Hallucinations are a universal feature of human experience. This doesn’t mean that everyone has hallucinated, but everyone is capable of hallucinating. If hallucinations can be managed, the effects range from enlightening to fun. If hallucinations are uncontrolled, the effects range from psychosis to terror. In most cases, expectations are the key to management [...]
Tags:absorption·charismatics·Christian·confabulation·delusions·evangelicals·hallucinations·perceptual bias·perceputal deficits·reality monitoring·shamans·Tanya Luhrmann·trance·visions
Just the other day, I commented on the origin of ritual and noted that Jonathan Z. Smith sees “the thrill of coincidence” as at least a partial explanation. Before rationalists dismiss this thrill as mere superstition, Smith also notes that the same kind of coincidence resides at the heart of scholarship:
The discovery that two events, [...]
Tags:Africa·Assembly of God·Catholics·charismatics·charms·coincidence·evangelicals·exorcism·Foursquare Gospel·Geoffrey MacDonald·Glimpses of African Belief·indigenous beliefs·Johann Hari·Jonathan Z. Smith·Massachusetts·mediums·pagans·Pentecostals·possession·psychics·ritual·rituals·rosaries·saints·Salem·secret interconnection·spells·spiritual tourism·spiritualism·superstitition·The Gathering·The Masque of Africa·The Vault·transubstantiation·V.S. Naipaul·voodoo·Wicca·witchcraft
In a recent post, I noted that the faithful yearn for empirical affirmations of their ineffable beliefs. For Evangelicals and Pentecostals (“charismatics”) one of these supposed affirmations can be found in church nearly every Sunday: someone will begin “speaking in tongues” and then someone else will proffer an “interpretation” of the message from God-Jesus or [...]
Andrew Brown from The Guardian recently attended a talk by Tanya Luhrman, a cultural anthropologist at Stanford who is studying the charismatic Christian Vineyard churches in California. Having attended similar churches in my youth, I was particularly interested in the kinds of things an ethnographer might have observed. Brown’s report provides some context:
The Vineyard churches [...]
Tags:agency detection·anthropomorphism·charismatics·evangelicals·Stewart Guthrie·Tanya Luhrman
