Religious Experience and Phenomenology

Abstract

Religious experience and the experiential dimension of religious practice have come to constitute a fruitful area of enquiry for anthropology. This entry discusses the phenomenological school of philosophy as a source for the anthropology of religion. Concepts from this school that have been taken up within the anthropology of religion, such as bracketing, intentionality, embodiment, and lifeworld, are explained. The work of anthropologists who have pioneered the application of phenomenological approaches in the anthropology of religion is discussed. The entry briefly indicates how anthropological applications of phenomenology differ from phenomenological approaches in the field of religious studies. Finally, some new developments in the study of religious experience are outlined.