Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Alistair Hardy - RERU/RERC
- What?
- Centre that focusses on the nature of
contemporary religious expereicne.
- Founded in 1969 in Manchester College
Oxford but moved to Lampeter
- Publishes books, articles, papers, reports and
explores the nature of inner religious experience.
- Statistics
- In 1979, they had over 3000
accounts of religious experience, in
2006 this had doubled to over 6000,
therefore demonstrating the
frequency of religious experience.
- it is mostly the middle aged and elderly
who have such experiences - links to
Durkheim and the notion of 'life crises'
- Impact of RERU
- Builds academic knowledge
- Induces an act of faith, "ask and it shall be given,
seek and it shall be found" (Luke 11:9)
- Qualitative, subjective research into a
transcendental reality that stimulates a
sense of 'something other'
- Represents individualism
and Westernisation
- "The Spiritual Nature of Man" - BOOK
- Published in 1979
- "Religion is another dimension that changes and alters behaviour"
- Four fold
- 1. Body of Knowledge from first hand
accounts of experiences.
- 2. Patterns of the reports
- 3. Quantitative studies
- 4. Tentative conclusions
- Roger Tagholm (Guardian, 2009)
- RERU is currently lead by Paul Badham
- Its easy to dismiss experiences as a product of the
human psyche however it is likely that they are
credible. Links to Swinburne's Principle of Credulity
- Critique
- Judeo-Chrisitan/Western Bias
- Ignores Eastern Religious expereince
- However, expereinece is arguably a Western
phenomenon
- Temple Foundation
- Provided a grant to RERU in order
to explore a global religious
experience phenomenon, in China =
Buddhist origin- recognizes the
interconnectedness of religious
experience.