Invisible humans and their gods

In her new book, Tanya Luhrmann (2020) offers a theory of religion of universal scope: effort is required to contact and sustain the presence of an invisible other, which is why people regularly pray and engage in rituals. Focusing one’s attention, through thoughts and behaviours, on the invisible kindles — like a small fire — the presence of the supernatural. The concept of kindling, like most of the other ideas and mechanisms cited to support her theory of religion, derive from a wide corpus of psychological science, from learning theory to the cognitive science of religion. The writing of this book is clear, it steers away from jargon or strips it to the bear essentials; in that sense, it is a joy to read and widely accessible to a large audience. Something exciting about it is that one can easily think of applications of Luhrman’s theory of religion well beyond the scope of the book. Take the example of secular rites surrounding nationalism, the efforts people are willing to undertake to feel that their nation is a real entity; or consider the success of mindfulness meditation as a secular religion, where individuals go through the effort of meditating twice a day to reach a pure state of awareness that changes their wellbeing and perception of the world (Kabat-Zinn, 2017).