Religion and Aesthetics: A Structured Integrative Review Toward A Process Model of Sacred and Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

This article examines whether religious and aesthetic experiences share a common processual architecture and explains why clarifying this relationship matters for the psychology of religion, neuroaesthetics, phenomenology, ritual studies, and applied care. The study was designed as a structured integrative review organized using a PRISMA 2020-informed screening logic. Peer-reviewed studies published between 2021 and 2025 were identified through keyword searches and backward citation tracing across psychology, neuroscience, religious studies, aesthetics, and cultural theory. Of these, 16 contemporary sources met the inclusion criteria. The synthesis demonstrates five major areas of convergence: heightened attention and sensory salience; self-transcendent emotions such as awe and reverence; interpretive meaning-making and identity reorganization; partially overlapping neurocognitive systems related to valuation and self-referential processing; and cultural mediation through ritual, architecture, iconography, music, and digital religion. At the same time, the review shows that religious and aesthetic experiences remain distinct in their ontological reference, doctrinal authority, communal normativity, and existential consequence. Religious and aesthetic experiences are therefore best understood as partially overlapping but non-reducible modes of human world-making; accordingly, future research should employ mixed-method, cross-cultural, and longitudinal designs, refine conceptual and psychometric distinctions, and test the proposed Aesthetic–Religious Experience Process Model in clinical, spiritual care, and digitally mediated contexts.