This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline

theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them. I'm Albert Moly your host and president of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Tanya Lerman is currently the

Watkins University professor in the anthropology Department at Stanford University.

She's been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

and she's also been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Her newest book is entitled,

When God Talks Back back understanding the American

Evangelical relationship with God. Tanya Lerman is a psychological anthropologist.

She's been looking at American evangelicals and and her perspective is something that American evangelicals should not miss.

Professor Lerman, how in the world did you come up with the idea for this project that became the book when God talks back?

Well actually I was doing a somewhat different project in Southern California and I was at a church,

evangelical church and talking to this young blonde woman.

And she said, if you really want to understand my church, you should have coffee with God. And I had never heard anything like that before.

And you know she said that she talked to God over coffee every day. It was clear that

she regarded God as sort of as a person among people.

I mean, it was obvious that God was big and mighty and beyond.

But he also seemed to be very intimate and I found that fascinating. I wanted to know how people did it

what it was like for them what it meant to them that kind of

Well you define your own field as that of a psychological anthropologist and you

certainly demonstrate the skills of that discipline in terms of this book but my guess is that what you're telling us is that that

that what you're telling us is that your first interest was really that of a kind of an

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