkins University Professor in Stanford's Department of Anthropology, previously worked at University of Chicago and University of California, San Diego. She has doctoral and master's degrees in social anthropology from Cambridge University and a bachelor's degree in folklore and mythology from Harvard University.

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is a former president of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and received a Guggenheim Award in 2007.

She recently studied how life on the streets may contribute to mental illness and is now working on a multinational research project comparing spiritual experience, prayer practice and the experience of hearing voices through psychoses.

UofL presents four Grawemeyer Awards each year for outstanding works in music composition, world order, psychology and education. The university and seminary jointly give a fifth award in religion. This year's awards are $100,000 each.

For more details on the awards or to download Luhrmann's photo, see grawemeyer.org.

SOURCE University of Louisville