essay about my experience with god in a sacred place

My Personal Experience Of God Essay Example

My cup of gladness is most full when I am helping people become more aware of God’s presence in their lives to fulfil their calling. This might happen in the context of leading a traditional worship service, preaching a sermon, mentoring, teaching or facilitating a prayer group. But just as often, encountering God happens in the ordinary, everyday, mundane tasks and activities of life. Becoming aware of God’s presence in our lives is a lifelong exercise in learning to see.

From an early age, when I accepted Christ as Savior, I had a strong sense that my life would be about Jesus. I believe that was God’s first call (small c) on my life—to follow him. As I grew in my faith, there was a growing awareness within that God was Calling (capital C) me into much more. Throughout different seasons in life, I can recall several godly people who affirmed this in me.

At a young age I have felt irresistibly drawn to God. As a child, I was compelled to read my Bible and pray every day—and I did with little or no understanding why or how it should be done. My journey to this revelation was long and filled with great struggles. I recall having dreams from five years, they would speak to the cause of current issues within the family, events to come (all manifested) and a great part of my dreams were related to now known: spiritual warfare.  Surprisingly, I was somehow able to understand their meanings and help other interpret their dreams.  At times, I would speak things and they would come to past. Strong instincts to persons motives: discernment.  As a result of these unexplainable abilities, I struggled with rejection and strong attacks both physically and spiritually from those operating under the Jezebel spirit from many including persons with the body of Christ.  I remember wondering how God intended to use such a variety of seemingly strange and unrelated experiences to direct my path. When things got hard, I mean really hard, I felt disillusioned and disqualified. Little did I realize he was doing much more than leading me to a role or destination. God was (and still is) radically transforming and preparing me to be able to recognize and fulfill what he has called me to.

I recalled attending many services where I would be identified from the congregation and prophesied to in relation to my calling which stood as confirmation to dreams and visions received prior to these meetings. A pivotal point in my life was when I began to recognize that God’s purpose for me was so much more about my identity in Christ rather than what I was happening. Embracing this reality has brought incredible freedom. Don’t get me wrong, this continues to be a process—but one filled with much more joy and less frustration. Now that I am older, and hopefully a bit wiser, I can connect the dots and am often stunned by God’s wisdom, patience and redemptive power.

By the age of twenty-one years, I was convinced that I was called to ministry. It was a Thursday evening, sitting in the backyard conversing with God while admiring the birds flying around and the ants hustling with food to their nest. I recalled hearing the audible voice of God calling me. I looked around, no one was there, I heard it again, I began to denounce the spirit, which was my conclusion of such sound. Then, I heard the voice say, “I am your God, whom you are speaking with, fear not” Fear, immediately disappeared and I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and joy at the same time. He added, “I have chosen you; you are anointed for great work in my kingdom.” I immediately wrote the words down and pondered on them, researching the possible meaning through the scriptures. It did not happen overnight. I began studying the lives of Joseph, David and Moses to name a few as to how they served. 

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Sophie Ahava; Nicholas Buccella; and Olivia Mason-Lucas

A space by itself is not inherently sacred. Individual beliefs enhance the feelings and actions that occur within places, making some spaces more sacred than others. People develop certain feelings about spaces that are not always universal; these can be individually tailored sentiments that are ever-changing and differ between people and their beliefs. “The Power of Human Experience Within Sacred Space” chapter with explore how sacred space involves both emotional and physical attachment and. Without these elements, anything could be seen as sacred to anyone, which ultimately means nothing would be sacred.

The personal experience is a critical component of religious expression and serves to make space sacred. Ritual performances, evoked emotion, and the physical body act as mediums and allow space to be perceived as sacred. “A Building is Just A Building,” written by Sophie Ahava, will focus on how the actions, feelings, and performance within spaces contribute to its sacredness. Through the way people dress and move their bodies in religious spaces, to prayers said, to the feelings that are evoked, and the rituals performed, all of these factors help to form sacred space and differ among the individual as well as the religion.

The lives of humans are characterized by nonverbal interactions with living things and inanimate objects. Manufactured environments within sacred spaces are constructed with the purpose of influencing the behavior of those within it, thus resulting in performative actions. While these are influenced by personal experiences, religion and the environment, each individual will experience and attach meaning to spaces differently. “Sacred Space As a Stage,” written by Olivia Mason-Lucas, explores the boundaries between space, personal experience, and design. The intersection of these concepts accounts for the similar and differing interpretations of sacred space as they present themselves within the context of faith-based and secular societies.

The use, influence, power, and placement of sacred space have been consistent elements of religion and communities throughout time. The human experience and interaction with sacred space has always been an observable trait of mortal history. There is a mutual exchange between sacred spaces and the humans that inhabit them. The research in “The Influence and Power of Sacred Space,” written by Nicholas Buccella, delves into the interactions and powers of space and what makes it sacred, realizing that not only religious spaces that can be seen as sacred. The ways in which humans interact with space in recent history and what this lends to modern experiences with spaces are integral points to raise when looking at the sacredness of space.

Religious expression culminates within sacred space, which legitimizes the meaning assigned as it pertains to individuals and groups and thus differs among them. Behaviors in spaces that are not seen as sacred provoke feelings that are just associated to the surrounding elements. However, when religion is introduced, the performance manifests as a ritual based on norms, whether societal or spiritual and creates a supernatural element beyond everyday routines. Sacralization of space can be achieved in many aspects and differs among the individual and this chapter will explore the elements that help define sacred space. Actions that are carried out, emotions evoked, architectural designs, geography, and personal experience all combine to make a space sacred.

A Building is Just a Building

By sophie ahava.

Sacred space encompasses religions all over the world. However, attention seems to always be focused on the physical buildings and places themselves rather than what happens within those spaces. A building is just a structure; what happens within certain spaces is what can determine its sacredness. The personal experience is a critical component of religious expression and serves to make space sacred. The body, mind, and ritual performance all contribute to the sacredness of a space. An individual’s body is what physically enters a space, the mind and soul controls the emotions to one’s feelings about the space, and ritual and performance adds meaning to the space. The body can be presented in different ways that add to the sacredness of space. Sacredness can be explored in many different aspects. Ritualistic actions, community, clothing, movement, power of mind and prayer, and emotions a space evokes for an individual all provide a sense of sacredness that a space alone, lacking these elements, could not provide.

Sacredness can have different meanings for different people. A general definition from Wikipedia states that, “sacred means revered due to sanctity and is generally the state of being perceived by religious individuals as associated with divinity and considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion.” (“Sacred,” 2018). For something to be sacred, it does not necessarily need to be associated with a building. As long as it connects to the divine than that is all something needs. A space can only become sacred if the people in the space believe it to be so. Gillian Rose, a geographer of religion states that, “Places are not only a medium, but also an outcome of action, producing and being produced through human practice” and that sacred space depends on the people that use that space (Rose, 2010). In most religions, sacred space is more about the actions that take forth and who occupies that space rather than the area itself. Roger Stump, author of The Geography of Religion: Faith, Place, and Space, believes, “through [a person’s] experiences of and within sacred space, the believer can fully assimilate the basic motivations, expectations, and emotions associated with living their religion” (Stump, 2008). In other words, religions are about the people more so than the space. Stump continues to say that “the importance of sacred space in a religion’s worldview derives from its role as the setting for various forms of interaction between the human and the superhuman realms” (Stump, 2008). No matter where the space is, social interactions between people who believe in the same ideas of divinity create a sacredness within space. Roy Rappaport wrote Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity and is known for studying the anthropology of ritual. Rappaport contributes by saying, “ sanctity by this account is a property of religious discourse and not of the objects sanctified in or by that discourse” (Rappaport, 2010). Sacred space is determined by the way people carry out the religion, not necessarily the physical objects within a space where the religion is practiced. In Everywhere You Are Is Sacred Space, author Donna Labermeier asks questions regarding if “sacred space is really confined to a particular space that each of us has to go to in order to feel centered and peaceful” (Labermeier, 2014). People can be religious and feel a sense of sacredness before even entering a specific space. That feeling can be translated and brought within a space, intensifying the sacredness. In short, sacred space can be seen in many different ways, but what differentiates an ordinary space from one more sacred is the people in the space and the actions that take forth there.

Ritual performance significantly influences the sacralization of spaces. Lily Kong, an expert geographer of religion, advocates that people “need to discover individuality of personal religious experience as well as the social and material relations pertinent to that experience” (Kong, 1993). Places provide a space for religious communities to congregate and can provoke different emotions, but they are also the space where religious rituals take place which can intensify the sacredness of the space. Rabbi Sara Mason-Barkin teaches that in Judaism, “all of this becomes beautiful when we enter: each of us who is made holy by our daily choices that are inspired by the Torah and the community…a prayer goes forth from each soul” (Mason-Barkin, 2010). The action of prayer that occurs within Jewish synagogues amplifies the sacred feeling of the space, as does the community gathering in which it happens. The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, in Jerusalem is also an example of ritual performance that helps serve to make a space sacred. Not everyone reveres the Wailing Wall as sacred, but for Jews it is one of the holiest, most sacred sites within the religion. People place personal notes that consist of prayers and dreams that they hope God will hear. The Western Wall is a place Jews can go to feel closer to God and the actions that take place there allow this to happen. Other religions have rituals as well that contribute to the sacredness of space. For example, Stump explains how “prayer, baptism, and fasting…all manifest explicit intersections between body, space, and belief” (Stump, 2008). Space can be transformed by the actions that take place there. In the textbook, Geography of Religion: Where God Lives, Where Pilgrims Walk, many denominations of Christianity, baptism can occur in any body of water, whether it be a religious pool or the open ocean (Hitchcock, 2012). The act of baptism can allow any space to be sacred, no matter where the ceremony takes place, and allows Christians to be close to God and Jesus Christ anywhere this ritual takes place. Hinduism also finds sacredness within water, more specifically the Ganges River. The Ganges River in India is not seen as a universal sacred place, in fact it is severely polluted due to environmental factors; yet this is one of the holiest places for Hindus. According to Stump, “water from the Ganges has the power to heal and purify the living and the river itself represents an important site for cremation and disposal of the dead” (Stump, 2008). The rituals that are performed within the Hindu faith help create the sacredness that is associated with the Ganges. Additionally, there are rituals within Islam that take place at specific places. Mecca, for example, is revered as one of the holiest cities within Islam, but it is seen as an ordinary city to outsiders of the religion. One of the five pillars of Islam consists of the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Those who take the pilgrimage engage in specific ritual performances that intensify the sacredness associated with the city. Those who take the Pilgrimage engage in the same rituals that Sarah did in ancient biblical times which serves to make the space in which these rituals occur, sacred. In addition, tragedy serves to make space sacred. Certain events can turn an ordinary space into something others find intense meaning in. After September 11, 2001, the area where the Twin Towers in New York City stood is now memorialized and remembered. The space became sacred after being associated with a tragic event. Memorials can cause once ordinary spaces to become sacred due to the events that occurred there. Space is not sacred by association of just being space; the actions and performances that occur in these places serve to make the space sacred.

The physical human body and sense of community are important in many religions and major contributors in what makes space sacred. Stump understands that, “the body provides an essential medium for articulating the religious character of self, through dress, ornamentation, and other aspects of personal experience” (Stump, 2008). In other words, the human body helps serve to make space sacred through individual’s physical beliefs, clothing, and way the body moves within religion. In an essay written by Stephanie Are it is believed that, “incandescent body connects to and with the world and the other, unifying the human and the divine” (Arel, 2014).  An individual is the one who connects directly to the supernatural, and a space can provide that medium, but ultimately the feeling of sacredness comes from within. A sacred place is not going to be sacred to everyone, but it is sacred to those who connect within the space to get closer to the supernatural. The body is revered as sacred in many religions and when a person enters a space, that space can become sacred as well. OB Frothingham, author of The Sacredness of the Body, states that, “religion concerns primarily the body” (Frothingham, 2018). Individuals with the same belief system make up a religious community and the space in which the religious community congregates becomes sacred due to its association with the divinity and beliefs of the religion’s followers. Many religions have a strong emphasis on community gathering and believe sacred space comes from the people that make up a space. In Christianity, it is believed that, “a building with no worshipers cannot really be a church in the biblical sense” (United Church of God, 2011). A church is more about the people that gather in it than the building itself.  Within Islam, “Muslim jurists recognized that human beings are guaranteed universal rights by default…the most important of which is the right to life” (Elias, 2015). One can then infer that the body of an individual is much more sacred than a space itself in Islam. Abu Amina Elias pursues Islamic studies at University of Wales and continues to say, “every human life is sacred in Islam and every person has been granted God-given fundamental and universal rights at birth,” regardless of being Muslim or not (Elias, 2015). Sacred space is useful within religions, but it would not exist unless the people within that religion congregated to continue their worshipping beliefs as a community. Judaism is another religion that generates a focus on community. From the beginnings of the religion, Jews have been forced to move around due to prosecution. Judaism is still prominent today due to its focus on community; for a long time, the people were the temple. In other words, and place could become sacred so long as there was a community of people to gather there. MJL Staff, a Jewish author, explains how “Judaism offers an optimistic view on life, the union of body and soul” and how “The body is a gift from God to be protected and tended” (Staff, 2002). Emphasis on the personal individual that makes up this religion is important to acknowledge because each body is uniquely sacred within Judaism. The physical gathering of people within a specific space creates a sense of sacredness.

Clothing and religious dress influence the sacredness of a place. Clothes can allow an individual to feel closer to their religious practice which in turn makes them feel closer to the higher power in which they are worshipping. In both Islam and Christianity there are religious ceremonies in which an individual wears white. White is worn during the Hajj for followers of Islam and during baptism for Christians (Stump, 2008). The feeling of innocence and purification the white garments represent allow a space in which they are worn to feel special. In Judaism, a head piece called a kippah, or yamaka, is worn within the synagogue “as a sign of respect to God and as a reminder that their worldly existence lies below the greater divine presence” (Stump, 2008). Some sects of Judaism even require men to wear the kippah at all times, no matter the space, implying that no matter where a person is, God is present. This signifies the idea that the person within a space is more important than the space itself because God can be found anywhere. Clothing adds meaning to space and allow certain spaces to be more sacred than others.

Movement within space also contributes to its sacredness. Dancing is a motion that uses one’s body to get closer to the divine. Certain religions like Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, use the individual body to get closer to God through dance. Taoist Tai Chi also emphasizes the movement of body in sacred space. Dr. Caitie Finlayson, a successful geographer and professor at University of Mary Washington, states that “Tai Chi is meant to be flowing, in harmony with nature” (Finlayson, 2012). Participating in Tai Chi can allow one’s body to further connect to the space being occupied, causing it to have this feeling of sacredness. WOE Oesterley, an English theologian, explains “the origin of sacred dance was the desire of early man to imitate what he conceived to be the characteristic of the supernatural powers” (Oesterley, 2016). Since sacred space is associated with the divine, allowing one’s body to engage in dance can permit someone to get close to God anywhere. The idea that an individual’s physical body can be used to get closer to the supernatural serves to make any space sacred.

The mind and soul are focuses within certain religions and allow the space in which the individual occupies to be sacred. Through personal experiences, any space can become sacred. Buddhism is a major religion that directs a lot of its teachings to the individual mind. Tenzin Legtsok, and American monk, argues “that nothing exists inherently or totally independent of other things, from its own side,” therefore space and the individual in that space correlate to one another (Legtsok, 2015). Without individual’s beliefs about a space, an area will just be seen for what it is, plain and simple, with no real emotional attachment. The power of prayer within religions also help to create sacredness within spaces. Labermeier believes “having a close connection to one’s soul, not just one’s physicality” is critical (Labermeier, 2018). Prayer can make one’s mind change about the space someone occupies. In Buddhism, it is understood that “the power of prayer or aspiration is one of many qualities of the wisdom of truth body” and helps to focus the thoughts of individuals within a certain space (Legtsok, 2015). Prayer can be practiced anywhere and it can allow a person to look inward on themselves and practice their religion constantly no matter the location. The worship and prayer that exists within religious buildings helps to intensify the sacredness of those spaces in the sense that prayer brings individuals closer to divinity. Tai Chi along with Yoga are also religiously focused on the mind and soul within spaces. In Finlayson’s Spaces of Faith article, she talks about how there is a spatial context within which emotional and religious experiences occurs and that affective experiences are a critical faucet of lived religious experience (Finlayson, 2012). People’s individual emotion and perceptions of spaces is what makes that space sacred. The gardens within the Tai Chi religion cause people to feel like they are in a sacred place, outside of reality. People elicit different emotions within different spaces and that is going to change based on religion and individual beliefs of the space. Ultimately space becomes sacred when it evokes certain emotions within individual’s minds. For author and yoga instructor, Natalia Karoway, “[she] always invites spirits into [her] sacred space…of mother earth, the sun, moon and stars” (Karoway, 2018). Karoway teaches mindfulness through yoga, which does not pertain to a god necessarily, but more so to the feelings one has about the space they take up in this world. Sacred space is determined by individuals feelings about an area within their mind and soul.

Religious expression is dependent on individual experience and crucial for creating a sacred space. There are many factors that influence the sacredness of space and by accepting the body, mind, and ritual performance within religions, sacred space can be acknowledged. Karoway believes “sacred space does not need to be limited to the confines of certain places. No matter where we are in any moment, we can create a sacred setting to perform the work of the soul” (Karoway, 2018). In reality, any space no matter where it is can become sacred as long as there is a connection to the divinity or high power. Actions and performances that occur within space give it meaning and purpose. The processes that take place within a building or area create sacredness due to the meaning and intentions to get closer to God or a  higher power. The clothing someone wears within spaces can help differentiate a sacred space from one that’s ordinary. Dancing and the way one moves their body within space can bring someone closer to the supernatural elements within space. The way space can affect the mind and evoke different emotions for every individual allows sacredness to transcend into that place. Not every space is sacred universally, but that is what makes religion unique. If everything was inherently and universally sacred, technically nothing would be sacred.Views on space, beliefs within certain religions, gatherings of people with similar values, inner thoughts within the mind, and physical performance and ritual action all serve to make space sacred. This may differ between religions, but ultimately these characteristics lead to the sacredness within space anywhere. A building is just a building until an individual comes along to add meaning to the space to make it sacred.

Works Cited

Arel, Stephanie. “Reading The Road with Paul Ricoeur and Julia Kristeva: The Human Body as a Sacred Connection.” Text Matter, no. 4 (2014). 99-115.

Buttimer, Anne. “Afterword: Reflections on Geography, Religion, and Belief Systems.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96, no. 1 (2006): 197-202. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00509.x.

Elias, Abu Amina. “All Human Life is Sacred in Islam.” Faith in Allah. September 30, 2015. https://abuaminaelias.com/all-human-life-is-sacred-in-islam/ .

Finlayson, Caitlin Cihak. “Spaces of Faith: Incorporating Emotion and Spirituality in Geographic Studies.” Environment and Planning A 44, no. 7 (2012): 1763-778. doi:10.1068/a44580.

Frothingham, OB. “The Sacredness of the Body.” Herald of Health (1867) : 1-5. Accessed March 19, 2018. file:///Users/home/Downloads/reasearch%20source%201.pdf.

Hitchcock, Susan Tyler., and John L. Esposito. Geography of Religion: Where God Lives, Where Pilgrims Walk . Washington, D.C.: National Geographic (printed for Barnes & Noble,), 2012.

Legtsok, Tenzin. “How Do Holy Objects Work?” fpmt. 2015. https://fpmt.org/mandala/online-features/how-do-holy-objects-work/ .

Karoway, Natalia. “Defining Sacred Space.” Teach.Yoga. 2018. https://teach.yoga/defining-sacred-space/ .

Kong, Lily. “Negotiating Conceptions of Sacred Space: A Case Study of Religious Buildings in Singapore.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18, no. 3 (1993): 342. doi:10.2307/622464.

Labermeier, Donna. “Everywhere You Are Is Sacred Space.” Huffington Post . Oath Inc. February 13, 2014. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-labermeier/sacred-space_b_4415078.htm .

Mason-Barkin, Sara. Rabbis in Relationship: A Feminist Critique of The Rabbi as a Symbolic Exemplar . 2010.

Oesterley, W. O. E. Sacred Dance: A Study in Comparative Folklore . Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 2016.

Rappaport, Roy A. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity . Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010.

Rose, Gillian, Monica Degen, and Begum Basdas. “More on ‘big Things’: Building Events and Feelings.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35, no. 3 (2010): 334-49. doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2010.00388.x.

“Sacred,” Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sacred&oldid=831507352 (accessed March 22, 2018).

Staff, MJL. “Body and Soul.” My Jewish Learning. 2002-2018. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/body-soul/ .

Stump, Roger W. The Geography of Religion Faith, Place, and Space . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

United Church of God. “The Church Is Not The Building.” United Church of God. February 23, 2011. Accessed April 03, 2018. https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/bible-study-course/bible-study-course-lesson-10/the-church-is-not-the-building .

Influence and Power of Sacred Space

By nicholas buccella.

The use, influence, power, and placement of sacred space has always been a constant element of religion and communities throughout human history and across the world. This paper will explore the rich history of sacred space and how we as humans have utilized and made sacred space a constant theme in our daily lives. To display the ways in which humans have affected sacred space and how it in turn has affected us, I will delve into the history of sacred space itself. Where it really began, how it became what it is today, and how we perceive sacred space as individuals. Sacred space is an integral part of society even today, although a good number of people are not aware of this. Whether it be the church down the road or a personal favorite coffee shop, sacred space takes on many different and numerous forms that are often over looked in the study of space itself. Looking deeper and analyzing the beginning of sacred spaces and connecting the dots to the modern world, the connections become clear to how our everyday lives are affected by sacred space, no matter how small or large, it is almost always there. Those are the dots that this paper will connect, the past and present of sacred space and how it has played into human history and into individual lives.

One of the most difficult issues when dealing with sacred space is defining what a sacred space is. There is no real clear cut definition of what exactly a sacred space could be, but a good starting point is that, “A sacred place is first of all a defined place, a space distinguished from other spaces”(Thomson). Meaning that a sacred place is just a place that is different in some way than any normal place. This is where the definition gets a little tricky. Going off the assumption that a sacred space is just a space that is different from others, that means that anything could be sacred based on who is interacting with that particular area. This helps us understand why the exact definition of a sacred space is very difficult to get right, is because it could vary drastically from person to person.

The history of sacred spaces is as old as human history itself. There has always been some form of sacred space that humans have always gathered around or revered in a special way. Looking at the early Abrahamic religions, sacred space held an important precedence over the followers of religion and how they lived their lives. The easiest and most prominent example of important sacred space in the Abrahamic religions is Jerusalem. This city holds extremely important sites and spaces that involve Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. There are many sites to examine within the city of Jerusalem, many of which are only sacred to certain groups of religious followers. This once again begs the question of what makes something sacred or special? Reverend Samuel G. Candler of the St. Philip Cathedral explains it like this, “I think of awesome places outside our comfortable homes that we call holy. Wide beaches, where our eye meets the mystery of the horizon. Mountain views, where the clouds move constantly into new and mesmerizing configurations. And, of course, I think of churches.”(Candler) This is obviously a Christian point of view on the matter but I think it sheds some light on the question of what is sacred, and expands sacredness to the whole world. Mainly nature and like the Reverend pointed out, churches. Within Jerusalem one of, if not the holiest sites for Christianity sits in the old section of the city. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a church within Jerusalem that contains “the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus of Nazareth was crucified,[2] at a place known as “Calvary” or “Golgotha”, and Jesus’s empty tomb, where he is said to have been buried and resurrected.”(Wikipedia). The Church is where the figure head of one of the world most prominent religions is said to have resurrected, imagine being a follower at the time this event is said to have taken place. The sway this must have had over the people of Christianity at the time is immense. The history of this sacred space is a testament to how space influences humanity and how we interact with the world around us. This church has stood since the founding of Christianity and has maintained a status that few places ever acquire, it has attained almost a state of timelessness. Remaining almost exactly how it was when Jesus was crucified at the site, is a display of how sacred space is maintained and revered by humans. The space has been cared for and protected for thousands of years. Protected because it is seen as sacred. It has a level of significance that is almost awe inspiring because of its trait of timelessness. This is a trait of almost any historical sacred space anywhere in the world. Being that timelessness is such an important element in the history of sacred space it is easy to see that, “ One of the most important things about any sacred space is the way in which it transcends our normal sense of time, and by that I don’t mean that it has no connection to a time, but only that shows us with absolute clarity what the meaning of the word “timeless” is.”(Goldberger) timelessness could also be connected to spirituality of a space as well because most sacred spaces “all share at least one common quality: an intense spirituality that makes them special”(The Gale Group) I find the play between time and spirituality very interesting. Throughout history it has seemed that the more time that passes the more holier historical sites get. With garnered holiness comes more sway over the people of that faith. This has been the model for almost all historical sacred space throughout human history. Like Stonehenge being one of the oldest sites in the world, it was a sacred space to the people who built it and with time it has garnered more importance and spirituality. The same with important religious sites in the Middle East and in Europe. The more time that a sacred space exists the more it is respected and the more people connect with it spiritually. This is the history of all sacred spaces around  the globe because spirituality and time transcend borders and races as well as religions themselves. These spaces are anointed and revered for the feelings they evoke in followers and that is why the history of sacred spaces is so easy to track and understand, is because of the timelessness they hold.

From the history of sacred space comes the placement of sacred space and the power it emits in the lives of humans across the world. The placement of spaces that individuals hold sacred speaks to the importance these places hold for humans. For the followers of certain religions the placement of sacred spaces varies drastically, whether it may be the church at the center of town or a Buddhist monastery high in the Tibetan mountains, they all carry a certain weight of importance upon the followers of that religion. A sacred space is not always linked to a religion either, a non religious person could feel that a certain mountain or waterfall is sacred. These spaces in nature and the spaces created by man are sacred because of the emotions they evoke in the followers who visit. I would argue there is a sizable difference between a religious sacred space and a natural space that is held as sacred to a few individuals that see it that way. The context of a religious space has the element of the divine deity or divine power within a space. Looking again at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the element of the divine and its hold over the followers of Christianity is very evident. This is relevant because, “It may be argued that most of the world’s religions — from the most ‘primitive’ to the most highly developed — were established through manifestations of the sacred. It is of vital importance to religion that the manifestation is perceived not as generated by the beholder but as the purposeful revelation of god (or some lesser deity or saint) to the mortal beholder”(Witcombe)Within the space of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre it is said that Jesus rose from the dead out of a tomb. This makes that area practically ooze with divine power and would most likely make the experience of that space extremely sacred. The placement of these spaces is very important to understand the power that they emit into the world. In medieval times churches of the Christian faiths were the centerpiece of towns and more often than not the first real part of a town that is permanently built. This is because of the devotion followers shared for not only their religion but also to the sacred spaces their religion demands. In small villages these churches might have been the first things built but they were often not very striking or imposing. They were meant more as a community gathering place for worship and for important governing decisions. Everything was done through the churches. When the Christian faith grew more and more there were bigger and bigger churches constructed solely for the purpose of displaying the grand power of the church. In Europe “The cathedrals and former monastery churches are much larger than needed for the local population.”(Spanswick) for the express purpose of making the church goers feel the power of the space they were occupying and appreciate their god. This is true with most famous churches throughout the world that are well known. Most churches that are well known are known because of how immense they are. There was never a need for a church the size of three football fields, except for the purpose of displaying divine power. The power being displayed is not always a negative, people often draw happiness and personal power from religious spaces that emit divine power. The power of their sacred space often boosts their own personal power making the day or week easier to manage. This is also true of non religious sacred space. Non religious people and even religious people have sacred spaces that do not have to do with a religion. As the exact definition of sacred space is difficult to express, a clear consensus among the Geographers of Religion is that a sacred space is any space that makes an individual feel a sense of peace or spirituality. This leads to many non-traditional sacred spaces. Like I had mentioned earlier in this paper, that any space could be sacred depending on the individual viewing it, like maybe the coffee shop that is an individuals sacred space to escape reality and feel at peace. If that is the case then there would be sacred places everywhere for that individual as that is where they feel their peace. Whether religious or not, a space where one draws emotional and mental power can be regarded as sacred, along with the placement of the space and how it influences the individuals that regard it as sacred.

This takes us to the present day where the element of sacredness seems to be forgotten in most areas. I would argue that this is not the case. As the world seems to become more secular it would be logical to assume that sacred space would go out the door with religion. I find that this is not correct. In our modern world where everything is changing rapidly and there is a new scientific discovery every other day, sacred space has changed and evolved as well. With change comes criticism and approval. Michael Foster writes in the Interfaith Journal on Religion, Art, and Architecture that,

“Sadly the role of sacred spaces has gone the way of big box retail, with the mega-church model moving congregations to large suburban parking lots far from the vibrant urban fabric. Much-needed renovations of existing churches, synagogues, and mosques in urban areas are challenged by changing demographics and are often deferred indefinitely, until the buildings become obsolete or abandoned. Many are lost to redevelopment, and others are at risk of deterioration beyond the point of feasible renovation.”(Foster)

I do agree with Foster that for the Christian faith the mega churches have a way of taking the sacred and turning it into more of a show than a church. Although it does depend on the people within these mega churches as well. If the large number of people who attend these mega churches find the area or congregation sacred, than who are we to judge what they see as sacred? This is a fundamental issue with the modern perspective on sacred spaces and how we analyze them. When thinking of a sacred space we usually assume a small church or comfortable space that holds and importance, not a giant stadium with 15,000 church goers. The temptation to say that these aren’t sacred spaces is very strong as they do not fit in the narrative of traditional sacred space. Yet they are, or could be, because of the evolution of sacred space in our modern era. The point that foster makes about the decaying and demolished sacred sites is valid as well. Many urban areas upscale to more modern standards and the older spaces are either forgotten or have to be preserved, which can be extremely costly, especially to a nonprofit church. This is a issue that more and more religious denominations must deal with in order to survive in urban areas.

While the shift away from religion seems to just be beginning, it is still significant in this changing world. In America, “The percentage of adults who describe themselves as “religiously affiliated” has shrunk 6 points since 2007, from 83 percent to 77 percent.”(Gjelten). So it becomes very apparent why the major religious groups would be worried about this shift. The spaces that have been held as sacred for generations might be forgotten in another hundred years as religion is left behind by more people. This comes back to the point that not all spaces that are sacred have to do with religion. Speaking for myself I find the most sacred place to me to be at the top of a mountain. The peace I feel within myself at the summit of a hike is one of the most sacred things I can describe and it has nothing to do with religion. This is the mindset of many people in more recent generations. Many factors can go into the reason as to why this is happening but I think it mainly has to do with the advancement of science and younger people wanting to be free from the constraints of organized religion. The mindset of younger people in todays world is more how to please oneself and discover who you are, rather than learn who god is and devote time to the church. With this comes a whole new swath of sacred spaces. While mine is the top of Old Rag Mountain, the student sitting next to could name the Starbucks next to campus as their sacred space because of the peace they feel their. And while that Starbucks may be their sacred space today, in a couple of years their definition of sacred space could have changed multiple times. This is the current state of sacred space today. It is ever changing and its definition will change from person to person.

To conclude I find the importance of sacred space has not diminished at all. The thing that has changed is what we consider to be sacred space. In the past there was a clear cut definition of what spaces could be seen as sacred, but in today’s world this definition of sacred space could be so vastly different depending on the person. I personally think this is magnificent. We as humans are no longer containing the sacredness of spaces to religions. We are exploring what sacredness is and where to find it. The fact that anything could be sacred is mind blowing and confusing at the same time, but I think that is why it works so well. The young people of the world are creative and free thinkers, always thinking outside the box and innovating. Sacred space being affected by the new innovators of tomorrow is something everyone should be excited about, because as more space is defined as sacred or not, more things change and more ideas of the interpretations of the sacred are opened up. Nevertheless the sacred is a constant theme in our lives, even if we do not see it or think of it, the sacred is there. It has shaped us in the past and the sacred continues to shape us into the future as we shape the sacred as well.

Candler, Samuel. “What Makes a Place Sacred?” The Cathedral of St. Philip – Atlanta, GA, Cathedral Times, 28 Oct. 2012, www.stphilipscathedral.org/Sermons/what-makes-a-place-sacred/.

DeWitte, Debra. “Sacred Spaces.” Art History Teaching Resources, 23 Dec. 2016, arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/sacred-spaces/.

Edmonds III, Radcliffe. “Holy Places: Some Theorizations of Sacred Space.” Society for Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr College, classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/148/abstract/holy-places-some-theorizations-sacred-space.

Foster, Michael. “Sacred Space in the City: Adapting to the Urban Context.” Faith & Form, faithandform.com/feature/sacred-space-city-adapting-urban-context/.

Gjelten, Tom. “Poll Finds Americans, Especially Millennials, Moving Away From Religion.” NPR, NPR, 3 Nov. 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/03/454063182/poll-finds-americans-especially-millennials-moving-away-from-religion.

Goldberger, Paul. “LECTURES.” Paul Goldberger, Chautauqua Institution,  www.paulgoldberger.com/lectures/architecture-sacred-space-and-the-challenge-of-the-modern/ .

Scott, Michael. “Sacred Space in Greece and Rome.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion,19Oct.2017,religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-257.

Spanswick, Valerie. “Medieval Churches: Sources and Forms.” Khan Academy,  www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval world/romanesque1/a/medieval-churches-sources-and-forms .

The Gale Group, Inc. “Sacred Places.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Encyclopedia.com, 2018, www.encyclopedia.com/history/latin-america-and-caribbean/cuban-history/sacred-places .

Thomson Gale. “Sacred Space.” Encyclopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia.com, 2018,  www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sacred-space .

Witcombe, Christopher L. C. E. “SACREDNESS.” Sacred Places: Sacredness, witcombe.sbc.edu/sacredplaces/sacredness.html.

Wikipedia, “Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre.

Ziettlow, Rev. Amy. “Creating Sacred Space in Life and Death.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 10 Mar. 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-amy-ziettlow/creating-sacred-space-in-_b_831544.html .

Sacred Space As a Stage

By olivia mason-lucas.

Behaviors within all spaces are not mere products of the individual’s personal feelings, perspectives, and experiences. The individual projects these factors onto their environment and the environment reciprocates. The design and architectural choices made by the overseer of the project made a choice predating the individuals that visit it; at one point in time, someone decided how they wanted the space to feel. This sense of ‘feeling’ can be positive or negative, empowering or humbling. The human experience is largely based on communication, both with other living beings and inanimate objects. When one acts in the presence of others in a space designated for a specific purpose, such as worship, it can be qualified as a type of performance that’s a product of multiple factors. Behavior is influenced by personal sentiments, the structure and design itself, and a combination of the two. Architecture as well as structural choices impact one’s feelings about any given space, which creates a manufactured response, or a performance, in reaction to the given stimuli. In the realm of sacred spaces, special attention is given to the intended meaning of each choice made by the designer and architect, and what the end result means for the structure it produces.

Dynamic Nature of Spaces and Individuals

The idea of spaces as living entities will guide this discussion along. Spaces are comprised of three components: the physical makeup, the perceived, and the intended. Any of these three concepts can influence the way one experiences space, and oftentimes, all of them do. Due to the unique interpretation and perspective each person posesses, everyone will experience an environment differently. (Goleman 1987) Architecture, therefore, is not static as it is thought to be; surely, the structure itself may never change but that’s only one aspect. The environment is a chimera, or a shapeshifter, due to its tendency to represent and evoke different emotions and experiences in individuals. “[T]here are links between the design of the built environment and our behavior, both individually and socially. (Lockton 2011)” Each person, in turn, has a different conversation with a space while they occupy it; the tone or type of conversation is in no way obligated to be the same as they return, either. The interaction is constantly changing. Despite the tendency of humans to view themselves in one distinct way over long periods of time, they are dynamic creatures. It is only natural to assume that the are constantly learning, growing, and changing.

While this is maintained, it is necessary to note how familiarity changes interpretation of space. As people become more intimate with sacred spaces, they tend to only notice the same things over and over, as opposed to an outsider noticing everything for the first time.

Architectural Choices and Space

The architect of a space employs extreme privilege and influence in their ability to determine how a space looks and the feelings they want it to evoke. These choices lay the foundation for experiences within all spaces, even those considered sacred. Moods and feelings can be created through decisions concerning lighting, designation of space, color, and imagery. Architecture, in a way, encompasses the field of design. It concerns itself with the “technical, artistic, and social. (Architecture/Introduction 2018)” A great deal of the work goes into how what’s done will be received by those who will inhabit or view the space.  “[A]rchitecture is a technology increasingly deployed in order to encourage certain behaviours in human populations. (Rose, Degen and Basdas 2010)” This engineered environment sets the stage, literally, for reactions to it. This performative element can be subtle or distinct.

Large, open spaces are used to convey a feeling of insignificance, a feeling generally experienced in natural spaces, such as on beaches and mountains. The feeling of insignificance is difficult to replicate as size and the cost of land on which to place a grand structure can be either unrealistic or costly. In the same approach, small spaces create a sense of intimacy that is otherwise ignored or overlooked in other spaces. Despite the great influence of architectural choices, some interpretation can be limited due to lack of attention to design choices or specific aspects of a space. (Rummel 1976) Since each person is socialized differently, they give importance to different objects that peak their interest and may act in the absence of the intended catalytic choice made by the architect. (Abdel Moneim Abdel Kader n.d.)

Sacred spaces garner their power by othering themselves from the spaces directly around them. This intentional juxtaposition heightens the meaning of the space. (Rose, Degen and Basdas 2010) It is not that they are particularly spectacular or special in design or makeup, but that they differ in size, shape, or appearance from structures around them.

While it’s maintained that sacred space is highly personal and subjective, certain structures can be identified as notable for qualities possessed that aren’t explicitly attributed to religion or are aesthetically pleasing. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC is the largest Roman Catholic Church in the United States and bears religious imagery on the outside of the structure.  

However, its importance can be attributed to a variety of factors concerning its location, orientation, and design. The church’s location in the nation’s capital lends to a perceived sense of sacredness due to the association of importance with the city as well as the feeling of citizens of the United States to feel particularly separated from the territory, spatially and emotionally. The idea of a capital city lends to these feelings: the space is seen as significantly more relevant than small towns within the country, attributed to history, centralization of industry and political interactions, and concentration of people. The Basilica is situated atop a hill, not only towering over surrounding structures, but occupying the entire space around it. Its material composition of light stone and stained class exude dominance over the side of the street it inhabits. Though it is surrounded by numerous religious institutions for higher education, it comes through as the most religious or sacred space in the area, if not the entire city or country.

Ford’s Theater, also in Washington, DC, possesses some aspects of sacredness that overlap with those of the Basilica. The theater has more widespread appeal due to what happens there: theatrical productions and educational tours. (Lincoln’s Assassination 2018) From the street, one can almost walk right past the esteemed site of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination; it blends right in with the background of the city. Though it is relevant in the modern day, its prominence stems from its identification as a site of a tragedy that led to a chain of events which follows through to today.

Sacredness, as it pertains to religious geography, is a culmination of the actions of people within a given space, the architectural choices that influence those rituals, and the meaning attached by people. As it boils down, sacredness is attributed to humans, whether their ideas, actions, or the results of both. While the importance of architecture and design choices on behavior are significant, the lack of both in disenfranchised areas creates a transition from focus on an engineered atmosphere to a raw environment that may lack the same attention to interpretation and impact. In these instances, the behavior exhibited by individuals becomes a product of the space, their experiences, as well as their imaginations. This is not to say that these experiences are wrong or less relevant, it is to say that behavioral responses to accidental or coincidental spaces exist and are brought about in the same way as those in structured spaces.

Behavior Within Spaces

Recognition of the fluid nature of places aids in acknowledgment of behavior within these spaces as performances. These actions are brought about by norms instilled, whether cultural, regional, or familial; interpretations of environments; and personal experiences. There are expectations in every space one enters, regardless of whether they are explicitly posted or stated. Environments such as museums warrant different behaviors than amusement parks do, but the same core beliefs play into both. One is expected to be respectful of others and the space, not harm others, and leave the environment as they encountered it, to some degree. As children, these baseline rules, along with others, are delivered to guide behavior. When in any space, one assesses their personal inventory of norms and rules then proceeds to apply them to their surroundings. (About Behavioral Analysis 2018) This type of behavioral analysis drives humanity forward. Unspoken sets of rules and norms of behavior are utilized inside of, and not limited to the surrounding area of, an important structure. The distinct separation between different places allows for this performance or lack thereof. It can be argued that any actions conducted around others are performative, but this does not negate their genuine nature.

With the idea that all forms of behavior are merely reactions to the given environment, identified as performances, those acted upon within spaces designated as sacred overlap with rituals. “We as humans do seem to have a mechanism for instantly recognizing that something is going on, and we have several models of what that specific event might be, though it may be difficult for one to verbalize if asked. (van Beek 2013)” Oftentimes, humans may recognize that they are acting differently than they would if they were outside on the street, yet either pay little to no attention to it or are not self-aware enough to pinpoint what exactly is happening to them. In sacred spaces, behavioral norms are some of the most intense and require countless things from visitors: quiet, respect, nice clothing, assembled appearance, lowered voices. In an exhibition of this idea in action, the conduct of classmates will be presented and analyzed while on a trip to The, aforementioned, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In the February of 2018, a Sacred Spaces class from the University of Mary Washington, located in Fredericksburg, Virginia, went on a field trip to The Basilica in DC. The class regularly engaged in class discussions where ideas were exchanged concerning journal articles and chapters. The students were very limited with what wasn’t acceptable within discussions and were genuinely themselves, with little to mask. It is important to note that not all of the students of the class were Catholic, or even parishioners of religion. Despite this reality, every member of the class presented themselves with various levels of business casual to “dressy” attire, due to the air of their destination.

When first stepping inside the doors, nobody made a sound. The sounds made were hushed and whispered; the main chapel of the church was void of people, save for the class. Technically, there was no reason to be quiet. Throughout the tour and navigation of the space, the classmates continued to whisper, only raising their voices to ask the guide questions. This trend continued through most of the structure, even the stairwells, and broke when the group encountered the cafeteria, located beneath the main chapel. In this space, they returned to their sociable selves. (Mason-Lucas 2018) While a participant in the phenomenon I was observing, I couldn’t figure out what made this space so different from literally every other one around it. I considered it the whole bus ride back to campus. As soon as we arrived, I figured it out; it was the designation of space that made a difference. Behavior is influenced by designation in addition to all of the aforementioned tenets.

The communicative nature of humans is important to note as individual behaviors are brought about partially by the actions of those around them. (Douglas 1966) Therefore, they may act as a collective, or in response to those around them. This idea serves to explain how classmates observed each other when unsure of how to proceed within the space. They looked to each other quite often and explored the area in groups or pairs, as opposed to individually.

Unique Sacred Spaces and Performance

Informal spaces that manifest as sacred are more common than one might think and are often heavily dependent on a mood or feeling to convey the intended response. Ghost tours and locations associated with the supernatural draw from generalized fears of the public. The tour guides go the extra mile to create an atmosphere representative of possibility and the selling point is whether participants buy into it or not. (Holloway 2010) In these informal, or vernacular, environments, it is easier for individuals to remove themselves from what they’re being confronted with because it is that much easier to recognize that they’re being confronted in the first place.

The genuine nature of actions exhibited by humans is not cheapened by the performance aspect. Life is constantly riddled with the free will versus fate debate and this discussion of influence determines that behavior within all spaces, especially sacred ones, are a combination of both. Rituals, as well as other religious acts, are characterized by the interactions among people and the space they inhabit. While it is generally accepted that people themselves are where sacredness originates, the behavior they exhibit supplements and magnifies it. Personal experiences and architectural choices shape actions within sacred spaces so each person walks away with distinct interpretations of what went on in that given environment. Sacred spaces are stages for more than those who are not skilled but are performers just the same.

Abdel Moneim Abdel Kader, Walid. n.d. Architecture and Human Behavior: Does Design Affect Our Senses?

About Behavioral Analysis.  2018. Accessed April 14, 2018. https://www.bacb.com/about-behavior-analysis/.

Architecture/Introduction.  2018. April 1. Accessed April 2, 2018. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Architecture/Introduction.

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York : Routledge.

Goleman, Daniel. 1987. “Each Sibling Experiences Different Family.” The New York Times , July 28.

Holloway, Julian. 2010. “Legend-tripping in spooky spaces: ghost tourism andinfrastructures of enchantment.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 618-637.

Lincoln’s Assassination.  2018. Accessed April 15, 2018. https://www.fords.org/lincolns-assassination/.

Lockton, Dan. 2011. Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review. September 12. Accessed March 20, 2018. http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2011/09/12/architecture-urbanism-design-and-behaviour-a-brief-review/.

Rose, Gillian, Monica Degen, and Begum Basdas. 2010. “More on ‘big things’: building events and feelings.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 334-349.

Rummel, R. J. 1976. “Social Behavior.” In The Conflict Helix , by R. J. Rummel. Accessed April 20, 2018. https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/TCH.CHAP9.HTM.

van Beek, Walter E. A. 2013. “Ritual and the Quest for Meaning.” By Our Rites of Worship: Latter-day Saint Views on Ritual in Scripture, History, and Practice 15-36.

Sacred Spaces: An Open Introduction to the Geographic Study of Religions and Belief Systems Copyright © by Sophie Ahava; Nicholas Buccella; and Olivia Mason-Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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February 27, 2022

Experiencing him in sacred places.

Written by Shana Schutte

“ Sacred places can be anywhere because God is everywhere.”

Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – February 27, 2022

Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5

Throughout the Bible, there are sacred places mentioned where God spoke to people, where angels were present, and where monuments were made to commemorate His faithfulness . . . places where God showed up.

God is present in people’s lives in sacred places today, too. When I recently considered where I have sensed God’s presence most, I thought about where I often hear Him: on a long car ride when I’m driving alone, hiking on a solitary mountain trail, or when I’m in my living room, face-down on the carpet.

God has been at work in my heart where I have given Him room to work, where I have moved into an empty, solitary, quiet place and made space for Him to speak so I can hear Him.

These moments in my favorite sacred places are decluttering moments when God sweeps away the debris that has been filling my heart and soul. These are righting or re-directing moments when He shows me what’s next or tells me where I need to change my attitude. These are revelatory moments filled with His love and fresh knowledge of His goodness.  Experiencing quiet, sacred places with Jesus is one of my favorite things about living life on planet earth. 

Sacred places can be anywhere because God is everywhere. The whole earth is full of his glory. 

When I lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado I used to often visit Garden of the Gods where I spent hours walking the trails, talking to the Lord. The more clutter, noise, sadness, or difficult emotions that were in my heart, the more I needed to walk, and the further I needed to go. Some days I spent thirty minutes there, and some days I spent hours. With every step, I communed with Him. I often started full of worry and cares, and as I walked, my concerns spilled out, and His love, peace, and truth poured into me. Walking in the mountains is still often one of my favorite sacred ways to commune with Christ. 

A natural inclination is to ignore our worries, concerns, burdens, or difficult emotions because we think we will be overtaken by them if we give them an inch. Besides, we’re too busy to take time to feel. But entering a quiet, sacred place could be breathtakingly refreshing if only we would take the time. But instead, we feel afraid of aloneness. What will we do without noise and without human companionship? The spilling out that happens in our sacred places is God’s way of healing us—and we must get alone to hear from Him and to receive comfort for our fretful hearts. 

Where has God been at work most in your life? What are the sacred places where you can hear Him most? Take time this week to visit one of those sacred places, whether it’s on a drive in your car, during a walk through the woods, or sitting in your favorite chair. Take time to listen and see how He speaks to you.

“Am I a God who is near,” declares the Lord, “And not a God far off? Can a person hide himself in hiding places So that I do not see him?” declares the Lord. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the Lord ( Jeremiah 23:23-24 ).

Lord, help me to slow down to listen to you. Help me to prioritize pulling away into a sacred place so that I can experience your presence more deeply. Amen.

Application

Decide where you will go to hear from the Lord, then decide when you will go. Then do it.

Related Reading

2 Chronicles 7:15; Psalm 16:8; Psalm 11:4

Worship Resource

Hillsong Worship: Be Still

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Reflecting on My Personal Experience with God

• Categories: Faith Personal Beliefs Religious Beliefs

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Published: Aug 4, 2023

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Questioning my faith in god, strengthening my relationship with god, learning experience with faith.

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Sacred Encounters: Glimpsing the Divine

• American Families of Faith
• October 23, 2023

In this article (Part 3/3 of this series on the empirical power of spiritual experience), I share some ways to think about spiritual experience and sacred experiences that I hope are helpful in strengthening your hope in eternal things. My hope is that the ideas and suggestions in this article will encourage and assist you in recording (e.g., in writing, audio, or video recording) your sacred personal experiences and describing your spiritual experience for the benefit of those you love.

Spiritual Experience and Spiritual Understanding

The Apostle Paul told the Colossians he desired for them to be “filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1:9). He said, “he that is spiritual judgeth all things” (1 Cor. 2:15); said, “concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant” (1 Cor. 121); said, “to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6); and encouraged the saints to “desire spiritual gifts” (1 Cor.14:1). The Apostle Peter said to “offer up spiritual sacrifices” (1 Peter 2:5). Alma asked, “have ye spiritually been born of God?” (Alma 5:14). 

Together these passages suggest that spiritual gifts, spiritual understanding, and spiritual experience are to be sought and treasured. In contemporary culture, the word “spiritual” is used in various ways. The entry for “spirituality” in Wikipedia states, 

Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension  and the “deepest values and meanings by which people live,” often in a context separate from organized religious institutions. This may involve belief in a  supernatural  realm beyond the ordinarily observable world,  personal growth , a quest for an ultimate or sacred  meaning ,  religious experience , or an encounter with one’s own “inner dimension.”

Some elements of this definition of the spiritual are entirely individualistic in nature and not consistent with how I think of spiritual experiences. That is, if spiritual is considered separate from religion and mainly about personal growth and meaning, and only about one’s own inner world, it is merely another self-oriented activity or experience like so many others. 

However, if spiritual experience helps a person move beyond self toward God and others, it then has relational and social value. Wikipedia includes this thought by Rabbi Dr. Erik Lankin:

Spirituality is a personal quest for the transcendent, how one discerns life’s meaning in relation to God and other human beings. Healthy spirituality fosters healthy relationships and affirms all of life’s experiences as part of the journey.

For me, authentic spiritual experience involves sacred encounters with the living God. Because God is an actual being, spiritual experience is inherently relational. Authentic spiritual experience widens a person’s sphere of concern beyond the self to include all beings. That is, spiritual experience is at once profoundly personal and sacredly social. 

Huston Smith, the great scholar of religions, stated , “A spiritual experience does not a spiritual life make.” A life of sacred experiences, s piritual beliefs, spiritual practices, spiritual commitments, and spiritual community can come together to help a person develop what might be called spiritual experience , that is, an authentic, mature way of being spiritual. 

Therefore, I distinguish what I call spiritual experience from one sacred experience. That is, when I use the phrase spiritual experience in these essays, I am not necessarily referring only to one experience but more so the sum of spiritual experiences, values, practices, and communities. When referring to one spiritual, transcendent, mystical, or numinous experience, I typically use the phrase sacred experience.

For me, since spiritual experience involves encountering an eternal being and eternal realities and concerns, a near synonym for a spiritual experience is an eternal experience. Issues around how spirituality is considered are complex and important and deserve further treatment in a future article.

Sacred experiences can be primarily cognitive, emotional, spiritual, physical, or any combination of those four. They can involve a new or deepened awareness of truth, a connection with the divine, a providential series of events, or an answer to prayer. Sacred experiences can relate to almost any matter, including temple and family history, family relationships, art, music, nature, travel, or intellectual pursuits. They may be numinous or transcendent but may also be prosaic and mundane. Sacred experiences are nearly unlimited in their nature, scope, or subject.

The Empirical Reality of Personal Spiritual Experience

The Oxford English Dictionary (1971, vol. 1, A-0, p. 854) defines the word empirical as “That is adopted because found (or believed) to have been successful in practice” and “Pertaining to, or derived from, experience.”

In his monumental work, The Varieties of Religious Experiences , William James (1902/1997) commenced to bring scientific rigor to the study of the complex and challenging phenomenon of personal religious experiences. James, credited as a founder of both empirical psychology and the psychology of religion, rigorously and systematically explored thousands of pages of written reports of personal religious experiences from hundreds of persons of various cultures, faiths, times, places, personalities, and temperaments.

While it is true that transcendent experiences may seem ambiguous and are often impossible to prove, James contended that an individual’s perceptions of his or her experiences matter more than provable facts—and that when transcendent experience influences action, it is then that “God is real since he produces real effects” (p. 400). 

James not only argued that personal religious experiences should be considered real because they produce real effects in the real world but also that religious experiences are arguably the most real things human beings experience:

  … so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with the private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term (p. 386, italics in original).

To illustrate, James referred to the kinds of transcendent experiences that each person has at some point in life: 

That unsharable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny as he privately feels it rolling out on fortune’s wheel may be disparaged for its egotism, may be sneered at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of our concrete actuality, and any would-be existent that should lack such a feeling, or its analogue, would be a piece of reality only half made up.  … The individual’s religion may be egotistic, and those private realities which it keeps in touch with may be narrow enough; but at any rate, it always remains infinitely less hollow and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which prides itself on taking no account of anything private at all. … By being religious, we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all (pp. 387-388).

In other words, our deepest spiritual experiences, in which we encounter the divine within and without ourselves, are the most real and consequential experiences that we have as human beings. When spiritual experiences produce real effects in us by changing us in some meaningful way, it is evidence of the reality of God and of God’s willingness and desire to be in us and work through us. 

Jesus said, “By their fruits, ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20), which can be interpreted as meaning, in part, that the gospel, including spiritual experience, produces actual, real, empirical evidence of God and God’s influence on us. 

Families Can Facilitate Sacred Experiences among Members 

Family religious practices can be approached and structured in ways that can facilitate personal and familial sacred experiences. Elder David A. Bednar, a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ, stated , “If members of families, as they come together, would think in terms of ‘I’m preparing to participate in a revelatory experience with my family’… I think we would prepare and act much differently.”

Support for this emphasis on the importance of “revelatory experience” in a family context is provided by scholar Jana Reiss in her book, The Next Mormons , which is based on recent social science research on the Latter-day Saint experience. Reiss states, 

I would posit that the successful transmission of a religious identity is based on a combination of three indispensable elements: orthodox belief, an accepted code of behavior, and a fuzzier category I would describe as transformative religious experience . This third category is paramount if rising generations are to fully inhabit the faith of their parents. In other words, the “secret sauce” of religion as a core identity has to include not just the shoulds and shouldn’ts of belief and behavior but also a palpable sense that a devotee has personally encountered the divine. This is an area in which Mormonism seems to excel” (p. 21, emphasis added).

For me, as someone whose own redemptive religious journey began with one profound spiritual experience and then a series of additional undeniable and unforgettable sacred experiences that changed everything, I know that even one encounter with God, when remembered and acted on, can make all the difference. 

However, as someone who, in the 46 years since that pivotal experience, has been blessed with many more sacred experiences, I know that a sustained pattern of religious activity, including regular, meaningful, spiritual practices, is even better. 

My own observation is that we are more likely to enjoy meaningful, and even redemptive, sacred experiences when we are fervently seeking to commune with God, diligently striving to serve God, humbly seeking guidance or comfort from God, begging for forgiveness from God, joyfully sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with others, and faithfully engaging in religious activities.

A Few Cautions  

I would now like to suggest a few cautions about how we think about sacred experiences. We should be very careful about judging someone else’s sacred experiences because they do not conform to our ideas, expectations, or experiences. Each of us is a unique soul and has unique sacred experiences. Some regularly experience a “burning of the bosom” (D&C 9:8), but others do not . Some faithful persons I know have never felt such a thing but rather experience the Holy Spirit enlightening their minds.

People differ widely in what they might consider to be a sacred experience. One person’s fortunate coincidence is another’s answered prayer. One person’s frustrating encounter with a scientific fact or mathematical formula is another’s spiritual “Aha” experience. One person’s bizarre dream is another’s revelatory vision. One person’s faith-killing trauma is another’s faith-building trial by fire. One person’s doubt-inducing historical fact is another’s answered historical question.

In reference to the Spirit, Jesus taught Nicodemus that we “canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth” (John 3:8, KJV). When we feel a soft breeze on our face or a strong wind on our body, we know that we have been touched by something outside, beyond, and above us.  

Like many, I have felt both soft spiritual breezes and strong spiritual gales. Like canyon winds that come in the mornings and evenings, I have often—but not always—felt the Spirit during regular spiritual practices such as worshipping in a chapel or temple or during personal prayer or scripture study. In other cases, sacred experiences have come like an unexpected mighty wind that overpowers me. In our teaching about the working of the Holy Ghost, I believe we should be careful not to suggest that we can easily or always summon the Spirit with formulaic spiritual practices.

Sacred experiences and spiritual practices are not ends in themselves but rather means to grow toward greater unity with God and others. Sacred experiences and sacred practices can and should lead to greater sanctification of our souls. Indeed, most of the sacred experiences received by most people of faith are quiet, gentle, and gradual in nature and have a sanctifying influence that occurs over time—here a little and there a little. But I know from personal experience that it also is possible to experience a “mighty change” of heart in an instant.

Finally, we should not be surprised or offended if others do not respond to or even accept the legitimacy of our sacred experiences. On the other hand, we can have the sacred experience of having the Holy Spirit bear witness of truth to us when we hear or read about another person’s sacred experience.

Some Thoughts on Sharing Sacred Experiences

I believe that when people record and share their own sacred experiences, it is important for them to attend to certain issues. Inspired by President Gordon B. Hinckley’s list of “ B-attitudes ” given to the youth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I would suggest that those of us who record and share sacred experiences try to attend to the following:

Be honest. Try to “speak the truth in love” so that you are an authentic but inoffensive witness of the goodness of God. Avoid embellishing the experience and just report what happened and what it has come to mean to you. Be careful. Try to get the facts (names, dates, places) right so that you place your experience in context and thus make it easier for others to connect with your experience. Be humble. Remember to give glory to God and to other people who were involved in your sacred experience. Be faithful. Share your experience in a way that builds faith in the living God and turns the hearts of your readers/listeners to God. Be compassionate. Be aware of the implications of how you share your experience with others who have not yet obtained the blessings you are writing/speaking about. Be compassionate toward those who, for whatever reason, might be hurt, offended, or otherwise bothered in some way by your story. Be generous. Give others who are involved in your experience the benefit of the doubt about their motivations and intentions—especially when the experience was not necessarily a positive one for you. Be open. Remain willing to revise your account of the experience to be more consistent with what you learn from others who might have been part of the experience and have different recollections, feelings, or thoughts than you about what occurred or what it means.

I would like to say that I perfectly follow my own advice in every account of my sacred experiences; however, while I have tried to do so, I’m sure that I have failed in some instances. Even so, my intent is to provide an accurate and honest and open and faithful account of my own sacred experiences to bear an authentic witness of the goodness of God in my own life. 

The Unique Power of Sacred Experiences

Sacred experiences have unique power in reminding us that we are spiritual beings now embodied in physical bodies and that we are eternal beings now embedded in time. Sacred experiences remind us that although we are now beset with earthly, mundane, and profane surroundings, we are, in our deepest essence, eternal beings. 

The Scottish Congregationalist minister and Christian apologist George McDonald wrote, “Never tell a child ‘you have a soul.’ Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body 1 .” The French Jesuit priest, philosopher, and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously stated , “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” When we have such sacred experiences, we may sense a window opening to eternity.

Nationally syndicated columnist Michael Gerson , in a sermon he gave at the National Cathedral in Washington DC , said, “The answer to the temptation of nihilism is not an argument—though  philosophy can clear away a lot of intellectual foolishness. It is the experience of transcendence we cannot explain or explain away.” Gerson went on to quote the second stanza of Christian philosopher G.K. Chesterton’s poem “ The Convert “:

  The sages have a hundred maps to give

That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,

They rattle reason out through many a sieve

That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:

And all these things are less than dust to me

Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Lazarus knew from his own experience that Jesus had power over death. Those of us who have experienced divine healing, received divine guidance, been changed by divine power, been made alive spiritually, or in other ways felt the power of God know for ourselves that God lives and that we live most abundantly as we live in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Despite how eternally important I believe sacred experiences can be, I would not make such an issue about them if I believed that such experiences were only available to spiritual virtuosi (i.e., “spiritual giants”) or were purely random events or were rare and fleeting like spiritual comets. Indeed, survey research demonstrates that most Americans report having had a mystical or religious experience. 

I believe that sacred experiences are common among all people who love the Lord and seek communion with God. I believe that, while not entirely within our control, sacred experiences are available to all—including those who are not even seeking the sacred. 

Those who have not yet tasted such sweet sacred experiences can do so as they faithfully, humbly, and patiently seek after the Lord and His righteousness. And, regardless of whether someone has personally enjoyed and recognized sacred personal experiences, they may find meaning, comfort, and inspiration from hearing of such experiences from loved ones.

May the Lord bless you and keep you as you seek to recognize, to remember, and to record your own sacred experiences, to share them with others, and to thus bear your witness of the goodness of God in your life. 

1. Published in British Friend , a Quaker magazine.

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David Dollahite

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How Have You Experienced The Presence of God During This Year?

Faith asked high school and college students how they have felt the presence of god during these long months of the pandemic..

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was still able to experience my relationship with God. I was able to take advantage of the time spent at home to reflect and develop my prayer life. I made an effort to just open up to God and be honest about everything I was experiencing, whether it was sadness, hope, joy or anything else.

– Owen Gross is a senior at Powers Catholic High School

“One good thing I’ve learned about my faith during the year of COVID-19 is that you should try to pray as many times as you can. Also it’s good to find a routine. Some nights you forget to pray because you are too tired but if you make it a routine and have those conversations with God it be-comes fun. I felt touched by God’s grace during the pandemic when my grandparents got home safe from Mexico and stayed healthy.”

– Joshua Garman is a senior at Powers Catholic High School

“I have felt the presence of God over the past few months by being able to slow down and take a few steps back to admire all that he has blessed me with. From the time gained to grow with family members, to the care and bright faces we see in our communities because we all understand the difficult times that are upon us.

– Noah Koenigsknecht is from the Catholic Community of St. Jude in DeWitt and is a junior at Northwood University.

“One way God has been present to me during the year of COVID-19 has been through offering more opportunities than ever before to get involved and draw closer to him. Through online retreats, Bible studies, small groups, youth group and helping my parish to host on online VBS, I was able to deepen my relationship with Christ. Near the end of quarantine when we were finally able to go back to Mass and have adoration, I had a much greater appreciation for the Eucharist!”

– Talia Tetmeyer is a senior at Powers Catholic High School.

“My faith has always been my rock, my stronghold in the storm. Throughout this particular storm, Jesus has reminded me time and time again that I am not in this storm alone. He sees me, knows my struggles and understands my pain. He is in control of it all. This pandemic has allowed me to place all of my trust in the Lord because he has control of every situation, and can overcome any evil. He never abandons us, forsakes us or ignores us. He loves us, and is with us always.”

– MaryGrace Ortega is a junior at Powers Catholic High School.

I have realized that more than ever I need to be a voice for compassion and kindness in the world. I realized that I need to do as much as I can to end hate because of the terrible effects that it has had on the people around me. I also realized that I need to be as kind as I can to others around me because there is no telling the hardships they are going through. I have seen the pandemic as a time for contemplation, and I have seen God pointing me in the direction to help others in their struggles. I have also seen that God sent challenges my way as examples for me to remember in order to have more understanding for others.”

– Conor Urban is from St. Elizabeth Parish in Tecumseh and is a senior at Oakland University

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have recognized God’s presence in my life through empathy. Everyone is in a similar boat in relation to this ’new normal’ we are living in, however, people are experiencing it in different ways. I have met many individuals who have lost family members because of this pandemic, others who have had COVID-19 themselves or even some, who may not believe this exists. God has given me the patience and the empathy to connect and converse with individuals to help them cope with what they may be going through during this difficult time.”

– Emily Thelen is from St. Joseph Parish in St. Johns and is a senior at Central Michigan University

This year has definitely been a roller coaster for me with the early ending of my senior year in high school, loss of my first job and finally getting COVID-19 as a freshman in college while writing this column. When looking at all of these events at a surface level, it would be easy to become mad and even blame God for this entire year. But the early ending of my senior year and the loss of my job allowed me more time to say goodbye to my friends and family before I left for college. Even having COVID-19 allowed me more time to focus on my studies and enjoy some me-time with a new book. I was able to count on God to not only help me through them, but to also see the positives and grace they all bring.”

– Rebecca Fraley is from St. Agnes Parish in Fowlerville and is a freshman at Western Michigan University.

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Experiences of God

by Roger Karban

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One night there was no penitent hesitancy. "No!" the man emphatically answered. "I used to be a Protestant. I became a Catholic so I wouldn't have to read that damn book, and now you're giving me a penance from it?" We Catholics haven't had a good track record when it comes to the Bible. Our catechisms traditionally employ a whole list of biblical "proof texts" to validate our doctrines and practices. But that's far from having "known the sacred Scriptures from infancy" and using their "wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy). Have you ever compared the number of diocesan priests who have degrees in Scripture with those who have degrees in canon law? To understand the message our sacred authors are trying to convey, it's essential to put their writings back into the original context they were writing from. They never composed their Gospels to be used in a eucharistic setting, where most of us encounter them chopped into small, manageable servings, proclaimed with two other readings and a responsorial psalm. The Gospels, like all good literature, were meant to be read and appreciated in their entirety. Likewise, most people hear God's word not in abstraction but in particular contexts of lived faith. Their lives don't start and end with a one-hour "church experience" every weekend. Each of us has unique experiences of God in our daily lives. Our sacred writings were collected and saved, among other reasons, to assure us of the value and validity of those experiences. That's why our ancestors in the faith instinctively included readings from Scripture in their celebrations of the Eucharist and not readings from a catechism. Some years ago, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale did extensive research on our basic fears, eventually discovering that almost all human fears can be reduced to just one: the fear of being alone. Nothing is more personal than one's faith, nothing more unique. At times, our experiences of God working in our lives give us the impression we're completely alone. No one has ever encountered God quite like we've encountered God. At times we even wonder if these encounters are "invalid" — just a heretical figment of our imagination. But those who regularly delve into our Scriptures eventually discover a people who also had unique experiences of God. They find out they're not alone. The Bible doesn't give us our faith. Ideally, its writings kick in only after we've had personal faith encounters. That's why the Bible is such a thick book. There's no one way to experience God. That creates a problem for us analytical "Greek-thinkers," constantly looking for an "either/or" answer to every question. We forget (or don't even know) the people who composed our Scriptures were synthesizing "Semitic-thinkers," continually coming up with "both/and" responses to almost every question. For instance, today both the author of Exodus and Luke's Jesus assure us that God answers our prayers. We need only keep our "hands raised up," as Moses does, or eventually realize, after a lot of badgering, that God has our best interests at heart. Yet, at the same time in other parts of Scripture we hear Jeremiah complaining that Yahweh never listens to him, and Luke will later tell us not even Jesus gets his initial Gethsemane prayer answered. Theologians consistently teach that one of organized religion's main tasks is to help us come into contact with the God around us. That lays a big burden on any institutional church. Are the members of a particular denomination being led to actual experiences of God, or to just experiences of the organization? There's a big difference between the two. I can't repeat often enough the aside Cardinal Avery Dulles made during a 1969 lecture at St. Louis University: "Had there been a Holy Office at the time the four Gospels were composed," the Jesuit scholar dryly remarked, "we Catholics would have just one Gospel in our Bibles: Mark (the first written). But in our history books we'd have references to three notorious first-century Christian heretics named Matthew, Luke and John." Thankfully our sacred authors' different experiences of God weren't limited by an institution, otherwise a lot of us would still be convinced that we're alone. [Roger Vermalen Karban is pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Renault, Ill.]

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Devotionals & Quiet Times - Blog

How your personality connects you with god.

• Devotional , Prayer , Worship

Since I became a Christian, it’s been a struggle to consistently connect with God. Like me, you may also tend to think that most other Christians are experiencing God more deeply than you are.

Is there something wrong with me because I’m not experiencing Him like others? Am I missing something?

I’m not alone in this.

The Bible is full of examples of those who envy or resent other people’s relationships. Cain envied Abel’s relationship with God. Jacob and Esau fought over their father Isaac’s blessing. Jesus’ disciples argued about who would be the greatest in the kingdom of God. There’s a desire for intimacy and relationship that is present in each of these stories.

Is it possible that we don’t experience God like everyone else because God didn’t intend us to? Could it be that we’re missing something about what worship is?

We all know that worship isn’t just listening to songs in church or reading the Bible. Worship isn’t an experience we have once a week; it’s a part of everyday life. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:31 (New International Version), “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

Worship is an inward attitude of the heart. It’s not supposed to feel functional; it’s intimate. It’s recognizing who God is, who He’s created us to be and what our relationship to Him is.

We don’t need a one-size-fits-all relationship with God.

God uniquely formed each of us. I like folk music; you may like rap. I like being around small groups of people; you may be energized by large gatherings. If we each experience life differently, won’t those differences influence how we worship God?

In Gary Thomas’ book “Sacred Pathways,” he describes nine ways we can interact with God. You may find yourself relating to more than one. Which pathways do you most identify with?

Hover over the photos to read about different pathways and see practical ways you can connect with God.

Enthusiasts

Worship and celebration are words that appeal to you. You desire inspiration and feel close to God when you are inspired.

• Learn how to experience true worship.
• Discover why you were created to celebrate.

Naturalists

You experience God best out in nature — in His world. You feel closest to God on a hike, sitting beside a brook or river, or simply being outside.

• Take your Bible outside each day and walk through the study “Discovering God in Creation.”
• Allow nature to teach you about God’s existence .
• Go for a hike and use nature to guide you in prayer .

You appreciate beauty, art and music. You feel closest to God when listening to music, working with your hands or viewing art or photography.

• Understand your role as an artist in pointing to God.
• Bring creativity into your daily life.
• Write your own worship song.

You want to be part of a social or evangelistic cause. You feel close to God taking faith-risks, and you seek growing dependence on Him while striving for justice and against evil.

• Discover why justice matters.
• Incorporate talking about Jesus into your activism.

Traditionalists

You are drawn to God through ritual, symbol and sacrifice. You need something tangible to do to draw close to God.

• Make prayer a priority.
• Find ways to incorporate traditions and rituals into your life.
• Learn about traditions and rituals in the Bible.
• Develop new Christian habits.

You love God best by loving people. You feel close to God when serving the poor, hosting people in your home or helping with a church event.

• How can you love by faith?
• Ask yourself how you can serve someone today.
• Study what the Bible says about the Christian and good deeds.
• Learn how to be a servant leader.

Intellectuals

You experience God best with your mind. You love to study and have a need to learn new things about God.

• Pick a book of the Bible to study deeply using these methods.
• Gather a group of friends to discuss a book about God or the gospel: for example, The Attributes of God by Arthur W. Pink.
• Check out the Bible Study “Jesus and the Intellectual”.

Contemplatives

You worship God best through adoration. You love digging into a good book or engaging in a thoughtful discussion.

• Grow in your personal time with God.
• Practice thinking rightly about God.
• Spend time reflecting on and journaling about who God is and His characteristics.
• Learn what it means to take your faith from your head to your heart.

You need quiet, solitude and simplicity to feel close to God. You benefit from a silent retreat away from your phone and other external distractions.

• Follow in Jesus’ footsteps of solitude.
• Discover “5 Habits to Declutter Your Quiet Time.”
• Strive to simplify your life by removing extra activities.
• Pursue pure and simple devotion.

Now that you’ve learned how God has wired you, how can you explore that in your relationship with Him?

Related topics:, previous story, why god welcomes your doubt, when you feel like a failure after reading the bible, latest stories in devotionals & quiet times - blog, when death is beautiful.

Morbid as it may seem, autumn really is about death. And God repeats this pattern in you and me.

The Day I Went Missing

After becoming the object of a city-wide search, I realize the spiritual connection in finding something of value that was lost.

Of Great Value

I left the grocery store sticker-shocked. Eating healthy is not cheap.

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Top 14 Experiences with God from the Bible And What We can Learn

I was thinking the other day, about how people in the BIble experienced God. It feels like we don’t hear stories like that much anymore. So, I decided to explore Bible stories where people have experiences with God and see what we can learn from them.

People who have experiences with God in the Bible have so much to teach us. They show us that God is faithful, powerful, kind, and so much more. These experiences often resulted in increased faith and dependency on God. Experiences with God can happen today, though maybe not in the same way. We can experience God today through prayer, reading the Bible, loving others, and living in a community of faith.

Top Bible Stories Where Someone Experiences God

The Bible is full of stories with people who have experiences with God. Let’s look at the top 14 experiences with God in the Bible and see what we can learn from them. Ready?

The first story we’ll look at is the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3).

Moses was a prince in Egypt when he was forced to flee for murdering an Egyptian. He spends the next 40 years in the wilderness getting married, having a family, and being a shepherd. But his people are still slaves in Egypt.

One time Moses was leading the sheep to pasture, and he came across a bush on a mountain that was on fire but not burning up. A strange sight. So, he went to investigate. There, he experienced God. God spoke to Moses from the bush and called him to set the Israelites free.

What we can learn: From Moses’ encounter with God we can learn that experiences of God can lead to a calling from God. God called and equipped Moses to set the people free.

The next story of an experience with God that we will look at is the story of Balaam (Numbers 22:21-41).

Balaam was a foreign priest hired by the king of Moab to place a curse on the Israelites after they came up out of Egypt. On Balaam’s journeys to Moab from his homeland an Angel of the Lord appeared to him three times standing in the way.

Balaam could not see the Angel of the Lord, but his donkey could. So, the donkey would turn around or stop every time the Angel of the Lord was in the way. This caused Balaam to beat the donkey.

After the third time, the Angel of the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey and the donkey spoke to Balaam. Finally, the Angel of the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes and he saw why his donkey was behaving the way it was.

What we can learn : From this story of an experience with God, we can see that sometimes we don’t know we encounter God until after the fact. We can also learn that God can use these experiences to correct our misunderstandings about him.

The Philistines

The third experience with God that we will look at is the story of the Philistines (1 Samuel 5).

The Philistines were at war with Israel and they ended up capturing the Ark of God. They took it back to their territories. Now, in the temple, God’s glory was supposed to reside between the cherubim over the ark of God.

So, the Philistines had taken the Ark and brought it into their temples. God began to inflict devastation on the people. It was so bad they moved the ark to another city. But God did the same thing. Things got so bad they sent the Ark of God back to Israel.

What we can learn: From the Philistine experience, we can learn that experiences with God are serious moments. God relates to us how He chooses. Experiences with God can include salvation and judgement.

The fourth Bible story experience with God that we will look at is the story of Elijah. Specifically, after he fled to Horeb (1 Kings 19).

Elijah had fled for his life and lived in a cave. God came to him and asked him what he was doing. Elijah responded that he had spent his life serving God, and now everyone else who served God was dead, and so Elijah was running for his life.

God told Elijah to go stand in the mountain in the Presence of the Lord, because God was going to visit. A great hurricane force wind blew by, but God was not there. Then a mighty earthquake came, but God was not there. Then a raging fire roared, but God was not there. Then Elijah heard a gentle whisper; it was God.

What we can learn: So, what can we learn from Elijah’s experience with God? Well, our experiences with God might seem mundane or unimpressive, but God is there. Even in the simple and small things God is there. A kind smile to a stranger can demonstrate God’s great love.

Let’s turn to Isaiah’s experience with God. This story of an experience with God can be found in Isaiah 6.

Isaiah has this crazy vision where he sees the very throne room of God in heaven. There are flying angels talking to one another with voices so loud they shake the building, Smoke is all around. It’s an intense scene.

And Isaiah, says, “Woe to me! I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

After this, Isaiah is cleansed and called to go and share God’s message with the people of his day.

What we can learn: From Isaiah’s story and experience with God, we see that experiences with God remind us who God is and our place before Him. God is King over all Kings. And we are broken, fallen, sinful people.

Next, let’s look at Ezekiel’s vision of God (Ezekiel 1).

If Isaiah’s vision of God was intense, then Ezekiel’s was even crazier. There were living creatures with multiple faces from different animals. They had many wings. There was wind, and wheels, and fire, and lightening, and thunderous voices. Just take a minute to read it from Ezekiel 1, it’s pretty crazy.

Ezekiel said, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.”

Like Isaiah before him, he was called to be a prophet.

What we can learn: We can learn that experiences of God reveal exactly who God is. When we experience God’s love, there is no question that God is love. When we experience God’s grace, there is no question that God is gracious. When we experience God’s glory, there is no question, no arguing, about whether or not God deserves that glory. It’s just a fact.

The seventh story (if you are keeping count) is the story of Jonah.

Jonah was called to be a prophet, but ran away from God and God’s calling. While he was on the run, he was caught up in a storm at sea. This storm was a result of his actions.

In order for the storm to stop and the ship he was on to not be destroyed, he told the crew to throw him overboard.

So, Jonah was thrown overboard, swallowed by a big fish, and ended up doing what God called him to do in the first place.

What we can learn: So, what can we learn from Jonah’s experience with God? Well, experiences with God may not always be cool or exciting. Instead, they could be gross, but it will still result in us returning to God. God will chase us down when we stray.

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

Next, let’s look at the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3).

These men were important officials in the Babylonian empire. They were Jewish men who were taken captive and trained to work in the Babylonian government.

One day King Nebuchadnezzar, had a great statue of himself built and ordered everyone to bow down and worship it. If they did not they would be thrown into a blazing furnace.

Guess what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did? They did not bow down. So, the king had them thrown into the fire. Later, the King was looking in the fiery furnace and noticed four men in there, and still alive! But he had only thrown three men in.

The fourth person looked like a son of the gods, according to Nebuchadnezzar. The King called the three men out and praised God. Then, he issued a proclamation that everyone was to worship their God.

What we can learn: This shows us that experiences with God can point others to Him. Experiences with God should result in a spread of the gospel.

Unnamed Crowds (Jesus’ Miracles)

Throughout, Jesus’ earthly ministry, He healed many people and performed numerous signs and wonders. These miracles led to crowds of thousands following Him, hoping to catch just a glimpse.

Imagine for just a moment, seeing enough food for thousands come from a boy’s lunch box. Or picture lines of people in great need and suffering, waiting to be healed. Then imagine them after their experience with Jesus, walking away healed, completely new.

What we can learn: We can learn from these numerous experiences with God that such experiences can have spiritual, physical, and emotional impact. God is not limited to meeting just our spiritual needs alone. Nor does He care solely for our earthly needs. God’s approach is holistic.

Man born blind

Let’s look now at a specific example. The man born blind (John 9).

Jesus and the disciples were walking and came across a man who had been born blind. The disciples asked why he was blind. Was it because of his sin or his parents sin? Jesus responded by saying that it was neither. Rather, it was to give God glory.

Jesus proceeded to spit on the ground, mix up mud, and put it on the guy’s eyes. He told them to go and wash his eyes. The man did so, and he was able to see.

Later, Jesus ran into this man again and asked him if He believed in the Son of Man. The formerly blind man asked who the Son of Man, so that he could follow him. Jesus said that He was the Son of Man.

He then said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” What an interesting thing to say. But from it we can learn about experiences with God.

What we can learn: Experiences with God can convict us of our sin and need for forgiveness.

Peter, James, John

For our 11th story, let’s look at Jesus’ transfiguration (Matthew 17).

One day Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on a mountainside and revealed His glory to them. The Bible says, “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.”

And, “a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

Peter, James, and John fell down and worshipped God.

What we can learn: This story of an experience with God shows us that experiences with God can lead to a deeper and clearer understanding of Him. Experiences with God ought to lead us to worship and obey Him.

Mary Magdalene

The next story that we will look at is the story of Mary Magdalene and her experience with the resurrected Lord (John 20:11-18).

Mary went to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body with spices. But when she got there, the stone was rolled away and his body was missing! She assumed someone stole.

So when she saw a man standing there, she assumed he was the gardener and asked what he did with Jesus’ body. Jesus called her name. She ran toward him ready to hug Him. But, Jesus said, not yet, but go and tell the disciples I am alive.

Mary’s experience with God might not be as showy as Ezekiel’s but it is filled with God’s love, concern, and compassion for our emotional well being.

What we can learn: We see here, that experiences with God can bring healing to our emotional pain and scars. God cares about you. He cares about how you feel. He wants you to feel and experience His love for you.

The 13th story of an experience with God that we are going to look at is the story of Paul’s conversion (Acts 9).

Paul started out his relationship with Jesus as someone who persecuted Christians. He was there when they stoned Stephen to death. He was the one they sent to arrest and beat followers of The Way. In short, Paul was terrorizing the early Christian community.

He was on his way to continue his campaign of terror when he had an incredible experience with God. A bright light flashed around him, and he fell to the ground and heard a voice say, “Why do you persecute me?”

It was God. Paul was persecuting Jesus. This experience with God led to his conversion, and future missionary work around the known world. Paul became a great servant of the Lord and wrote most of the New Testament.

Many people may not be Christians today if it was not for this experience Paul had with God.

What we can learn: We can learn from this that our experiences with God, or even other people’s experience with God, can have impacts that we don’t ever get see. Why? Because it has a far greater impact than we may ever know.

The last story of an experience with God in the Bible that we are going to look at is John’s revelation vision.

A lot happens in the book of revelation, far too much to discuss here at the moment. So, we will save that for another time.

But what we can say here is that John saw God’s plan for His rule and reign on earth. John saw Jesus on the throne judging and saving people. God is the ultimate judge.

John recorded, in his gospel, a statement by Jesus when he was talking about the end times, the things John now saw in his vision. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart; I have overcome the world.”

John’s revelation vision isn’t meant to scare us, but to encourage us and strengthen us to overcome in the difficult times, in the face of persecution. Why? Because great is our reward.

What we can learn: John’s revelation experience shows us that experiences with God can comfort us and prepare us for difficult times.

Does an Experience with God increase your Faith?

All of these biblical stories of encounters with God show us that when we experience God our faith will grow. Our relationship with God grows. Our understanding of who He is, what He’s done, what He’s doing, and who we are is made clear.

Experiences with God changes lives. Because we experience His faithfulness, His kindness, His love, His grace. We get to know more and more of it. We are transformed by it, and as a consequence are made whole by it.

Our greatest experience with God, as Christians, came when we first accepted Him as Lord and Savior of our lives. That was just the beginning, there is so much more in store. We get to experience, see, and learn how deep and wide and high and long is the love of Christ.

How to Have A Spiritual Experience with God

This transformative power of experiences with God begs the question: How do we have these experiences with God? What can these encounters with God look like? Check out this article about how to have an encounter with God to find the answer the second question. To find the answer to the first question, keep reading.

Well, if we look back at these stories and other stories of experiences with God, we can see that people who had experiences with God after their initial conversion experience were people who:

• Studied Scripture
• Loved Others
• Lived in a Community of Faith

These are ways that we can experience God today. We can experience God through His word, through people who have a relationship with Him, through conversations with Him, and through loving others like Him.

Jesus said it best,

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33

If we want to have a spiritual experience with God, then quit trying so hard to find one. Instead, live for God and others. Love God. Love others.

Let me know in the comments below your favorite or coolest Bible story that involves an experience with God.

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How to Experience God in Your Daily Life

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Is it possible to experience God personally in your daily life? How?

If you believe in a benevolent, personal God , you likely want to hear from him and experience his presence in your everyday life. We all do, don’t we? We want to be assured that we follow a God who is dialed in—that he has our numbers and uses them.

Thankfully, he is. And he does.

A Communicative God

If God were a God who simply once reached out to man, who once spoke to us, we could rely on history alone, finding our assurance in what others claim God has already said and done. If our God were a deity who always communicated in the same way, or who could only be known and experienced by “professional” God-followers, then we might be excused from trying to experience him ourselves.

But the God of the Bible , the Father of Jesus Christ and the giver of the Holy Spirit, has been speaking to and communicating with men and women since he first created them. God has never stopped sharing himself with his people.

He is, after all, the God who conversed with Moses through a burning bush; 1 the God who directed the prophet Balaam’s attention by using the very donkey on which he was riding; 2 the God whose voice and glory knocked Saul to the ground; 3 the God who called to young Samuel in his sleep; 4 and the God who came to dwell among his people as a man. 5

From the beginning, God has spoken to humankind. The writer of Hebrews tells us that “in the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son.” 6

The Bible—what Christians believe to be the Word of God—records for us the very words and acts of God the Father and God the Son. The Bible also promises still more godly communication from the third person of the Trinity , the Holy Spirit: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.” 7

The Bible assures me that the God I love and follow is still speaking, still communicating, still involved in human life—and I can experience him through whatever means he chooses to use. For this reason, I should be expectantly attentive in every moment of every ordinary day. I should expect to experience him.

“Human life—all of it—is the precinct of epiphany: of God’s showing, of God’s constant speaking and breathing,” says Father Michael Downey. 8 God shows up. We should not be surprised. We should expect him.

First we must learn to be expectant by being attentive to our surroundings and anticipating God’s presence. We hear what we listen for, after all; I’m sure we’ve all suffered from “selective hearing” at least once or twice in our lives.

But something must happen in our hearts for us to be open to and aware of his presence. That something is relationship. “My sheep listen to my voice,” Jesus said, “I know them, and they follow me.” 9 Belonging to God—and knowing God —makes experiencing him possible. A relationship with him grows through time and trust.

Ordinary Circumstances

We can experience God in ordinary circumstances: in a stunning sunrise or a quiet subway ride. We can sense his power in creation and his sovereignty in its order. We can see his uprightness when mercy is shown for the weak and when justice prevails for the wicked.

But he is just as real and present in your particular struggles and your specific pain . When we feel a peace that “transcends all understanding” in the midst of tough circumstances, we are experiencing the presence of God in our lives. 10 As we’ll learn, God “shows up even when we’re not ‘on retreat’ or ‘having a quiet time.’ He invades grocery lines and football stadiums, cry rooms and cafeterias. He speaks in ways we expect, and in ways we do not.” 11

Ordinary People

Though we expect to experience God through spiritual leaders, we must recognize that we can receive his wisdom, care, love, and correction from ordinary folks—people just like you and me. From the insightful words of a friend to even the chastisement or correction of a stranger, God can communicate with us through those around us.

Author Ken Gire calls such moments “windows of the soul,” and maintains that God is certainly behind them: “He comes to us in ways that our senses can take Him in without injury, which is always less than He is. [His glory] must be veiled or it will blind us.” 12

Pages and Pictures

As a writer, I’ve often experienced God through the written word. God has been present to me in the words of poets like John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, and Wendell Berry. I’ve encountered him in the novels and essays of Frederick Buechner, in the fantasy fiction of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Even in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series I have tasted the great struggle between good and evil, and I have celebrated the love of unselfish friendship. In all this, I see glimpses of the goodness and glory of God.

Similarly, a walk through an art museum can remind me that God is the Creator of all creators. Any beauty I see is but a replica of the intricacies of his divine design, and no matter how stunning, I know it would pale in comparison to the true glory of God.

Community and Worship

God promises he is present among his people. When we gather together to worship him or simply to love and encourage one another, he is there. “Where two or three gather in my name,” Jesus said, "there I am with them." 13

Imagine that! God is with us in our work, our worship, our celebrations, and our shared sorrows. How different our experiences with one another might be if we imagined Jesus Christ as a guest at every meal, a trusted colleague in every endeavor, a co-celebrant in every glad gathering.

Pay Attention

If we know God through his Son, Jesus Christ, we are already in relationship with him. Connected to God the Father by grace, we can experience him in real, tangible ways. But we must be attentive; we must be ready to recognize his presence in our lives.

“We do not have to live in a monastery to experience God’s embrace,” writes professor and worship leader Robert Webber. “The spiritual life is not an escape from life but an affirmation of God’s way of life in the struggles we meet in our personal thoughts, in the relationships we have in the family, among our neighbors, at work, and in our leisure. The Christian life is an embodied life. It affirms that all of life belongs to God, and God is everywhere in life.” 14

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Biblical Authority and the Christian Tradition

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Scripture has played an important and authoritative role in the history of Christian churches, especially in the West.

Scripture is the revealed, inspired written Word of God.  The authority of the Bible originates in the authority of God, Scripture’s divine author. Biblical infallibility constituted a central doctrine of churches in the West until at least the nineteenth century. Catholic and Evangelical Christians have believed biblical infallibility is a church doctrine.

Scripture’s Singular Authority (Sola Scriptura)

“First of all, you need to know that Holy Scripture is the kind of book that makes the wisdom of all other books into foolishness, since none of them teaches about eternal life except this alone.” So wrote Martin Luther (1483-1546), the Protestant Reformer. Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura) infallibly tells us how we might be saved (Sola fide) and how we should live. Consequently, canonical Scripture is the sufficient “Rule” for faith and practice. Scripture is also norma normans (“the determining norm”) ruling over all human opinions, creeds, and traditions and natural philosophy or “science.” Scripture is not “normed” by any of them.

Scripture’s Divine Author

God is the divine author of Holy Scripture. The authority of Scripture originates from God’s authority: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2Tim. 3:16-17). Scripture’s human authors, using their giftedness, were inspired by the Holy Spirit: “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” ( 2Pet. 1:21).

Scripture’s Central Focus

Martin Luther wrote: “All of Scripture everywhere deals only with Christ.” Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the central focus of Scripture. Jesus Christ gives authority to Scripture. He told his disciples to search the Scripture in which they would find eternal life and which testified of him (John 5:39). He quoted Scripture in confronting the Devil (Matt. 4:1-11). He taught Scripture’s truthfulness, that is “till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18).

Scripture’s “Truthfulness”

St. Augustine (354-431) played a key role in articulating the central church doctrine that Scripture is the “truthful” or infallible revealed written Word of God. In his own day he encountered critics who raised questions about supposed discrepancies in the Gospels. In response Augustine penned The Harmony of the Gospels In which he provided guidance regarding how the alleged discrepancies could be resolved.

Martin Luther indicated that he followed St. Augustine’s views in subjecting his faith to the Word of God alone: “I follow the example of St. Augustine who among other things was the first and about the only one who, refusing to be absorbed by all the books of the fathers and saints, wanted to be subject to the Holy Scriptures alone.” Luther cited with approval a letter in which Saint Augustine defended the truthfulness of Scripture:

It seems to me that the most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books, that is to say, that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us and committed to writing, did put down in these books anything false. If you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement, there will not be left a single sentence of these books, which, if appearing to any one difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away as a statement, which intentionally, the author declared what was not true.

In a letter to Faustus the Manichean, St. Augustine set forth what Christians should do if they came across a supposed error in Scripture:

I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand.

Augustine’s guideposts became essential components of the “Lower criticism of the Bible”—that is, the initiative to establish the original writings of Scripture.

In 1521, at the Diet of Worms, Martin Luther took his stand on the authority of Holy Scripture (Sola Scriptura). He challenged directly the authority of the Roman Catholic Church:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience…May God help me, Amen.

Luther believed in the sufficiency of Scripture and that “infallible Scripture” should interpret “infallible Scripture.”

John Calvin (1509-1564), another Protestant Reformer, also affirmed Sola Scriptura and the infallibility of Scripture. He indicated that although there are good reasons demonstrating that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, Christians come to this conviction owing to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Calvin indicated the Holy Spirit accommodates Scripture to our understanding. Calvin urged pastors to focus their preaching on the Word of God. After all, it is “living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12).” The Reformer William Tyndale (1494-1536) also cited Hebrews 4:12 in sending covertly his English translation of the Bible to England.

Not only did the Protestant Reformers concur with St. Augustine’s teaching about the “truthfulness” of Scripture, contemporary Roman Catholic theologians often did as well. When Erasmus (1466-1536), a Roman Catholic humanist and compiler of a Greek New Testament (1516), posited that Matthew might have made a mistake by substituting one name for another (Isaiah for Jeremiah), the Roman Catholic Johann Maier von Eck gently rebuked him: “Listen, dear Erasmus: do you suppose any Christian will patiently endure to be told that the evangelists in the gospels made mistakes?” Eck then referenced St. Augustine: “If the authority of Holy Scripture at this point is shaky, can any other passage be free from the suspicion of error? A conclusion drawn by St. Augustine from an elegant chain of reasoning.”  For Eck, even one word misplaced constituted an error and subverted the authority of Scripture.

Scripture’s Authority and Tradition

At the Council of Trent (1545-1563) the Roman Catholic Church defined her doctrines and practices. The council decreed that Scripture and Tradition constituted equal sources of revelation. It also stipulated that Jerome’s Latin Vulgate was the “authentic” biblical version.

In 1588, the year the “Roman Catholic” Spanish Armada bore down with troops to invade England, William Whitaker (1547-1595), an Anglican Professor at St. John’s College Cambridge University, published Disputations on Scripture. In this volume he critiqued the arguments about biblical authority defended by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), an accomplished apologist. 1) Whereas Bellarmine claimed that we must add “Tradition“ to Scripture in order to understand fully what constitutes our salvation, Whitaker replied that the Bible is “sufficient” in providing us with all we need to know about “faith and practice.” We do not need “Tradition” in this regard. 2) Whereas Bellarmine claimed the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome was the “authentic” version of the Bible, Whitaker replied that the Bible is infallible in the inspired “original” biblical writings in Greek and Hebrew.

Martin Luther had earlier proposed that many Roman Catholic theologians misconstrued the Christian faith because they did not know Greek. He was grateful for the recent recovery of that language. In 1394-1395, Manuel Chrysoloras from Byzantium had begun to re-introduce knowledge of Greek in Florence, Italy.

Luther wrote:

…it was also a stupid undertaking to attempt to learn the meaning of Scripture by reading the exposition of the fathers and their numerous books and glosses. Instead these men should have given themselves to the study of languages. But because they were without languages the dear fathers at times belabored a text with many words and yet caught barely an inkling of its meaning; …For in comparison with the comments of all the fathers, the languages are as sunlight to shadow. Since then, it becomes Christians to use the Holy Scriptures as their one and only book.

Whitaker continued his critique: 3. Whereas Bellarmine believed that the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible was infallible, Whitaker retorted:

The Latin Vulgate is most certainly and most plainly corrupt. And the corruptions I speak of are not casual or slight, or common errors, such as the carelessness of copyists often produces in books, but errors deeply rooted in the text itself, important and intolerable. Hence is drawn the weightiest argument against the authority of this edition.

By contrast, the originals of Scripture were without error:

They [the biblical writers] wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, as Peter tell us, 2Pet. 1:21. And all Scripture is inspired of God as Paul expressly writes, 2Tim. 3:16. Whereas, therefore, no one may say that any infirmity could befall the Holy Spirit, it follows that the sacred writers could not be deceived, or err, in any respect. Here, then, it becomes us to be so scrupulous as not to allow that any such slip can be found in Scripture. For, whatever Erasmus may think, it is a solid answer which Augustine gives to Jerome: “If any error, even the smallest, be admitted in the Scripture, the whole authority of scripture is presently invalidated and destroyed.”

The translators of the King James Bible (1611) appreciated Whitaker’s teaching on biblical authority. Likewise, many Protestant theologians endorsed his articulation of the infallibility of Scripture. European Christians often looked to Scripture as the authority for their understanding of faith and practice as well as profane matters.

Scripture and “Biblical Criticism”

In the seventeenth century some Christians believed that the biblical texts they had in hand were infallible. A number of scholars, however, thought otherwise. They pursued Critica Sacra, the attempt to re-establish the “original” texts of Scripture from extant documents. In his Histoire du Vieux Testament (1678), Richard Simon, often hailed as the “Father of biblical criticism,” described this latter program:

One is not able to doubt that the truths contained in Holy Scripture are infallible and of a divine authority, since they come immediately from God, who in doing this used the ministry of men as his interpreters…. But in that men have been the depositories of Sacred Books, as well as other books, and that the first Originals [ les premiers Originaux ] had been lost it was in some measure impossible that a number of changes occurred due as much to the length of time passing, as to the negligence of copyists. It is for this reason St. Augustine recommends before all things to those who wish to study Scripture to apply themselves to the Criticism of the Bible and to correct the mistakes ( fautes ) in their copies (Augustine Book 2 of Christian Doctrine).

After describing “lower biblical criticism,” Simon proceeded to advocate what became known as “higher biblical criticism.” He denied that Moses wrote the Pentateuch in its entirety. He indicated that inspired “public scribes” interjected passages into the Pentateuch not written by Moses. He claimed that his approach answered the criticisms of the Bible’s authority proposed by Baruch Spinoza in his highly controversial work, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670). The government ordered the 1,300 copies of Simon’s book be burned.

During the so-called “Enlightenment” (1680-1799), various forms of biblical criticism countering the traditional view of Scripture’s authority sank deep roots in European countries such as Germany, France, and England.

Despite stiff criticisms of the Bible by English Deists in the eighteenth century, the orthodox view of Scripture’s authority remained the “popular opinion” among English Protestants in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his posthumous Letters of an Enquiring Spirit (1841) , Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fierce critic of biblical infallibility, printed a skeptic’s report to this effect:

I have frequently attended meetings of the British and Foreign Bible Society, where I have heard speakers of every denomination…and still have I heard the same doctrine—that the Bible was not to be regarded or reasoned about in the way that other good books are or may be…What is more their principal arguments were grounded in the position that the Bible throughout was dictated by Omniscience, and therefore in all its parts infallibly true and obligatory, and the men whose names are prefixed to the several books or chapters, were in fact but as different pens in the hand of one and the same Writer, and the words the words of God.

By the 1880s, however, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) and J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), the Bishop of Liverpool, bemoaned the fact that many English were abandoning their belief in the authority of Scripture. They had been impacted by Coleridge’s criticisms, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories which discounted the Bible’s account of creation, biblical higher critical studies and the like. A number of American newspapers commented on the same loss of confidence in biblical authority taking place in the United States especially between the years 1880 and 1900. In 1881, A.A. Hodge and B.B. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary published the influential article “Inspiration.” They affirmed that the doctrine of biblical infallibility constituted the central church tradition of western churches.

In Germany biblical critics and theologians from David Strauss (1808-1874) to Adolph von Harnack (1851-1930), denied the orthodox view of biblical infallibility. By contrast in 1893, Pope Leo XIII, in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus , “On the Study of the Bible,” re-affirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s commitment to biblical inerrancy. The Pope supported his teaching by quoting St. Augustine.

By the onset of World War I (1914), many secularized Europeans no longer esteemed Scripture as a significant authority. Thomas Huxley, one of Darwin’s most avid advocates, pointed out that the replacement of revealed knowledge by natural knowledge was a dominant trait of intellectual life in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the end of the twentieth century, atheistic naturalism had gained a hegemonic control over the curricula of many universities in both the United States and in Europe.

At Vatican II (1962-1965), the Roman Catholic Church abandoned her former commitment to biblical inerrancy and indicated that the Bible was infallible for faith and practice but not necessarily for matters historical and scientific. In evangelical circles, a similar phenomenon took place in which some theologians limited the authority of the Bible’s truthfulness to matters of faith and practice but not history and science.

A number of leading historians claimed that a belief in biblical inerrancy was a wayward doctrinal innovation of Fundamentalists. But many Evangelicals disagreed. They responded that biblical infallibility is taught in Scripture itself and represents the central tradition of western churches. Like St. Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin, they believed not only that Scripture is the Word of God, but it is a rule for faith and practice as well as history and science. They agreed with J. I. Packer that after hearing pastors preach, parishioners should be able to say, “I heard in the sermon what the Bible says.” They agreed with Luther that Psalm 1 provides an understanding of what the blessed life is: it is meditating upon the law of God. And they also agreed with the Westminster Catechism that their chief goal in life should be to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Further Reading

• Carson, D. A., ed. The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016).
• Woodbridge, John D. Biblical Authority: Infallibility and Inerrancy in the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015).

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material. If you are interested in translating our content or are interested in joining our community of translators,  please reach out to us .

18 February. Sacred spaces / places

• Post author By Maria Mercedes Carrion PhD
• Post date February 22, 2020
• 5 Comments on 18 February. Sacred spaces / places

What are sacred spaces? Sacred places? How do they correspond with geography, politics, mapping, history, myth, distance, materiality, origin, ephemera? How is a sacred space constituted in the transit or translation of a self, a subject, an individual, into a community? What role does community play in the material part of the sacred? What role does belief play in the constitution of rituals and, with it, of the hierophanic?

In composing your reflection, make sure you note how the chapter you read intertwines with premises established by MacDonald’s “Introduction” and Nancy’s chapter.   To keep this from putting undue pressure on your reading and writing for this coming week, this post does not have a regular deadline; you can post it the last day of Spring Break, March 11.

5 replies on “18 February. Sacred spaces / places”

“Place is not just a spatial, or even a spatial and temporal, notion; it is also a poetic and aesthetic conception and a political strategy…Places are human constructions that come into being when people act on space” (MacDonald 3).

“The sacred center defines and delineated ‘the quality of space and its opposition to the profane’ — that which is outside the boundary of the sacred center. While the boundary is centralized in geographical terms, ultimately it is a cognitive boundary, providing a psychological and intellectual diagram of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in relation to a sacred center” (MacDonald 107).

MacDonald’s declaration that space “a poetic and aesthetic conception and a political strategy” brings me to Nancy’s articulation of the political as a series of power relations which either controls the systematic order and administration of a society (the Right) or is (in the case of the Left) centrally concerned with the needs and desires of the community. Thinking about the connection between the concept of the political and the reality of the community/communal, I am interested in the ways that sacred geographical spaces become a material site of both unity and division, each of which is often fueled by political desire. For Olúpònà, the sacred city of Ile-Ife designates its own modern political consciousness within the Yoruba culture insomuch as it stands in for a unified homeland that coalesces the Yoruba people both culturally and spiritually through various rituals. Furthermore, Olúpònà, as quoted above, highlights how the “cognitive” boundary between what is spiritual and profane also tends to organize/categorize one’s intellectual and spiritual connection to a specific (possibly sacred) space/place. Once again I am drawn back to Clooney’s notion of a religious other, and how our experiences of place, whether sacred or not, is so closely tied to our political and social identities. It would seem that a Comparativist approach to understanding sacred geography might allow us to see the expansive nature of our critical relationship to place, however, the desire to protect the cultural specificities of specific religious and cultural traditions, as righteous as it may be, does require firm boundaries between what is sacred and profane as well as who is allowed and disinvited in/from any sacred/political space. However, if MacDonald’s observation of place as a “human construction” is correct, then it is possible that what makes a space sacred is not simply that it is a space in contrast to the profane, but what makes a space sacred it its capacity to speak to a multiplicities of spiritual connections which exceed the political restraints of religion proper.

My essay by Michael Barkun, “Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Millennialism,” appears to share more in common with Nancy’s premises/theses than those in MacDonald’s introduction. First and foremost, Barkun’s essay seems to speak to the dispersion and displacement (or “spacing”) of the sacred from any particular place (or dogma), exemplified by the postmodern practice of pastiche and its postmodern infrastructure in the internet. The hollow-earth, reptilian-species conspiracy theories, in their millennial form, are virtually stripped of any relation to the sacred, other than remnants of an end-of-days discourse in which the underworld-reptillians are purely malevolent and will make themselves apparent upon the final battle with the human race. I suppose the one point of contact with MacDonald’s introduction would be how the millennial underworld is an “aesthetic conception and a political strategy” (3). The narratological infrastructure for these conspiracy emerged our of pulp-fiction from the 40s/50s/60s and have been mobilized in order to account for hidden power brokers manipulating the strings of media and government. Given that there is almost always more than meets the eye when it concerns political systems, these conspiracy theories, however empirically and theoretically inadequate, arise in order to provide an account of that which is occluded. And by focalizing the invisible in an other-/under-worldly political space/place (MacDonald), these millennial conspiracy theories attempt to provide an account for the contemporary exposure to the divine (or divine justice) as the basis of their (online) communal gathering (Nancy).

Apologies for the delay on this. I didn’t see it go up on Saturday and then forgot to come back to it.

In the introduction to her work, MacDonald challenges the idea that “place” is simply a physical/spatial location. While certainly it encompasses this, she writes that “Place is not just a spatial, or even a spatial and temporal notion; it is also a poetic and aesthetic conception and a political strategy” (3). That is to say, when we think about “place,” we need to move beyond simply thinking of a given place in a given time, but also think about the communal processes that have taken place to assign meaning to this place, that have given a reason why this place is what it is, and why it’s important to people. The sense of belonging and significance that place evokes is owed to these human constructions. This concept is quite adeptly demonstrated by Nili Wazana’s article on the Promised Land. Wazana illustrates that there are two incompatible descriptions of the Promised Land in the Old Testament, and details the way some scholars have tried to resolve this conundrum (54-56). She challenges, however, the idea that the more expansive description was ever meant to be a precise physical map, stretching the Promised Land from one geographic location to another. Rather it “is a promise of world dominion” that should be understood “as a literary idiom and not literally as a border description” (71). What Wazana illustrates then is that place descriptions in the Hebrew Bible cannot always be assumed to simply put something on a map. Descriptions of the Promised Land may be more than a “spatial” description of its boundaries in a certain “temporal” period. The descriptions are poetic and aesthetic inasmuch as they reflect faith in the power of God and his promise to Israel. They are political in pushing the boundaries of Israel’s power further than the boundaries of the kingdom. In this more expansive vision, place is less about where the boundaries of the kingdom’s power lie, and more about the whole world as God’s footstool (Is. 66:1). The creative power and authority of the God of Israel feature more prominently than the sovereignty and authority of the king of Israel.

Where lies God? Where is the sacred in our midst? In my own reading of Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Divine Places,” the quest for God, particularly the desire to know the places in which the sacred exists was one of the main questions. Yet, as Nancy sought to (dis)prove the death of God, he also stressed that it is not that divinity is hidden like a secret; it is more likely that we do not have the eyes to see it.

As Mary MacDonald explains, the distinction between the sacred and the profane is not always clear. However, quoting the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, MacDonald emphasizes that there are times “’when the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany [manifestation of the sacred]’” and cause “’a break in the homogeneity of places’” (MacDonald, 8). Put simply, Eliade’s understanding of the sacred and the profane might be considered as a project of Western dualisms. Nonetheless, Eliade’s argument might still be helpful when thinking of the significance of particular places—places that are constructed to facilitate interactions with the divine.

Ile Ife might be such a place. Stressing that the Yoruba people does not make such a sharp delineation between the sacred and the profane, African-heritage religions scholar Olupona also states that Eliade’s understanding of sacred places/spaces as center of the world still “provide[s] a basis with which to begin interpreting African religious experiences” (89). Thus, building on Eliade’s idea of sacred place, Olupona explains that for the Yoruba people, Ile-Ife is a center. As a center, in addition to being a place of memory and nostalgia of the past, Ile Ife is also place where creation begins. Still, it is important to emphasize that this place is not constantly shifting. It is not dynamic or tied to a sacred people. Rather, Ile Ife offers a static centralized model of place; that is, this place is “associated with a historical and mythological experience of the divine” (90).

Toward the beginning of his essay, Olupona paused the question: how does place impact the religious experience and imagination of a people? It is a different, yet similar in essence to what I paused of Jean-Luc Nancy: why do we care to find the places where the divine exists? Perhaps, I did find a response in Olupona’s reflection on Ile Ife as a center of the world. Because sacred places are also political, sacred places are used to foster nationalism, as a way of political mobilization, and creates boundaries. Furthermore, using religious imaginary, sacred places are imagined/remembered to improve the welfare of people. As a result, I argue that religious imaginary and place create a faith that is political!

This week, I am reflecting on the connections between Mary Gerhart’s chapter on Hildegard and Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussion of community/communion. In her exploration of the life of Hildegard of Bingen, Gerhart realizes she must ask not just, “Who was Hildegard?” but, “Where was/is Hildegard?”

“What began for me as a fascination with a major theologian, composer, prophet, visionary, and possibly artists of the twelfth century turned into a wrestling match with a huge bin of gnarled and knotted twine. However much I read, I had a sense that mere information was not enough. Neither Hildegard’s biography nor her cosmology lends itself to a straightforward textual analysis: In order to retrieve pre-critical beliefs of nine hundred years ago—beliefs vastly different from ours today—I found that I needed a sense of place in order to reconstruct information within my own mind-space” (Experiences of Place, 119.)

I see Gerhart making an immensely important claim about historical research: it can never be purely empirical, textual, or neutral. In order to most authentically engage with a historical subject, we must have an understanding of place that is imaginative and theological.

Jean-Luc Nancy’s work is also helpful here. He illuminates the concept of place itself as extremely mobile and malleable, with both ontological and epistemological dimensions. When Nancy asks, “Is there a place for God?” he invokes an ontological understanding of place—i.e. God is above, God is in heaven, God dwells with us—as well as a litany of epistemological concerns—i.e. is there a place for God in certain discourses? What are the political dimensions of God? With this expansive understanding of place in mind, Gerhart’s visit to the monasteries where Hildegard lived, worked, and worshipped gave her more than just a sense of the physical spaces Hildegard inhabited. Seeing what Hildegard saw—the woods, the morning fog, the light of a candle—allowed Gerhart to see Hildegard’s cosmology with greater depth. Despite the fact that Hildegard wrote extensively about Heaven, for example, Gerhart is only able to access Hildegard’s beliefs about Heaven through a communion with Hildegard in place and space, not just in the archive of her writing.

This is the greatest lesson I take from engaging comparatively with religious space/place: Historical research—both personal and academic—cannot just be done at arm’s length through documents and data; it must involve communion with those who have come before us, communion through place that stretches beyond the ontological.

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100-Word Faith Stories: (Very) short essays about unexpectedly experiencing God in the world today

In new life—whether in the priesthood or bringing a child into the world—we can experience God in new ways. Faith comes from surprising places. We asked readers to share stories of surprising moments of faith in no more than 100 words. In these (very) short essays, they describe their faith journeys found through these experiences with life. They show how faith can be strengthened in these small yet meaningful ways. 

I am currently pregnant, but my husband and I know there are several problems with this pregnancy. We don’t know what the end will look like, but there is a chance our third baby will not survive. In the midst of this, I feel God tapping me on the shoulder through prayer, Scripture or those around me trying to say: “No, you don’t know the outcome yet, but I’m with you through it all. I haven’t abandoned you. Trust me. I’m here, I’ve got you, and I love you. Elizabeth Hokamp  Sterling, Kans.

We’ve lost our intimacy with the life and death of things we eat. Humans can pretend their meat wasn’t a living being before it arrived at the market elegantly wrapped. I have never said grace so earnestly as I did after hunting, cooking and eating a woodcock. As the instrument of my dinner’s demise, I felt sad and grateful for its life and that it died on my behalf. Giving thanks to God for his creature, I thought of how serious a decision it is to eat meat, to take a life, when other options are available. God provides.  Anthony Giattino Yonkers, N.Y.

May 17, 1975. I lay prostrate on the cold marble floor of the cathedral in Trenton, N.J., preparing to be ordained a Catholic priest. I listened to the Litany of the Saints being sung. When the music concluded, I began to right myself from the floor. My hands touched the marble where my body had been, and it was warm. This was what servant priesthood would be for me; to draw from the cold world, and absorb in my body all that is cold, and make it warm with the love of God within. My soul smiled with joy. Msgr. Charlie Cicerale Willingboro, N.J.

The day arrives. The manufacturing business that sustained the family over generations succumbs, a victim of change. Virtually nothing is left. He worries. What will he do now, in middle age? How will he provide for his family? 

On his weary way home, he feels conflicted. To visit a cheery, well-lit pub or a quiet church? Both are on his path. Inexplicably, he chooses to trudge into the church, slipping into the back pew. It is deserted and peaceful; the light of the tabernacle comforts. “Fear not; I am with you always.”

Comforted, he walks out of the church. Faith strengthens. Tom Thomas Bengaluru, India

It’s his smile, a toothy grin that, spread wide, creates five deep dimples across his face. It brings God close every time I see it. During the pandemic, his smile was lost in the confusion of a deaf child unable to read lips concealed behind masks. But he refused to disappear. Educators taught him creative ways of connecting, like using big buttons with their smiling faces on it, and being more intentional with their eye contact. He and his teachers navigated the barriers until the barriers finally came down. It is his smile that, for me, is faith made real. Gretchen Crowder Dallas, Tex.

Related: 100-Word Faith Stories in our November 2022 Issue

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Religious Experience

Religious experiences can be characterized generally as experiences that seem to the person having them to be of some objective reality and to have some religious import. That reality can be an individual, a state of affairs, a fact, or even an absence, depending on the religious tradition the experience is a part of. A wide variety of kinds of experience fall under the general rubric of religious experience. The concept is vague, and the multiplicity of kinds of experiences that fall under it makes it difficult to capture in any general account. Part of that vagueness comes from the term ‘religion,’ which is difficult to define in any way that does not either rule out institutions that clearly are religions, or include terms that can only be understood in the light of a prior understanding of what religions are. Nevertheless, we can make some progress in elucidating the concept by distinguishing it from distinct but related concepts.

First, religious experience is to be distinguished from religious feelings, in the same way that experience in general is to be distinguished from feelings in general. A feeling of elation, for example, even if it occurs in a religious context, does not count in itself as a religious experience, even if the subject later comes to think that the feeling was caused by some objective reality of religious significance. An analogy with sense experience is helpful here. If a subject feels a general feeling of happiness, not on account of anything in particular, and later comes to believe the feeling was caused by the presence of a particular person, that fact does not transform the feeling of happiness into a perception of the person. Just as a mental event, to be a perception of an object, must in some sense seem to be an experience of that object, a religiously oriented mental event, to be a religious experience, must in some way seem to be an experience of a religiously significant reality. So, although religious feelings may be involved in many, or even most, religious experiences, they are not the same thing. Discussions of religious experience in terms of feelings, like Schleiermacher’s (1998) “feeling of absolute dependence,” or Otto’s (1923) feeling of the numinous, were important early contributions to theorizing about religious experience, but some have since then argued (see Gellman 2001 and Alston 1991, for example) that religious affective states are not all there is to religious experience. To account for the experiences qua experiences, we must go beyond subjective feelings.

Religious experience is also to be distinguished from mystical experience. Although there is obviously a close connection between the two, and mystical experiences are religious experiences, not all religious experiences qualify as mystical. The word ‘mysticism’ has been understood in many different ways. James (1902) took mysticism to necessarily involve ineffability, which would rule out many cases commonly understood to be mystical. Alston (1991) adopted the term grudgingly as the best of a bad lot and gave it a semi-technical meaning. But in its common, non-technical sense, mysticism is a specific religious system or practice, deliberately undertaken in order to come to some realization or insight, to come to unity with the divine, or to experience the ultimate reality directly. At the very least, religious experiences form a broader category; many religious experiences, like those of Saint Paul, Arjuna, Moses, Muhammad, and many others come unsought, not as the result of some deliberate practice undertaken to produce an experience.

1. Types of Religious Experience

2. language and experience, 3. epistemological issues, 4. the diverse objects of religious experience, other internet resources, related entries.

Reports of religious experiences reveal a variety of different kinds. Perhaps most are visual or auditory presentations (visions and auditions), but not through the physical eyes or ears. Subjects report “seeing” or “hearing,” but quickly disavow any claim to seeing or hearing with bodily sense organs. Such experiences are easy to dismiss as hallucinations, but the subjects of the experience frequently claim that though it is entirely internal, like a hallucination or imagination, it is nevertheless a veridical experience, through some spiritual analog of the eye or ear (James 1902 and Alston 1991 cite many examples).

In other cases, the language of “seeing” is used in its extended sense of realization, as when a yogi is said to “see” his or her identity with Brahman; Buddhists speak of “seeing things as they are” as one of the hallmarks of true enlightenment, where this means grasping or realizing the emptiness of things, but not in a purely intellectual way.

A third type is the religious experience that comes through sensory experiences of ordinary objects, but seems to carry with it extra information about some supramundane reality. Examples include experiencing God in nature, in the starry sky, or a flower, or the like. Another person standing nearby would see exactly the same sky or flower, but would not necessarily have the further religious content to his or her experience. There are also cases in which the religious experience just is an ordinary perception, but the physical object is itself the object of religious significance. Moses’s experience of the burning bush, or the Buddha’s disciples watching him levitate, are examples of this type. A second person standing nearby would see exactly the same phenomenon. Witnesses to miracles are having that kind of religious experience, whether they understand it that way or not.

A fourth type of religious experience is harder to describe: it can’t be characterized accurately in sensory language, even analogically, yet the subject of the experience insists that the experience is a real, direct awareness of some religiously significant reality external to the subject. These kinds of experiences are usually described as “ineffable.” Depending on one’s purposes, other ways of dividing up religious experiences will suggest themselves. For example, William James (1902) divides experiences into “healthy-minded” and “sick-minded,” according to the personality of the subject, which colors the content of the experience itself. Keith Yandell (1993, 25–32) divided them into five categories, according to the content of the experiences: monotheistic, nirvanic (enlightenment experiences associated with Buddhism), kevalic (enlightenment experiences associated with Jainism), moksha (experiences of release from karma, associated with Hinduism), and nature experiences. Differences of object certainly make differences in content, and so make differences in what can be said about the experiences. See Section 4 for further discussion of this issue.

Many have thought that there is some special problem with religious language, that it can’t be meaningful in the same way that ordinary language is. The Logical Positivists claimed that language is meaningful only insofar as it is moored in our experiences of the physical world. Since we can’t account for religious language by linking it to experiences of the physical world, such language is meaningless. Even though religious claims look in every way like ordinary assertions about the world, their lack of empirical consequences makes them meaningless. Ayer (1952) calls such language “metaphysical,” and therefore meaningless. He says, “That a transcendent god exists 3s a metaphysical assertion, and therefore not literally significant.” The principle of verification went through many formulations as it faced criticism. But if it is understood as a claim about meaning in ordinary language, it seems to be self-undermining, since there is no empirical way to verify it. Eventually, that approach to language fell out of favor, but some still use a modified, weaker version to criticize religious language. For example, Antony Flew (Flew and MacIntyre, 1955) relies on a principle to the effect that if a claim is not falsifiable, it is somehow illegitimate. Martin (1990) and Nielsen (1985) invoke a principle that combines verifiability and falsifiability; to be meaningful, a claim must be one or the other. It is not clear that even these modified and weakened versions of the verification principle entirely escape self-undermining. Even if they do, they seem to take other kinds of language with them—like moral language, talk about the future or past, and talk about the contents of others’ minds — that we might be loath to lose. Moreover, to deny the meaningfulness of religious-experience claims on the grounds that it is not moored in experience begs the question, in that it assumes that religious experiences are not real experiences.

Another possibility is to allow that religious claims are meaningful, but they are not true or false, because they should not be understood as assertions. Braithwaite (1970), for example, understands religious claims to be expressions of commitments to sets of values. On such a view, what appears to be a claim about a religious experience is not in fact a claim at all. It might be that some set of mental events, with which the experience itself can be identified, would be the ground and prompting of the claim, but it would not properly be what the claim is about.

A second challenge to religious-experience claims comes from Wittgensteinian accounts of language. Wittgenstein (1978) muses at some length on the differences between how ordinary language is used, and how religious language is used. Others (see Phillips 1970, for example), following Wittgenstein, have tried to give an explanation of the strangeness of religious language by invoking the idea of a language-game. Each language-game has its own rules, including its own procedures for verification. As a result, it is a mistake to treat it like ordinary language, expecting evidence in the ordinary sense, in the same way that it would be a mistake to ask for the evidence for a joke. “I saw God” should not be treated in the same way as “I saw Elvis.” Some even go so far as to say the religious language-game is isolated from other practices, such that it would be a mistake to derive any claims about history, geography, or cosmology from them, never mind demand the same kind of evidence for them. On this view, religious experiences should not be treated as comparable to sense experiences, but that does not entail that they are not important, nor that they are not in some sense veridical, in that they could still be avenues for important insights about reality. Such a view can be attributed to D. Z. Phillips (1970).

While this may account for some of the unusual aspects of religious language, it certainly does not capture what many religious people think about the claims they make. As creationism illustrates, many religious folk think it is perfectly permissible to draw empirical conclusions from religious doctrine. Hindus and Buddhists for many centuries thought there was a literal Mount Meru in the middle of the (flat, disc-shaped) world. It would be very odd if “The Buddha attained enlightenment under the bo tree” had to be given a very different treatment from “The Buddha ate rice under the bo tree” because the first is a religious claim and the second is an ordinary empirical claim. There are certainly entailment relations between religious and non-religious claims, too: “Jesus died for my sins” straightforwardly entails “Jesus died.”

Since the subjects of religious experiences tend to take them to be real experiences of some external reality, we may ask what reason there is to think they are right. That is to say, do religious experiences amount to good reasons for religious belief? One answer to that question is what is often called the Argument from Religious Experience: Religious experiences are in all relevant respects like sensory experiences; sensory experiences are excellent grounds for beliefs about the physical world; so religious experiences are excellent grounds for religious beliefs. This argument, or one very like it, can be found in Swinburne (1979), Alston (1991), Plantinga (1981, 2000), Netland (2022) and others. Critics of this approach generally find ways in which religious experiences are different from sensory experiences, and argue that those differences are enough to undermine the evidential value of the experiences. Swinburne (1979) invokes what he calls the “Principle of Credulity,” according to which one is justified in believing that what seems to one to be present actually is present, unless some appropriate defeater is operative. He then discusses a variety of circumstances that would be defeaters in the ordinary sensory case, and argues that those defeaters do not obtain, or not always, in the case of religious experience. To reject his argument, one would have to show that religious experience is unlike sensory experience in that in the religious case, one or more of the defeaters always obtains. Anyone who accepts the principle has excellent reason to accept the deliverances of religious experience, unless he or she believes that defeaters always, or almost always, obtain.

Plantinga offers a different kind of argument. According to Cartesian-style foundationalism, in order to count as justified, a belief must either be grounded in other justified beliefs, or derive its justification from some special status, like infallibility, incorrigibility, or indubitability. There is a parallel view about knowledge. Plantinga (1981) argued that such a foundationalism is inconsistent with holding one’s own ordinary beliefs about the world to be justified (or knowledge), because our ordinary beliefs derived from sense-experience aren’t derived from anything infallible, indubitable, or incorrigible. In fact, we typically treat them as foundational, in need of no further justification. If we hold sensory beliefs to be properly basic, then we have to hold similarly formed religious beliefs, formed on experiences of God manifesting himself to a believer (Plantinga calls them ‘M-beliefs’), as properly basic. He proposed that human beings have a faculty—what John Calvin called the ‘ sensus divinitatis ’—that allows them to be aware of God’s actions or dispositions with respect to them. If beliefs formed by sense-experience can be properly basic, then beliefs formed by this faculty cannot, in any principled way, be denied that same status. His developed theory of warrant (2000) implies that, if the beliefs are true, then they are warranted. One cannot attack claims of religious experience without first addressing the question as to whether the religious claims are true. He admits that, since there are people in other religious traditions who have based beliefs about religious matters on similar purported manifestations, they may be able to make the same argument about their own religious experiences.

Alston develops a general theory of doxastic practices (constellations of belief-forming mechanisms, together with characteristic background assumptions and sets of defeaters), gives an account of what it is to rationally engage in such a practice, and then argues that at least the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of Christian religious experiences fulfills those requirements. If we think of the broad doxastic practices we currently employ, we see that some of them can be justified by the use of other practices. The practice of science, for example, reduces mostly to the practices of sense-perception, deductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning (memory and testimony also make contributions, of course). The justificatory status the practice gives to its product beliefs derives from those more basic practices. Most, however, cannot be so reduced. How are they justified, then? It seems that they cannot be justified non-circularly, that is, without the use of premises derived from the practices themselves. Our only justification for continuing to trust these practices is that they are firmly established, interwoven with other practices and projects of ours, and have “stood the test of time” by producing mostly consistent sets of beliefs. They produce a sufficiently consistent set of beliefs if they don’t produce massive, unavoidable contradictions on central matters, either internally, or with the outputs of other equally well-established practices. If that’s all there is to be said about our ordinary practices, then we ought to extend the same status to other practices that have the same features. He then argues that the Christian practice of belief-formation on the basis of religious experience does have those features. Like Plantinga, he admits that such an argument might be equally available to other religious practices; it all depends on whether the practice in question generates massive and unavoidable contradictions, on central matters, either internally, or with other equally well-established practices. To undermine this argument, one would have to show either that Alston’s criteria for rationality of a practice are too permissive, or that religious practices never escape massive contradictions.

Both Plantinga’s and Alston’s defense of the epistemic value of religious experiences turn crucially on some degree of similarity with sense-experience. But they are not simple arguments from analogy; not just any similarities will do to make the positive argument, and not just any dissimilarities will do to defeat the argument. The similarities or dissimilarities need to be epistemologically relevant. It is not enough, for example, to show that religious experiences do not typically allow for independent public verification, unless one wants to give up on other perfectly respectable practices, like rational intuition, that also lack that feature.

The two most important defeaters on the table for claims of the epistemic authority of religious experience are the fact of religious diversity, and the availability of naturalistic explanations for religious experiences. Religious diversity is a prima facie defeater for the veridicality of religious experiences in the same way that wildly conflicting eyewitness reports undermine each other. If the reports are at all similar, then it may be reasonable to conclude that there is some truth to the testimony, at least in broad outline. A version of this objection is the argument from divine hiddenness (cf. Lovering 2013). If God exists, and shows himself to some people in religious experiences, then the fact that he doesn’t do so for more people, more widely distributed, requires some explanation. Axtell provides another version of that objection. He argues that to insist that one’s own religious convictions are true in the face of the diversity of religions is to reason counter-inductively, and is therefore irrational. The reasoning is counter-inductive because your own convictions come from the same kinds of epistemic sources (investment in testimonial authority) as those you deem to be wrong, so if you are right, it is just a matter of luck. But if two eyewitness reports disagree on the most basic facts about what happened, then it seems that neither gives you good grounds for any beliefs about what happened. It certainly seems that the contents of religious-experience reports are radically different from one another. Some subjects of religious experiences report experience of nothingness as the ultimate reality, some a vast impersonal consciousness in which we all participate, some an infinitely perfect, personal creator. To maintain that one’s own religious experiences are veridical, one would have to a) find some common core to all these experiences, such that in spite of differences of detail, they could reasonably be construed as experiences of the same reality, or b) insist that one’s own experiences are veridical, and that therefore those of other traditions are not veridical. The first is difficult to manage, in the face of the manifest differences across religions. Nevertheless, John Hick (1989) develops a view of that kind, making use of a Kantian two-worlds epistemology. The idea is that the object of these experiences, in itself, is one and the same reality, but it is experienced phenomenally by different people differently. Thus, is possible to see how one and the same object can be experienced in ways that are completely incompatible with one another. This approach is only as plausible as the Kantian framework itself is. Jerome Gellman (2001) proposes a similar idea, without the Kantian baggage. Solutions like these leave the problem untouched: If the different practices produce experiences the contents of which are inconsistent with one another, one of the practices must be unreliable. Alston (1991) and Plantinga (2000) develop the second kind of answer. The general strategy is to argue that, from within a tradition, a person acquires epistemic resources not available to those outside the tradition, just as travelling to the heart of a jungle allows one to see things that those who have not made the journey can’t see. As a result, even if people in other traditions can make the same argument, it is still reasonable to say that some are right and the others are wrong. The things that justify my beliefs still justify them, even if you have comparable resources justifying a contrary view.

Naturalistic explanations for religious experiences are thought to undermine their epistemic value because, if the naturalistic explanation is sufficient to explain the experience, we have no grounds for positing anything beyond that naturalistic cause. Freud (1927) and Marx (1876/1977) are frequently held up as offering such explanations. Freud claims that religious experiences can be adequately explained by psychological mechanisms having their root in early childhood experience and psychodynamic tensions. Marx similarly attributes religious belief in general to materialistic economic forces. Both claim that, since the hidden psychological or economic explanations are sufficient to explain the origins of religious belief, there is no need to suppose, in addition, that the beliefs are true. Freud’s theory of religion has few adherents, even among the psychoanalytically inclined, and Marx’s view likewise has all but been abandoned, but that is not to say that something in the neighborhood might not be true. More recently, neurological explanations of religious experience have been put forward as reasons to deny the veridicality of the experiences. Events in the brain that occur during meditative states and other religious experiences are very similar to events that happen during certain kinds of seizures, or with certain kinds of mental disorders, and can also be induced with drugs. Therefore, it is argued, there is nothing more to religious experiences than what happens in seizures, mental disorders, or drug experiences. Some who are studying the neurological basis of religious experience do not infer that they are not veridical (see, e.g., d’Aquili and Newberg 1999), but many do. Guthrie (1995), for example, argues that religion has its origin in our tendency to anthropomorphize phenomena in our vicinity, seeing agency where there is none.

There are general problems with all kinds of naturalistic explanations as defeaters. First of all, as Gellman (2001) points out, most such explanations (like the psychoanalytic and socio-political ones) are put forward as hypotheses, not as established facts. The proponent assumes that the experiences are not veridical, then casts around for an explanation. This is not true of the neurological explanations, but they face another kind of weakness noted by Ellwood (1999): every experience, whatever its source, is accompanied by a corresponding neurological state. To argue that the experience is illusory because there is a corresponding brain state is fallacious. The same reasoning would lead us to conclude that sensory experiences are illusory, since in each sensory experience, there is some corresponding neurological state that is just like the state that occurs in the corresponding hallucination. The proponent of the naturalistic explanation as a defeater owes us some reason to believe that his or her argument is not just another skeptical argument from the veil of perception.

One further epistemological worry accompanies religious experience. James claimed that, while mystical experiences proved authoritative grounds for belief in the person experiencing them, they cannot give grounds for a person to whom the experience is reported. In other words, my experience is evidence for me, but not for you. Bovens (2012) gives a modern expansion and explanation of this claim. The claim can be understood in a variety of ways, depending on the kind of normativity that attaches to the purported evidential relation. Some (see Oakes 1976, for example) have claimed that religious experiences epistemically can necessitate belief; that is, anyone who has the experience and doesn’t form the corresponding belief is making an epistemic mistake, much like a person who, in normal conditions, refuses to believe his or her eyes. More commonly, defenders of the epistemic value of religious experience claim that the experiences make it epistemically permissible to form the belief, but you may also be justified in not forming the belief. The testimony of other people about what they have experienced is much the same. In some cases, a person would be unjustified in rejecting the testimony of others, and in other cases, one would be justified in accepting it, but need not accept it. This leaves us with three possibilities, on the assumption that the subject of the experience is justified in forming a religious belief on the basis of his or her experience, and that he or she tells someone else about it: the testimony might provide compelling evidence for the hearer, such that he or she would be unjustified in rejecting the claim; the testimony might provide non-compelling justification for the hearer to accept the claim; or the testimony might fail to provide any kind of grounds for the hearer to accept the claim. When a subject makes a claim on the basis of an ordinary experience, it might fall into any one of these three categories, depending on the claim’s content and the epistemic situation of the hearer. The most natural thing to say about religious experience claims is that they work the same way (on the assumption that they give the subject of the experience, who is making the claim, any justification for his or her beliefs). James, and some others after him, claim that testimony about religious experiences cannot fall under either of the first two categories. If that’s true, it must be because of something special about the nature of the experiences. If we assume that the experiences cannot be shown a priori to be defective somehow, and that religious language is intelligible—and if we do not make these assumptions, then the question of religious testimony doesn’t even arise—then it must be because the evidential value of the experience is so small that it cannot survive transmission to another person; that is, it must be that in the ordinary act of reporting an experience to someone else, there is some defeater at work that is always stronger than whatever evidential force the experience itself has. While there are important differences between ordinary sense-experience and religious experience (clarity of the experience, amount of information it contains, presence of competing explanations, and the like), it is not clear whether the differences are great enough to disqualify religious testimony always and everywhere.

Just as there are a variety of religions, each with its own claims about the nature of reality, there are a variety of objects and states of affairs that the subjects of these experiences claim to be aware of. Much analytic philosophy of religion has been done in Europe and the nations descended from Europe, so much of the discussion has been in terms of God as conceived of in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. In those traditions, the object of religious experiences is typically God himself, understood as an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, free, and perfectly good spirit. God, for reasons of his own, reveals himself to people, some of them unbidden (like Moses, Muhammad, and Saint Paul), and some because they have undertaken a rigorous practice to draw closer to him (like the mystics). To say that an experience comes unbidden is not to say that nothing the subject has done has prepared her, or primed her, for the experience (see Luhrmann 2012); it is only to claim that the subject has not undertaken any practice aimed at producing a religious experience. In such experiences, God frequently delivers a message at the same time, but he need not. He is always identifiable as the same being who revealed himself to others in the same tradition. Other experiences can be of angels, demons, saints, heaven, hell, or other religiously significant objects.

In other traditions, it is not necessarily a personal being who is the object of the experience, or even a positive being at all. In the traditions that find their origin in the Indian subcontinent—chiefly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—the object of religious experiences is some basic fact or feature of reality, rather than some entity separate from the universe. In the orthodox Hindu traditions, one may certainly have an experience of a god or some other supernatural entity (like Arjuna’s encounter with Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita), but a great many important kinds of experiences are of Brahman, and its identity with the self. In Yoga, which is based in the Samkhya understanding of the nature of things, the mystical practice of yoga leads to a calming and stilling of the mind, which allows the yogi to apprehend directly that he or she is not identical to, or even causally connected with, the physical body, and this realization is what liberates him or her from suffering.

In Theravada Buddhism, the goal of meditation is to “see things as they are,” which is to see them as unsatisfactory, impermanent, and not-self (Gowans 2003, 191). The meditator, as he or she makes progress along the way, sheds various delusions and attachments. The last one to go is the delusion that he or she is a self. To see this is to see all of reality as made up of sequences of momentary events, each causally dependent on the ones that went before. There are no abiding substances, and no eternal souls. Seeing reality that way extinguishes the fires of craving, and liberates the meditator from the necessity of rebirth (Laumakis 2008, 158–161). Seeing things as they are involves removing from the mind all the delusions that stand in the way of such seeing, which is done by meditation practices that develop the meditator’s mastery of his or her own mind. The type of meditation that brings this mastery and allows the meditator to see the true nature of things is called Vipassana (insight) meditation. It typically involves some object of meditation, which can be some feature of the meditator him- or herself, some feature of the physical or mental world, or some abstraction, which then becomes the focus of the meditator’s concentration and examination. In the end, it is hoped, the meditator will see in the object the unsatisfactory and impermanent nature of things and that there is no self to be found in them. At the moment of that insight, nirvana is achieved. While the experience of nirvana is essentially the realization of a kind of insight, it is also accompanied by other experiential elements, especially of the cessation of negative mental states. Nirvana is described in the Buddhist canon as the extinction of the fires of desire. The Theravada tradition teaches other kinds of meditation that can help the meditator make progress, but the final goal can’t be achieved without vipassana meditation.

In the Mahayana Buddhist traditions, this idea of the constantly fluctuating nature of the universe is extended in various ways. For some, even those momentary events that make up the flow of the world are understood to be empty of inherent existence (the idea of inherent existence is understood differently in different traditions) to the point that what one sees in the enlightenment experience is the ultimate emptiness ( sunyata ) of all things. In the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism, this is understood as emptiness of external existence; that is, to see things as they are is to see them as all mind-dependent. In the Zen school of Mahayana Buddhism, the enlightenment experience ( kensho ) reveals that reality contains no distinctions or dualities. Since concepts and language always involve distinctions, which always involve duality, the insight so gained cannot be achieved conceptually or expressed linguistically. In all Mahayana schools, what brings enlightenment is direct realization of sunyata as a basic fact about reality.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in the Chinese traditions. The idea of religious experience seems to be almost completely absent in the Confucian tradition; the social world looms large, and the idea of an ultimate reality that needs to be experienced becomes much less prominent. Before the arrival of Buddhism in China, Confucianism was primarily a political and ethical system, with no particular concern with the transcendent (though people who identified themselves as Confucians frequently engaged in Chinese folk religious practices). Nevertheless, meditation (and therefore something that could be called “religious experience”) did come to play a role in Confucian practice in the tenth century, as Confucian thought began to be influenced by Buddhist and Daoist thought. The resulting view is known as Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism retains the Mencian doctrine that human beings are by nature good, but in need of purification. Since goodness resides in every person, then examination of oneself should reveal the nature of goodness, through the experience of the vital force within ( qi ). The form of meditation that arises from this line of thought (“quiet sitting” or “sitting and forgetting”) are very like Buddhist vipassana meditation, but there is no value placed on any particular insight gained, though one can experience the principle of unity ( li ) behind the world. Success is measured in gradual moral improvement.

The Daoist ideal is to come to an understanding of the Dao, the fundamental nature of reality that explains all things in the world, and live according to it. Knowledge of the Dao is essential to the good life, but this knowledge cannot be learned from discourses, or transmitted by teaching. It is only known by experiential acquaintance. The Dao gives the universe a kind of grain, or flow, going against which causes human difficulty. The good human life is then one that respects the flow of Dao, and goes along with it. This is what is meant by “life in accordance with nature,” and is the insight behind the Daoist admonition of wu wei, sometimes glossed as “actionless action.” By paying attention to reality as it presents itself, a person can learn what the Dao is, and can experience unity with it. This picture of reality, along with the picture of how one can come to know it, heavily influenced the development of Ch’an Buddhism, which became Zen.

All of the same epistemological problems that arise for theism will also arise for these other traditions, though in different forms. That is, one can ask of experiences of Brahman, Sunyata, the Dao, and anything else that is the object of religious experience whether there is any reason to think the experience is veridical. One can also ask whether testimony about those experiences carries the same weight as ordinary experience. Naturalistic explanations can also be offered to these experiences. It is equally true that the responses that have been offered to these objections in a theistic context are also available to defenders of non-theistic religious experience.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Religious Experience Resources , by Wesley Wildman, Boston University.

empiricism: logical | hiddenness of God | James, William | mysticism | perception: epistemological problems of | religion: epistemology of | religious diversity | testimony: epistemological problems of

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David French

Don’t let our broken politics mangle our faith.

By David French

Opinion Columnist

In 2007, I had a conversation about the culture war with the evangelical pastor Tim Keller that I’ve never forgotten. Keller, who was the founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, died last year , a devastating loss.

Keller was describing a change in his church’s young adults. “I’ve long seen friendships flourish across political differences,” he told me. “Now I see that disagreement often ends friendships.” As he put it, what he was seeing was a change from a culture in which younger Americans were intolerant of cruelty and tolerant of good-faith political differences to a culture in which people were intolerant of political differences and tolerant of cruelty — so long as that cruelty was aimed at the right targets.

Keller wasn’t just describing young Christians. He was seeing the change everywhere. Your political or theological positions were becoming the primary measure of your virtue, and your conduct was a distant second. According to this ethos, being for or against abortion rights, for example, defines you far more than the way you treat other people.

I’m reminded of a recent conversation I had with a college student who said, “When I first heard you speak, I thought you were a decent conservative, and then I found out you were pro-life.” I’ve heard comments like that many times in recent years, and not just about abortion. Any disagreement about any important issue can lead to crushing disappointment and outright anger.

Hidden within comments like that is an assumption — that her point of view was so obviously correct and mine so obviously wrong — that my pro-life position created an irrebuttable presumption of bad character.

This dynamic runs both ways, often with a vengeance. On March 29, President Biden issued a proclamation declaring March 31 to be the Transgender Day of Visibility. He’s done it all three years of his presidency so far, yet this year, March 31 also happened to be Easter Sunday. And so a number of prominent Christians chose to interpret Biden’s proclamation as a direct attack on the Christian faith. The popular Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh called Biden a “ demon .” Biden, Senator Josh Hawley said , “deliberately desecrated the most sacred holy day in the Christian faith.”

One can certainly disagree with Biden’s choice to elevate the Transgender Day of Visibility, but it’s quite a stretch to say that Biden was deliberately targeting Easter when Easter doesn’t occur on a fixed date and only rarely falls on March 31. In fact, according to the Census Bureau , the next time Easter is on March 31 will be the year 2086. So Biden did exactly what one might expect when two events occur on the same day — he issued statements for both.

Does that make him a “demon”? Is there any ounce of charity in saying that a practicing Catholic “deliberately desecrated” his own holiday? Of course not, but we are watching the culmination of the trend that Keller pointed out to me nearly 20 years ago. Disagreement doesn’t just fracture friendships; it now breeds contempt.

What can be done? It’s not enough to simply decry our political and religious problem. It’s necessary to try to articulate a better way. That’s why I worked with my friends Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, and Curtis Chang, host of the “Good Faith” podcast, to create a curriculum for church groups to articulate a profoundly different approach to politics, one that emphasizes the means of our engagement just as much as the ends we pursue.

I’ve been working on this curriculum for a while. The journalist and author Tim Alberta wrote about the genesis of the idea in his book “ The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory : American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.” I started the project well before I joined The Times, in part because I don’t think America can have a healthy culture or healthy democracy without virtuous Christian engagement. Religious dysfunction can tear this nation apart.

The curriculum is called The After Party , it’s free, and while it’s aimed at Christians, I believe its key principles can resonate with people of good will from other faith traditions as well. At its root is an obvious scriptural reality that I hadn’t fully understood until I was well into my (quite partisan) early adulthood — that scripture speaks much more to how we treat our neighbors than it speaks to the policy goals of our political engagement.

Wrong is not a synonym for evil, and right is not the equivalent of righteous. As the Apostle Paul made clear in his first letter to the Corinthian Church , I can purport to speak and act as a Christian, but if I “do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

This is a lesson I’ve had to learn and relearn, time and time again. I’m the product of something evangelicals call “worldview training.” One of the core goals of worldview training is to educate evangelical young people into a proper Christian approach to politics, and worldview training strongly emphasized issues. In the Cold War era, it taught us the virtues of capitalism versus communism and the merits of the American system over the Soviet system. In the culture war era, it emphasized promoting religious freedom, opposing abortion and confronting sexual libertinism.

I mainly received this training exactly in the way we hope to deliver The After Party, in Sunday school and church groups. But it would also take place in weekend or weeklong conventions and seminars. Worldview training was not necessarily an experience most evangelicals received, but if you were interested in politics, it was there to shape and mold your approach.

Over time, proper issue orientation became the sine qua non of evangelical political engagement and of Christian character assessment. It’s outcomes that matter. Concerns about process or relationships were secondary, at best. This is why you see so many Christians say things like , “If you vote Democrat as a Christian, you can no longer call yourself a Christian,” even though the Democratic Party contains millions upon millions of Bible-believing Christians . This is why so many Republicans believe Donald Trump is a man of faith . If he’s perceived as right on the issues — and has the right enemies — then he has to be a good man.

To many of these Republicans, it doesn’t matter if a Democrat professes faith in Christ, believes in the inerrancy of scripture and exhibits the fruit of the spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The fact that she might also be pro-choice, support a legal right to same-sex marriage or find elements of critical race theory compelling and persuasive makes her destined for hell. I’ve seen the same dynamic in reverse, with more progressive Christians condemning as apostates those believers who don’t share their views on guns or race.

But the more I matured, and the more I recognized my own tendency toward combativeness and judgmental behavior in the face of disagreement, the more I realized that this approach profoundly misunderstands Christian moral commands. Let’s take the central verse of the After Party curriculum, Micah 6:8 — “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Christians can’t shrink from confronting injustice, and we must engage with humility and kindness.

In many ways, humility is simply a recognition of reality. We’re imperfect people with imperfect knowledge and wisdom. Even on issues on which we feel that burning moral clarity is necessary, understanding complexity should give us pause.

You may believe that the United States has a moral obligation to ameliorate the effects of hundreds of years of legalized, violent racial injustice, and yet also understand that how to do so is an extraordinary complex and difficult question, one that requires an immense willingness to listen to others and learn from our own mistakes.

You may believe that unborn children are people who deserve a chance to live outside the womb and yet also understand that there are complex questions regarding the proper role of the state, the interplay between maternal and fetal health, the actual reasons people seek out abortions and the justice of a primarily punitive response. People of good will can come to different conclusions, and it’s worth hearing their reasoning.

Our most basic human experience teaches us that kindness is indispensable in human relationships. Our cruelty can end relationships before they start. Our cruelty broadcasts arrogance. It creates the condition for conflict as our targets justifiably defend themselves against our aggression. It removes the possibility of persuasion as people dig in against unfair and malicious attacks.

I’ve spoken about these obligations in countless churches and Christian schools, and the objection is always the same. Kindness and humility are the path to surrender and defeat. They’re signs of weakness in the great struggle against the presumed enemies of the nation and the church.

It’s an odd objection coming from biblical literalists. The relevant verses that command our kindness, humility and love are not conditioned on political victory. We don’t pursue those virtues only until they don’t work to achieve the outcomes we want.

It’s also an odd objection in the American context. After all, American history contains shining examples of Christian activists who placed justice, kindness and mercy at the center of political engagement. The civil rights movement wasn’t exclusively Christian by any means. People of all faiths and no faith joined to demand liberation from Jim Crow, but the Christian faith was at center stage in Martin Luther King Jr.’s arguments and, crucially, his tactics. Christian means were married to Christian ends.

Consider the guidance contained in King’s commitment card for civil rights activists. It contains 10 pledges, including “meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus” and “Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love.” It says marchers should refrain from “the violence of fist, tongue or heart.” It declares that “the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation — not victory.”

Those words would be potent at any time, but they were especially potent in 1963. There is no American political community today that faces a challenge as great as Jim Crow, yet it is difficult to find any American political movement that treats its enemies as well as the civil rights movement treated some of the most hateful politicians and law enforcement officers in modern American life.

On Tuesday, Trump sought to capitalize on Biden’s recognition of the Transgender Day of Visibility by declaring, in front of a raucous crowd, that Nov. 5 — Election Day — would be “ Christian Visibility Day ,” as legions of Christians vote for a man who has been found liable for sexual abuse and who has declared vengeance and retribution as the core objectives of his second term.

When I think of “Christian Visibility Day,” I have very different images in mind — of Christians on the Edmund Pettus Bridge marching for justice and responding to violence with peace, of Christians in Birmingham, Ala., enduring fire hoses and attack dogs in the name of justice and reconciliation. Or I can think of the ultimate Christian Visibility Day, on a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem, when the son of God faced the ultimate act of persecution, looked at the men who were murdering him and declared, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation .” You can follow him on Threads ( @davidfrenchjag ).