IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v595y2004i1p190-203.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond Mysterium Tremendum: Thoughts toward an Aesthetic Study of Religious Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Omar M. McRoberts

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract

Much sociological ethnography of religion values an objective distance between observer and subject to the point of reducing religion to a catalogue of doctrines and rituals, failing all the while to take seriously the subjective experiences of believers and the experiences of ethnographers themselves. The association of religious experience with transcendent feelings of awe or ecstasy, coupled with the methodological impossibility of perfect empathy, further drives the ethnography of religion away from the consideration of religious experience. I offer thoughts toward an aesthetics-oriented method of studying lived religiosity, whereby the ethnographer becomes sensitive to aspects of religious experience that are precognitive but not necessarily spiritual.

Suggested Citation

  • Omar M. McRoberts, 2004. "Beyond Mysterium Tremendum: Thoughts toward an Aesthetic Study of Religious Experience," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 595(1), pages 190-203, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:595:y:2004:i:1:p:190-203
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716204267111
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716204267111
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0002716204267111?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:595:y:2004:i:1:p:190-203. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.