Religious Experience

How is religious experience to be identified, described, analyzed and explained? Is it independent of concepts, beliefs, and practices? How can we account for its authority? Under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? Wayne Proudfoot shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices are presupposed by the rules governing this identification of an experience as religious. Some of these characteristics can be understood by attending to the conditions of experience, among which are beliefs about how experience is to be explained. Religious Experience is a 1985 book by Wayne Proudfoot, published by University of California Press. It received the American Academy of Religion Award in 1986, one year after publication. Its area of exploration (i.e., the academic study of religious experience) is along the lines of that explored by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience. One of the key questions routinely raised by such academic study is whether religious experience of individuals reflects a truly hidden spiritual reality or merely physiological changes of state. How is religious experience to be identified, described, analyzed and explained? Is it independent of concepts, beliefs, and practices? How can we account for its authority? And under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? This title shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices.