''Religious Experience'' is a 1985 book by

Wayne Proudfoot Wayne Lee Proudfoot (born November 17, 1939) is an American scholar of religion and has written several works in that field, specializing in the philosophy of religion. Proudfoot earned the degree of Master of Theology from the Harvard Divinity S ...

, published by

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...

. 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 William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

in ''

The Varieties of Religious Experience ''The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature'' is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University o ...

''. One of the key questions routinely raised by such academic study is whether

religious experience A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense ...

of individuals reflects a truly hidden spiritual reality or merely physiological changes of state.

List of reviews

*Review: "Explaining the Unexplainable: Wayne Proudfoot's 'Religious Experience'", G. William Barnard, ''Journal of the American Academy of Religion'', Vol. 60, No. 2, (Summer, 1992), pp.231-256 :

Excerpt: ''"Religion for Proudfoot is primarily a cultural, public, accessible phenomenon. According to him, those who claim that religious experiences are private, personal, or interior are mistaken. They simply do not understand the true nature of emotions and an undue respect for our ability to make authoritative judgements based on introspective evidence. ... roudfootneglects to mention that the Schachter and Singer experiment, though acknowledged as a classic because of its extensive influence on subsequent cognitive models of emotion, is considered, at best, controversial, and more seriously, has been judged by many to be methodologically unsound and unwarranted in its conclusions. Although Proudfoot in a footnote (242) mentions that some criticisms of the Schachter and Singer experiment do exist in the literature, the reader, despite the footnote, is left with the impression that what criticisms exist are inconsequential, and that the conclusions reached by the Schachter and Singer experiment are still those most widely accepted in the psychological community. ... Perhaps it is inevitable, even necessary, that as students of religion, we will choose which methodological approach we find most adequate and fruitful. I would like to propose that a modified Jamesian approach is, in the end, far superior to Proudfoot's solution. James's willingness to entertain seriously the possibility of a transcultural reality, combined with his awareness of the tentative nature of every explanatory attempt, and his emphasis on the worth of attempting normative assessments of different religious worldviews and practices, makes his methodology a far more attractive and viable option than the methodology offered by Wayne Proudfoot in Religious Experience."''

*"Religious Experience by Wayne Proudfoot", Kusumita P. Pedersen, ''

Philosophy East and West ''Philosophy East and West'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering non-Western traditions of philosophy in relation to Anglo-American philosophy, integrating the discipline with literature, science, and social practices. Special issues have ...

'', Vol. 38, Num. 2, April 1988, pp. 209–212. :

Excerpt: ''"Finally, it is welcome indeed to have a philosopher of Proudfoot's ability make such a strong case for the cognitive content of religious consciousness by demonstrating the central role of judgment and explanation in religious experience."''

{{reli-book-stub 1985 non-fiction books University of California Press books