Religion: Immediate Experience and the Mediacy of Research - Interdisciplinary Studies in the Objectives, Concepts and Methodology of Empirical Research in Religion (Hardcover)

The volume focuses on the fundamental problem of the fundamental tension between experience and empirical science, which has been central to modern religious research since the classic approaches of Friedrich Schleiermacher and William James: How can religious experience that is lived directly be theoretically described and critically classified so that it does not follow the conceptual reconstruction lost in the way of analysis? The twelve articles in this English-language volume deal with this question in an interdisciplinary discussion. Attempts to answer questions are presented by leading international representatives of the respective discipline, which convincingly bring in the specialist perspectives from theology, philosophy of religion, cultural anthropology and empirical social research. This also brings to bear the breadth of religious experience from ecclesiastically and culturally diverse contexts in Europe, North America and Africa.