Religious experience as narrative: reflections on the advantages of a narrative approach

Three authors have significantly shaped the social scientific study of religious experiences: William James devised the research agenda for primordial personal religion, Wayne Proudfoot demonstrated the theoretical inadequacy of an unmediated experience and introduced the methodological distinction between descriptive and explanatory reduction, Ann Taves aimed at conceptual tools in order to bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the humanities. Relying on the first-person perspective, the adequate conceptual starting point for the study of religious experience is a formal-hermenteutical concept of experience linked to a narrative articulation. This approach may lead to a celebration of pluralism in religious studies without favouring any analytical concept from natural sciences, social sciences or humanities. To demonstrate some (other) advantages of this conceptualization the ongoing debate about the relationship between religious experience and its representation will be reframed and the common core debate concerning mystical experiences will get a hermeneutical solution.