Rethinking Religious Experience: Notes from Critical Theory, Feminism, and Real Life
Stacy Burton
Dialogue A Journal of Mormon Thought December 1, 1995 DOI: 10.2307/45226142 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that critical theory is imperative for studying Mormonism because it enables fuller, more honest, and more critical examination of religious and secular identities and experiences, highlighting unnoticed but crucial factors that shape how people exist and interact. Cites William James's view that religions grow from individual revelatory experience, with theologies and organizations arising secondarily. |
Abstract
Since humans have long managed to have experiences that they understood to be religious without the benefit of critical theory, some may wonder why I find thinking about Mormonism and theory not only worthwhile but imperative.Others may suppose that using critical theory as a lens for viewing Mormonism puts the cart before the horse or uses the cart to mow the horse down.The short response to these reservations is that theory enables us to view our identities and our experiences -religious as well as secular -more fully, honestly, and critically; it highlights easily unnoticed but absolutely crucial factors that shape how we exist, think, and interact with others.The long response is this essay.1 Religious movements begin in human experience: they are based, as William James writes, in the founder's revelatory experience, in "direct personal communication with the divine."From such "feelings, acts , and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine ," he explains, "theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow."2It is also from such experiences that scriptural texts 1.My thoughts on this topic began to coalesce in a conversation with Lorie Winder Stromberg following Gloria Cronin's paper at Sunstone West in April 1993; I appreciate the spark their ideas provided.