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God put a thought into my mind: the charismatic Christian experience of receiving communications from God

Dein, S.; Cook, C.C.H.

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Authors

S. Dein



Abstract

The agentive aspects of communicative religious experiences remain somewhat neglected in the social sciences literature. There is a need for phenomenological descriptions of these experiences and the ways in which they differ from culturally defined psychopathological states. In this semi-structured interview study, eight congregants attending an evangelical church in London were asked to describe their experiences of God communicating with them. Communications from God were related to current events rather than to the prediction of future events. These communications were received as thoughts and do not generally reveal metaphysical insights, but rather they relate to the mundane world. They provided direction, consolation and empowerment in the lives of those receiving them. Individuals recounted that on occasion God sometimes speaks audibly, or accompanied by supernatural phenomena, but in the vast majority of cases, the way God speaks is through thoughts or impressions. In all instances, agency is maintained, individuals can choose to obey the thoughts/voices or not. The findings are discussed in relation to externalisation of agency and the phenomenon of thought insertion in schizophrenia.

Citation

Dein, S., & Cook, C. (2015). God put a thought into my mind: the charismatic Christian experience of receiving communications from God. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 18(2), 97-113. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2014.1002761

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 23, 2014
Publication Date Feb 27, 2015
Deposit Date Apr 9, 2015
Publicly Available Date Apr 13, 2015
Journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture
Print ISSN 1367-4676
Electronic ISSN 1469-9737
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Issue 2
Pages 97-113
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2014.1002761
Keywords God, Thought, Mind.

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (157 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.





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