The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity

Abstract

In this article, we use a combination of ethnographic data and empirical methods to identify a process called “absorption,” which may be involved in contemporary Christian evangelical prayer practice (and in the practices of other religions). The ethnographer worked with an interdisciplinary team to identify people with a proclivity for “absorption.” Those who seemed to have this proclivity were more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experience. The more they prayed, the more likely they were to have these experiences and to embrace fully the local representation of God. Our results emphasize learning, a social process to which individuals respond in variable ways, and they suggest that interpretation, proclivity, and practice are all important in understanding religious experience. This approach builds on but differs from the approach to religion within the culture‐and‐cognition school.

Frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and mediumship: a comparative study between spiritist mediums and controls

“…Taken together, the findings of the present study provide support for the hypothesis that absorption can have an important mechanistic role in anomalous sensorial experiences like mediumship and culture-bound spirit possession 3 . Replicating the few available prior EEG studies on this research field 18,19 , we observed that mediums had greater theta and beta power during the anomalous sensorial experience compared to non-medium controls.…”

“…Absorption is the capacity to direct the focus of attention to externally or an internally (thoughts, emotions, memories) generated stimulus, and to allow that focus to increase while decreasing attention to the multitudinous distractions of daily life. In these circumstances, mental activities of reality monitoring, that is, basic decisions about whether the source of an experience is internal to the mind or external in the world, may be impaired and perceptual "breaks" may result 3,4 .…”

“…The Spiritism, popular in Brazil, is a religious tradition that emphasizes such experiences. Currently, one of the most widely accepted neuropsychological theories to explain mediumship and other spiritual experiences with sensorial alterations is the "absorption hypothesis" 3 . Absorption is the capacity to direct the focus of attention to externally or an internally (thoughts, emotions, memories) generated stimulus, and to allow that focus to increase while decreasing attention to the multitudinous distractions of daily life.…”

Diversity Within the Psychotic Continuum

“…24 In my own work, absorption predicts whether charismatic Christians experience God with their senses, whether God is person-like for them, whether they have a back-and forth relationship with God, and it predicts whether people have unusual sensory experiences and a wide range of spiritual experiences. 25 These observations suggest that some unusual sensory experience (rare, brief, and positive) may have little to do with psychotic vulnerability. Instead, attention to mental imagery-as a result of practice or inclination-may be a pathway for at least some of these phenomena.…”

Aesthetics as metaphysical meaning-making in the face of death

“…As an adult, Helena no longer agreed with the Pentecostal theology of her childhood church, yet she felt that her background had taught her that the world was not merely composed of visible, materialistic dimen sions: 'That is what I am thankful for, that gift that I have gotten, since I was small, that there exist also other worlds where you can… like, it isn't just about this reality where we are, but there also exists some other, very rich reality…' 9 When Helena speaks about 'plunging into' the object, she literally repeats MerleauPonty's descrip tion of the act of perceiving. Staring at the object, she 9 The connection that Helena herself draws between her present aesthetic imagination and her Pentecostal background is a very interesting one, which demands to be elaborated more, especially on the basis of Tanya Luhrmann's 'absorption hypothesis' (Luhrmann et al 2010).…”