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What would Oliver Sacks have made of a room full of Christians speaking in tongues? That question literally drove the writing of this book — Sacks's books stacked beside my keyboard, his careful empathy, clinical tenderness and radical curiosity my constant reminder. Tongues of Fire: How Charismatic Prayer Changes Evangelical Brains and Inspires Spirit-Filled Activism (Bloomsbury Press) is the result: a book that moves between neuroscience and the prayer circle in search of something a bit like surrender.
Hey folks – please join us in person (or if need be, on zoom) for my Santa Cruz Book Talk. Zoom link registration: https://tinyurl.com/tongues-of-fire-talk -- go to the blog post for this eventt. But come in person and say hi if you can.
People who liked the book --
“We know so little about speaking in tongues, a spiritual practice widely used in the United States and around the world. Brahinsky is a fluid writer and a careful listener who has worked with tongues-speakers for years. He has much to say about the way people feel speaking in tongues in their bodies and experiencing it in their minds. We are in great need of a good book which will explain the practice and explain how the practice changes those who use it. This is that book.” —Tanya Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real and When God Talks Back
“Tongues of Fire tells fascinating stories that draw you in. It provides a remarkable coupling of anthropology and neuroscience that skillfully explores how modern Christians train their bodies to transform their consciousness. In the process, Brahinsky expands our current understanding of how related meditative practices and psychedelic experiences can shape both our immediate experience of the world, and our sense of human potential. This kind of forward-thinking research, told in terms we can all understand, is deeply needed in our field and in our world today.” —Michael Lifshitz, Professor of Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Canada
“Christian mind-body practices have been largely ignored by the recent explosion of research on contemplation. And yet, as some of the world’s most skilled and influential contemplative practitioners, Charismatic Christians are all around us. This close exploration of their understudied high arousal practice asks us to rethink what is healthy, what is normal, and what is possible. Brahinsky’s vital blend of anthropology and neuroscience charts new terrain in the field of contemplative science.” —Michael Murphy, Co-founder of Esalen Institute, author of Golf in the Kingdom
“Brahinsky provides a rich phenomenology of Pentecostal glossolalia, one that lifts up its physicality, sensuality, affectivity, and audiality so that readers come into new appreciation of the significance—semiotically, kinesthetically, neurologically, and otherwise—of charismatic tongues as empowering human agency, especially how such is cultivated and experienced. For believers and scholars, including those who reject this binary, Tongues of Fire deepens, rather than removes, the complexity, if not also mystery, of Pentecostal-charismatic spirituality.” —Amos Yong, Professor of Theology and Mission, Fuller Seminary
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Josh Brahinsky is a researcher at Stanford University in Religious Studies, McGill University in Transcultural Psychiatry, and a Teaching Faculty at UC Santa Cruz. He studies prayer and meditation. Tongues of Fire is available from Bloomsbury Press. Contact [email protected] and theprayerstudy on social media more information.
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Event Venue
London Nelson Community Center, 301 Center St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060-4308, United States
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