Religious Experience as an Observational Epistemic Practice

William Alston proposed an understanding of religious experience modeled after the triadic structure of sense perception. However, a perceptual model falters because of the unobservability of God as the object of religious experience. To reshape Alston’s model of religious experience as an observational practice we utilize Dudley Shapere’s distinction between the philosophical use of ‘observe’ in terms of sensory perception and scientists’ epistemic use of ‘observe’ as being evidential by providing information or justification leading to knowledge. This distinction helps us to understand how religious experience of an unobservable God can be an epistemic practice that satisfies our epistemic obligations and justifies religious belief.     

Religious Experience: A Sociological Perspective

This paper draws on a wide range of researches to stress the importance of social context to the sociological understanding of religious experiences. It argues that individualistic definitions fail to take into account real group experiences such as those resulting from the reforms of Vatican II. For the sociologist, it is important to explore general patterns of group experiences and the meanings attributed to them. The paper discusses some of the methodological and conceptual problems in this area before considering evidence for the patterning of religious experience according to differences of generation, gender, class, level of urbanization, institutional involvement, and status inconsistency. The paper concludes by locating religious experiences in the context of modernity. In contrast to related theories of secularization, it draws attention to the recent work of Hervieu-Léger which suggests that utopian future expectations create space which can only be met by new forms of religious experience.     

Varieties of Religious Experience:Continuity and Change in Religious Involvement

ABSTRACT The intent of the present study was to determine whether the selective aggregation of background data subgroups could be used to identify and control for differences across persons in the meaning of religious involvement. After background data subgroups had been clustered based on similarity in the variables related to religious involvement, two clusters were identified. One cluster contained individuals whose religious involvement was characterized by a functional, instrumental orientation, while the other was composed of individuals whose religious involvement was characterized by an affective, expressive orientation. Subsequently, causal models intended to describe continuity and change in religious involvement were constructed using individuals assigned to each cluster. It was found that different models were required to describe continuity and change in religious involvement in the instrumental and expressive clusters.     

Ambivalence and Male Religious Experience: An Autobiographical Study

I argue that what are typically identified as “calls from God” to an office of sacred power are filled with various degrees and types of ambivalence. This ambivalence becomes manifest (or not) to the person experiencing a call at various points in their lifespan and it exists for a number of reasons. I seek to unveil the psychodynamics responsible for these feelings of ambivalence. I argue that the awareness of feelings of ambivalence can be correlated with the degree of one’s happiness—specifically in one’s sexual and mental health; this point is marshaled throughout the essay by autobiographical examples of men who experienced some type of divine calling. In addition to psychoanalytic resources, I apply postmodern autobiographical criticism to this autobiographical study; my autobiographical notes are written in italics.     

Attribution and building blocks: Comment on Ann Taves's Religious Experience Reconsidered

Taves nicely elaborates an attribution approach to the study of religious experience, clarifying the issues it raises and providing some guides for further research. This comment addresses two of those issues, (1) the relation of top-down and bottom-up accounts of religious experiences and (2) what Taves describes as the building block approach to their study.     

Mourning the Religious Self: An Experience of Multiplicity,Loss, and Religious Melancholia

The loss of religion is not one thing to all people, nor even one thing to one person. This article asks the question, “when we are talking about the loss of religion, who is mourning what?” The author considers what the loss of religion looks like if we view the self as abiding in both multiplicity and melancholia, and claims that the loss of religion requires a reconfiguration of the inner landscape of centrality and marginality. A clinical example illustrates how one patient’s “loss of faith” calls her to a complex mourning process that includes confronting many personal losses and their relation to her transgendered self.     

The Batson-Schoenrade-Ventis Model of Religious Experience: Critique and Reformulation

A critique is offered of the 4-stage model of religious experience sketched by Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993). Drawing inspiration from Wallas's (1926) classic work on creative thinking, the Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (BSV) model of religious experience states that religious experiences go through 4 stages-existential questioning, self-surrender, new vision, and new life. Shortcomings of this model include the possibility that only the first 3 stages are really needed to describe religious experience; the need for the model to be more specific about the content of each stage, especially the second (self-surrender) stage; and the need for the model to take more cognizance of emotional factors in religious experience. In response to these criticisms, a revised model is proposed. This revised version of the BSV model describes only 3 stages-a stage of moral questioning; a stage of renunciation of worldly pleasures, in which intrapunitive behaviors are engaged in at a conscious and controlled level, but in which-one may hypothesize-positive self-evaluations are taking place at a more automatic, nonconscious level; and a stage of new vision, in which new patterns of mentation articulated at a nonconscious level during the second stage may gain ascendancy into consciousness as abrupt, intense experiences. Suggestions for empirical research predictions derived from the revised model are outlined.     

Religious Education and Pastoral Counseling: The Classical Pentecostal Experience

The paper addresses the subject of religious education and pastoral counseling in the classical Pentecostal church. It argues that Pentecostals can benefit from a merger of religious education and pastoral counseling that leads the student/client to a closer relationship with God.     

宗教体验的情绪活动与生理活动研究

宗教体验是人在宗教活动中的心态或体悟及伴随的情感体验,有强烈的情感特征。为了探讨宗教体验的情绪变化特征及其与生理活动的相关性,本研究用自编图片诱发情绪,以情绪调查表记录诱发情绪前后18名基督徒和非基督徒大学生的情绪主观体验变化,同时采用多导生理仪记录了其自主神经生理指标和脑电波。结果表明,基督徒与非基督徒的主观体验差异显著,并在C3C4电极所记录的脑区表现出θ波能量差异。总体上,基督教的宗教体验与普通的情绪体验不同,基督徒更多的是正性情绪体验。     

Corpus Mysticum and Religious Experience: Henry,Lacoste and Marion

While usually denoting the church and/or the sacrament of the Eucharist, the ‘mystical body of Christ’ has become a theological grammar for Catholic phenomenologists Michel Henry, Jean‐Yves Lacoste and Jean‐Luc Marion to think through the possibility of religious experience. This article traces out some of the richly detailed accounts of religious experience proffered by Henry, Lacoste and Marion, paying heed to how they narrate the non‐worldly, invisible disclosure of that religious experiencing. The final section outlines a deeper integration of the three by highlighting the need for an encounter with Christ to be both non‐worldly and worldly, between presence and absence, and thus an experience that is concrete, lived, but also mediated by the visible church.     

Religious Experience in a Cross-Cultural and Interfaith Context: Limitations and Possibilities

Religious experience is a multifaceted aspect of an individual’s experience involving conscious and unconscious components. Individuals, for example, maintain varied ideas of God at different levels of awareness and consciousness, all of which contribute to their broader experience of God. This paper focuses primarily on complex theistic experiences of God, their relationship to psychological and spiritual health, and how these experiences can be changed through psychological intervention. Consideration is also given to ethical issues and other implications of changing one’s religious experience.     

Pain and Sacrifice: Experience and Modulation of Pain in a Religious Piercing Ritual

Fascinating pain-related rituals have been observed throughout the world, but so far no systematic evidence exists to support previous ethnographic reports of analgesic states and dissociative symptoms during these events. To address this issue, we combined quantitative and qualitative measures with the aim of investigating pain experience and modulation of pain during the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual in Mauritius. In Study 1, results indicated low levels of pain intensity during the ritual, and regression analyses showed that expectations of pain were significantly predictive of actual pain intensity ratings. In Study 2, the meanings surrounding the ritual were found to generate expectations of low pain and a positive outcome, and intense prayer was reported as the main coping strategy. In addition, most participants expressed symptoms of dissociation (including amnesia, absorption, and depersonalisation) during Thaipusam, and a high prevalence of these symptoms was associated with low levels of pain.