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Religious Experience (Summary)
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Religious ExperienceWhat is a religious experience?
This is when a person claims to have experienced the DIVINE
or a messenger from the Divine.
A religious experience is primarily an individual one.
Religious experiences can take a number of forms:
- Prayer
- Conversion
- Charismatic
- Numinous
- Mystical
- Miracle
- Vision
Prayer is a major vehicle through which a religious experience
occurs e.g. in mysticism
Common features of religious experience
Universality- All communities report occurrences of religious
experiences. This is by no means restricted to what we might
consider to be ‘primitive’ or traditional societies.
Diversity- Religious experience are not uniform- they differ for
individuals in the same community. Those who are part of the
same believing community may attempt to apply the same
cultural driven theology or doctrinal spin after the event,
however this does not take away the uniqueness of the
experience
Importance- Religious experiences are extremely important to
the individuals who have them. Often they are life-changing,
others may find them symptomatic of a religious life that
brings greater maturity, spiritual depth and peace
The religious experience can, according to Moojen Momen
o “lead to a compete change in the wat individuals think
about themselves a complete alteration on lifestyle or a
reorganisation of the individuals conceptual”
Agreed Features of religious experience include:
It is an intense and energising experience that is important
and demands attention.
The experience is liberating as it transcends the boundaries
and demands of the physical world.
It brings peace, awe, joy, dread, exultation and exhilaration.
, The experience will give the recipient knowledge or insight into
their faith. The inward confirmation of faith is what is important
to the recipient.
Time may appear to stop and space can become distorted.
This often occurs in deep mediation where the mediator can be
oblivious to external factors of any kind.
The experiences will generally be seen as authoritative if it
leads to personal growth, change and alteration in lifestyle or
way of thinking.
William James- “Varieties of Religious Experience”
James highlights similar findings in his study of religious
experiences in a variety of religious traditions.
1. Ineffability (defy description and are different from ordinary
experience)
2. Noetic Quality (states of knowledge, even if that knowledge
cannot be expressed; awareness sometimes described as
revelation)
3. Transiency (cannot be sustained for long)
4. Passivity (person who has a mystical experience feels that
they have received something, rather than done something)
Broad types of religious experience
1. Regenerative
2. Charismatic
3. Mystical
Regenerative
When an individual believes they have come into contact with
a greater reality
This coming into contact will give the recipient the following
things:
- Sense of personal renewal
- Power in their lives that had not been previously
experienced
- People will notice a change in lifestyle, behaviour and
thought processes
Momen gives three subcategories
1. Confirming experiences- These experiences occur in those
rediscovering or deepening their own faith.
2. Commissioning experiences- These could be called Vocative
experiences as they often involve an element of ‘calling’.
Alternatively, the recipient could adopt a whole new way of
life.
3. Conversion experiences- like the conversion Saul --> Paul
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