Essay On Religious Experience

Human experience is both revelatory and a representation of the wider social context which incorporates societal structure, values and behavioural patterns of individuals.

This essay will provide a critical comparative analysis of human religious experience in disparate contexts separated by approximately 36 years. This analysis will be assisted by Charles Wright Mills’ composition, the ‘Sociological Imagination’, applying the alternation from “one perspective to another” and highlighting the intersection between ‘biography’, ‘history’ and ‘social structure’ as to illuminate the wider social context. Moreover, the interview technique will be applied as to illustrate the crucial similarities and dissimilarities between the biographies of myself and the interviewee who will be referred to by the pseudonym, Lilly. Religious affiliation will be topically explored by: adherence, in adherence, ceremonialism and the place of the religious dimension in human history.

Religion is explicated as a ‘unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things’ (Durkheim [1912] 1995). Religious affiliation is a dynamic, multifaceted component of identity and human experience, often intertwined with present social conditions. The spiritual fluctuations of my interviewee Lilly will be explored chronologically, detailing the motivations behind periods of adherence and in adherence. Lilly was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1962 into a vehemently Roman Catholic family of 5. Accordingly, Lilly was baptised and went to church and Sunday school weekly. Following her family’s departure from Ireland, Lilly and her family moved to Accrington, England. Lilly then attended the Holy Family Catholic School and discontinued higher education due to falling...

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... that their plight was divinely inspired, creating an illusion of afterlife and happiness (Carl et al 2012). He crucially claimed that it functioned to make the people ignore the debilitating capitalist oppression (Marx [1844] 2000).

In summary, the religious experience and resultant affiliation of individuals is closely correlated with the existing social conditions. Patently, the subjects examined illustrated notable parallels and contradictions, sharing the directly linked intersection between ‘biography’, ‘history’ and ‘social structure’ (Mills, 1959). It is blatantly manifest that the Australian religious landscape of adherence has undergone a complete reconfiguration since 1947 and that the role of institutionalised religion is diminishing, primarily as a result of a revolutionised social climate embracing alternate forms of worship and individualism.