Surrender and Renewal: The Brain Science Behind Charismatic Prayer with Dr. Josh Brahinsky

In this episode of Ask a Theologian, I talk with Dr. Josh Brahinsky, an anthropologist, ethnographer, and neuroscientist from Stanford and McGill, about his new book, Tongues of Fire: How Charismatic Prayer Changes Evangelical Brains and Inspires Spirit-Filled Activism. He explains that his project doesn’t try to prove God or not-God, but examines embodied religious experience: how theology, practice, and neurobiology “loop” together. After years of interviews, he ran an NSF-funded MRI study comparing praise prayer to speaking in tongues to isolate surrender/letting go. He found decreased activity in a motor-planning region during tongues, consistent with reduced control, and links between surrender in prayer and increased divergent thinking (creativity), which helps explain reports of renewal, hearing God, and new ways of seeing the world.