In her Op-Ed article in The New York Times (@nytopinion), Stanford (@Stanford) anthropology professor and author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, T. M. Luhrmann raises some interesting points that apply to biblical fiction, Bible-based movies, and creative storytelling in sermons. She says:
Most evangelicals describe the Bible as literally true. Yet for many, “literally” often means “keep what’s there and add details to make it vivid.”
I am an anthropologist, and in recent years I have been exploring a kind of American evangelical Christianity that seeks to enable its followers to know God intimately. These evangelicals talk about the Bible as if it is literally true, but they also use their imagination to experience the Bible as personally as possible. They talk about getting to know God by having coffee with God, or asking God what shirt they should wear in the morning. A man from Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego told me that “the Bible is a love story, and it is written to me.” It is a style of evangelical Christianity with many followers: perhaps a quarter of all Americans....
I am no theologian and I do not think that social science can weigh in on the question of who God is or whether God is real. But I think that anthropology offers some insight into why imaginatively enriching a text taken as literally true helps some Christians to hang on to God when they are surrounded by a secular world.
First, this way of knowing God involves what social scientists would call “active learning.”.... Second, these practices make the experience of God personally specific....
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