The Study of Religious Experience - Approaches and Methodologies - Bettina E. Schmidt
Foreword
The Study of Religious Experience - Approaches and Methodologies - Bettina E. Schmidt
Peggy Morgan
Description
Sir Alister Hardy, a renowned scientist, approached the complex field of religious and spiritual experience from a similar disciplined and scientific manner in which he approach natural science. Asking people from the public to send him accounts of first-hand experiences with spiritual or religious powers he established the Religious Experience Research Centre that has been since then at the forefront of the academic study of religious experiences. This book will take his work forward and show how to study religious and spiritual experiences in the 21st century. The aim of the book is to show how a range of disciplines (e.g. anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, theology, biblical studies, history) approach the topic religious experience, what their contributions to the study of religious experience are and how the approach can be applied. Each chapter will present a different approach while the introduction will highlight how the individual chapters contribute to the study of religious experience, where they differ and where they overlap.