Institutional Religion and Religious Experience
Religions September 22, 2021 Lidia Rodríguez, J. L. de León, L. Uriarte et al.
Despite declining adherence to religious institutions, religious experience persists through individualization. Based on 39 in-depth interviews conducted between 2016 and 2018 with Evangelical and Catholic populations in Córdoba, Montevideo, Lima, and Bilbao, the authors find that believers show growing autonomy from religious institutions while reporting a rich range of experiences of God and diverse God representations. The interviews indicate that believers elaborate their own religious experience in a personal and complex way, supporting the hypothesis that deinstitutionalization runs simultaneously with individualization rather than leading to the disappearance of religious experience.