Book cover of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others

Book description

The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith

How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people-as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see…

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Why read it?

1 author picked How God Becomes Real as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book instantly drew me in, since Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann asks a question I’ve always wondered about: how the mind—and imagination—work. Here she documents her work with groups that range from Wicca, Evangelical Protestants, Hasidic Jewish communities, to Santeria and hallucinating patients in mental hospitals. Through her research, she explores a kind of “imaginative play” that enables people “to experience the world as responsive and alive.” The book is a page-turner, offering amazing insights about cognition, anthropology, and about why—and howcountless people still powerfully engage religious traditions.

If you love How God Becomes Real...

Book cover of When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome

When Jesus Became God by Richard E. Rubenstein,

Was Jesus of Nazareth a remarkably holy man and a prophet, or was he God in human form? This question tore the early Christian community apart in the fourth century CE, generating 60 years of violent conflict and raising questions that still concern millions of people worldwide.

"A splendidly dramatic…

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