How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others. By Tanya Luhrmann

In How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, Tanya Luhrmann explores the concept that individuals must work, and specifically work hard, in order for God to become real to them in their experience.Luhrmann possesses a background in both anthropology and psychology, thus, her analysis consists of approaches that involve the mind, human emotion, affect theory, and phenomenology (xi).This work is very useful for those studying the anthropology of Christianity, and religious experience broadly.In the beginning of this book, Luhrmann summarizes the goal and intention of her work: "I argue here that the puzzle of religion is not the problem of false belief, but the question of how gods and spirits become and remain real to people and what this real-making does for humans" (x).In another fashion, she describes her argument as shifting the general focus on questions of belief.