BY
Dr. Etim E. Okon
Associate Professor
Department of Religious and Cultural Studies
University of Calabar Cross River State, Nigeria
dretimokon55@gmail.com
+2348038025231
ABSTRACT
William James in a ground-breaking Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology, delivered at the University of Edinburgh that was published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, blazed the trail in the psychological study of religion. While James was not the pioneer theorists in the psychology of religion, he pioneered the study of personal or individual religion. While scholars before him, especially sociologists had concentrated on the study of religion as a communal experience, James focused his interest and attention on the personal experience of homo religiosus. James established the nexus between religious and mystical experience, and integrated psychical experience with human spiritual quest. James ignored the unscientific pretensions of scientism and positivism, where religion was relegated to oblivion as a non-empirical entity. James from the glory and strength of a resounding scholarship demonstrated and affirmed the validity of reason, and justification of rationalism for the scientific study of human religious experience. Since then Varieties has remained a memorable point of reference in the scientific study of psychology and religion. This study is a re-examination of the fundamental presuppositions of the Varieties especially, its relevance in contemporary psychological study of religion.
KEYWORDS: Psychology, William James, Religion
RE-IMAGINING JAMESONIAN PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
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