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, [...]
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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
