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Religious Experience summary for Philosophy A-level
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Religious ExperienceMystical experience Experiences of God or the supernatural which go beyond everyday
sense experience
Conversion experience An experience that produces a radical shift in someone's belief
system
Corporate religious Religious experiences which happen to group of people ‘as a body’
experience
Numinous experience An indescribable experience which involves feelings of awe, worship
and fascination
Principle of credulity Swinburne’s principle that we should usually believe what our senses
tell us we are perceiving
Principle of testimony Swinburne’s principle that we should usually trust that other people
are telling us the truth
Naturalistic explanation An explanation referring to natural rather than supernatural causes
Neurophysiology An area of science which studies the brain and the nervous system
Religious experiences can be difficult to communicate in the language we use every day as they are
different from every day experiences.
What is Religious Experience?
People sometimes use this phrase to refer to anything that happens in a religious context, such as
attending a service. Others suggest that religious experience refers to a specific life changing event.
Religious experience is often solitary and personal but it can be corporate (shared by a body of
people). Some would suggest that when Christians share the eucharist they are having a religious
experience but others would use the phrase to refer to a specific event which is totally outside the
ordinary.
Religious experience can come in many different forms such as the perception of visions and voices,
conversion experiences, numinous experiences, and near-death experiences; and because such
experiences are outside of everyday life, they can be difficult to describe to others. There is also, of
course, the issue of whether religious experiences are genuine encounters with something that exists
in reality, beyond the subjective, or whether they are simply the result of an overactive imagination, or
are hallucinations which are better explained with reference to science.
The influence of religious experience
Stories of religious experiences are common throughout every world religion’s texts. On a personal
level, some people have changed the whole direction of their lives on the basis of their RE, and some
people have been willing to sacrifice everything. Collectively, people have drawn on the religious
experiences of others in the formation of their doctrines and practices; the style of charismatic
Christian Churches is based on the corporate religious experience of the first Christians at Pentecost.
What makes an experience distinctively religious?
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
Schleiermacher was a theologian who claimed the essence of religion was based in personal
experience. For him, it was not enough to simply follow doctrine. He thought that religious experience
should be at the heart of faith. Schleiermacher believed that everyone has a consciousness of the
divine, but that in many people this is obscured by other concerns. Religious people are those who
are aware of, and try to develop, this sense of the divine.
According to Schleiermacher, religious experience is ‘self-authenticating’; that it requires no other
testing to see if it is genuine. In Catholic tradition, the experiences of mystics had to be tested against
the Church’s teaching and against scripture before they were considered to be genuine, whereas
Schleiermacher believed that experiences should have priority and statements about faith should be
formulated to fit them instead.
, Schleiermacher was reacting against the contemporary view of eighteenth-century Germany, which
was that reason was of prime importance. In his view, religious experiences could take different forms
in different cultures, and that the different world religions are a reflection of this. He believed that
Christianity was the highest religion as Jesus Christ is the only example of someone with complete
‘God-consciousness’, but not the only true religion.
Critics of Schleiermacher argue that he places too much emphasis on emotions and that he reduces
the possibility that religious claims are based on fact. Some argued that there must be a way to
authenticate religious experiences as those caused by hallucinations or drugs would be valid.
William James (1842-1910)
Wrote “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, which is a series of lectures he gave on the subject.
His aim was to take an objective stance and to take personal accounts of religious experience
seriously, and to make observations about them which he hoped would lead to significant insights.
James considers what is understood by ‘conversion’ and gives various different accounts of
conversion accounts. His understanding is that the term relates to a process where someone who is
‘divided’, and conscious of being wrong and unhappy, becomes much more confident on what is right,
and much happier, as a ‘consequence of firmer hole on religious realities’. James recognises that this
can be a slow or gradual process.
He believed that, to an extent, religious experiences could be tested for validity. This is done by
looking at the after effects of the religious experience; they will become less selfish, calmer and more
loving. James went on to say that religious experiences outside of Christianity could also be valid, if
they produced the same effects.
For James, a religious experience does not have to be marked by dramatic supernatural events,
although it could be. The real test of what happened is the long-term change in the person. James is
known as a pragmatist; someone who holds that the truth of something can be determined by its
practical effects and consequences.
Identified four main qualities of religious experiences:
Passivity: the person having the experience feels as if the experience is being controlled from
outside themselves – they are the recipients of the experience, rather than the instigators of it.
Ineffability: impossible to express adequately using normal language.
Noetic quality: the experience gives the person an understanding of important truths, which
could have not been known using reason.
Transience: the experience happens suddenly but the effects last a lifetime.
James concluded that, even though religious experiences do not give proof of anything, it is
reasonable to believe that there is a personal God who is interested in the world and individuals.
Rudolf Otto (1896-1937)
Rudolf Otto was a Protestant theologian who used his vast knowledge of natural sciences,
comparative religion and oriental traditions to try and analyse religion. In his book, “The Idea of the
Holy”, Otto tried to identify what it was about a religious experience that made it religious, rather than
just an experience. He wanted to show that it was essential to religion that individuals should have a
sense of a personal encounter. Otto said that the divine would have three main qualities:
1. A quality of mystery, a realisation that God is incomprehensible, that God can be met and his
work can be seen and yet God can never be captured, fully understood or described.
2. God is recognised as being of ultimate importance.
3. God has a quality that is both attractive and dangerous. That God cannot be controlled and
that the person feels a sense of privilege during religious experience.
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