They are interested in the diversity of
religious experience as much as in religious institutions and leadership roles.
But television is likely to do
for religious experience today something quite different from what the invention of printing did for it five hundred years ago.
But there is a third stage of
religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling.
Students interviewed during the course of this study further obscure the issue by describing themselves as «spiritual» and defining their general spirituality as a
personal religious experience.
The fact that it may be «the same ultimate reality» behind distinct
religious experiences does not by any means require that they result in the same religious end.
But they do not seem to count very much when it comes to the interpretation of North
American religious experience, church attendance, theological education and missionary commitment.
In accordance with the nature of the
basic religious experience the conception of the nature and function of members of the community will vary.
In fact, I know people who had never traveled alone who describe their first solo trip as an
almost religious experience — one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of their lives.
This is what religion, as distinct from «spirituality» is all about: the physical machinery to
induce religious experience or, at least, religious fun.
She has done very well with this approach, providing a convincing «thick description» of the
Evangelical religious experience, or at least one important version of it.
While studies have clearly shown a relationship
between religious experiences and various brain disorders, there are several reasons why this association can not be the only answer.
Both of these elements enter into the emergence of all experience, but taken by themselves neither one yields the exact meaning of
religious experience developed here.
It can be argued that the enterprise now seeks the basically religious by moving through individual historical
religious experiences rather than by ignoring or moving around the peculiar or particular experiences.
Similarly, religious forms and symbols arise out of
elemental religious experience and must be renewed and transformed by such experience if they are to retain their living reality.
The awareness that a family, in all its creative experiences, is organically related to the creative forces of the universe is a
moving religious experience.