Pain and Religious Experience: Theory and Methods

Abstract

This article examines the way that the hurting body enhances, deepens, and informs religious experience. It begins by examining the contested category of religious experience, contrasting the essentialist with the constructivist approaches. Both are complicated by consideration of embodiment—specifically, of the body in pain. Two concrete cases of religious pain, or sharp discomfort, are discussed as illustrations of a qualitative approach to studying pain and religious experience. This method is evaluated against two examples of a quantitative method. The article concludes that a qualitative interpretation of the meaning, rather than the analysis of causes, of religious hurting are superior, within specified parameters. Finally, the qualitative method requires an exposition that takes the form of a narrative in which the researcher acts as a close observer–participant.