This indicates the specific practices that bind a religion together, such as prayer, holidays, and attending services. An aggregation of these practices makes up what is known as religious tradition. The major purposes of these religious practices of religion are to achieve the goals of salvation for oneself and others, as well as to render due worship and obedience to God. Different religions have different understandings of salvation and God. The major religious traditions of the world include Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, and Confucianism with each tradition including various branches often varying on a liberal to conservative continuum.
Published in Chapter:
Phenomenology of Religious Experience: A Christian Perspective
Joseph Olufemi Asha (Baptist College of Theology, Lagos, Nigeria)
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4595-9.ch013
Abstract
In the Christian tradition, a spiritual experience is a phenomenon that in some sense remains controversial. Nonetheless, spiritual experience in Christianity refers to the personalization of the faith in Christ that transcends the normal. This is, however, critically contested and regrettably unexplored. It lends credence to why contemporary research on religious experience reveals that Christian spiritual experiences have the element of supernatural intervention by the Holy Spirit, although supernatural must not be confused with spectacular. It might be spectacular, as in the case of Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). Drawing upon extensive contemporary research, content analysis, and literature on religious experience, this study adopts descriptive methodology as techniques. The study situates religious experience as occurrence in an everyday situation of Christians through which they derive a clear inner realization of “the truth.” Findings reveal a significant implication for collective research on religious and spiritual experiences for Christians.