The Trouble with Atheists

Spirituality Studies, 2018

We live in a world where most people believe in God. Despite propaganda to the contrary, the number of atheists in the world remains rather small (only 3% in the U.S.A, and only 9% in Canada). Why is that? Is it because people are stupid, superstitious, and irrational. Or is it because there is something there that keeps them engaged. Putting aside derisive dismissals of human spiritual experience, this paper renames mystical experience as "connection experience" and points out that connection experiences are a ubiquitous and healthy aspect of human spirituality and human experience.

Religions, 2020

Taking as its foundation a religious experience of my own, this paper explores the impact of the study of religion on the interpretation and significance of experience. My experience will be analyzed in relation to the work of William James, followed by a movement into neuroscientific research on null experiences, before turning to philosophic and theological treatments of experience in Nishida Kitaro and Meister Eckhart especially. These accounts of religious experience are then explored in terms of the potential connection they suggest with drug use in and out of religious settings. Finally, I will turn to a fundamental questioning of experience as seen in the work of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion, all of which sets up a tentative conclusion regarding our approach to religious experience, whether as an object of study or our own.

Religious Studies, 2004

Fieldwork in Religion, 2012

The ‘turn to experience’ has been described as one of the most defining characteristics of contemporary religion. Research on religion, and in particular on spirituality, therefore increasingly concentrates on the description of its experiential dimensions. The turn to experience, however, asks for something more than just the observation that a particular dimension (experience) has become of greater value for practitioners of religion. Dimensions which have for a long time been central to the social-scientific study of religion, but are avoided in the practitioners’ discourse and, surprisingly, in the social-scientific discourse as well, such as authority and power, turn out to be of lasting significance in the mediation and construction of religious experience. In this contribution, the authors take the social construction of religious experience in contemporary spirituality as a starting point for a reflection and discussion on the methodological challenges of experiential religi...

2016

The special issue Connected with God: Body, the Social, and the Transcendent addresses the very topical question of the architecture of religious, especially Christian, experiences. Specifically, it examines the processes in which Christians experience the connection with, and gain knowledge of, God in and through the body, and, in particular, the role of social relatedness and morality in generating and informing these experiences. The issue challenges the view of an individual subjective relationship with God, and argues that Christian experiences of God’s presence are not solely a matter of an individual’s relationship with the divine but are very much made possible, guided, and conceptualised through corporeal relationships with social others – believers and other fellow-humans. Through detailed ethnographic and historical examination, the issue also addresses the question of whether and how the form of Christianity practised influences people’s experiences of divine presence.

Spirituality and Health International, 2008

Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 2019

Approaching Religion, 2022

This article discusses and argues for a ‘new’ and inclusive umbrella concept for varieties of experiences that have been called, inter alia, religious, spiritual, existential, paranormal, extraordinary or inexplicable. The umbrella concept to be explored is seen as a means of capturing one kind of ‘lived religion’ in contemporary society and simultaneously expanding the field of the sociology of religion. The discussion is theoretical and anchored in contemporary theories and traditions in sociology of religion, but it is also of pragmatical, methodological, empirical, and ethical concern. The main concepts that are currently in use and considered as offering a possible umbrella term for this cluster of often overlapping experiences, which are difficult to clearly define and distinguish, are summarized, and the main concepts, such as religious, spiritual and paranormal experiences, are elaborated in more detail. Thereafter follows a definition and in-depth discussion of the suggeste...

Religious Studies, 1998