journal-article-10.1086_663718.xml

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         <journal-title-group>
            <journal-title>The Journal of Religion</journal-title>
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         <publisher>
            <publisher-name>University of Chicago Press</publisher-name>
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         <issn pub-type="ppub">00224189</issn>
         <issn pub-type="epub">15496538</issn>
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         <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1086/663718</article-id>
         <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">JR1771</article-id>
         <title-group>
            <article-title>Are Religious Experiences Too Private to Study?<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn1">*</xref>
            </article-title>
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               <string-name>
                  <given-names>Stephen S.</given-names>
                  <x xml:space="preserve"> </x>
                  <surname>Bush</surname>
               </string-name>
            </contrib>
            <aff id="af1">Brown University</aff>
         </contrib-group>
         <pub-date pub-type="ppub">
            <day>01</day>
            <month>04</month>
            <year>2012</year>
            <string-date>April 2012</string-date>
         </pub-date>
         <volume>92</volume>
         <issue>2</issue>
         <issue-id>662287</issue-id>
         <fpage>199</fpage>
         <lpage>223</lpage>
         <permissions>
            <copyright-statement>© 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.</copyright-statement>
            <copyright-year>2012</copyright-year>
            <copyright-holder>The University of Chicago.</copyright-holder>
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      <fn-group>
         <fn id="fn1">
            <label>*</label>
            <p>I delivered an early version of this article at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, and I’m grateful for the remarks of Robert Sharf and the respondent, Wayne Proudfoot, on that occasion. I also received helpful suggestions from Charles Matthewes, Josanda Jinnette, Michaelle Jinnette, Nancy Jinnette, two anonymous referees, and especially Jeffrey Stout.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn2">
            <label>
               <sup>1</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Such experiences are recounted in R. Marie Griffith, <italic>God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission</italic> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn3">
            <label>
               <sup>2</sup>
            </label>
            <p>David Chidester, “Material Terms for the Study of Religion,” <italic>Journal of the American Academy of Religion</italic> 68, no. 2 (2000): 374; Mark C. Taylor, ed., <italic>Critical Terms for Religious Studies</italic> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn4">
            <label>
               <sup>3</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Talal Asad, <italic>Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam</italic> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), chap. 1.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn5">
            <label>
               <sup>4</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Seyla Benhabib, <italic>Situating the Self</italic> (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), 208.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn6">
            <label>
               <sup>5</sup>
            </label>
            <p>In a recent work that is sympathetic to the category of religious experience, Ann Taves admits that many think that the study of religious experience is “passé in an era that has abandoned experience for discourse <italic>about</italic> experience.” Ann Taves, <italic>Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things</italic> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), xiii-xiv. And Harold Roth speaks of a “total retreat from serious consideration of religious experience” in religious studies, such that the “role of subjective experience in religion” has been “totally abandoned as a subject of academic study.” Harold D. Roth, “Against Cognitive Imperialism: A Call for a Non-ethnographic Approach to Cognitive Science and Religious Studies,” <italic>Religion East &amp; West</italic> 8 (2008): 7. Taves’s work provides a valuable service to the study of experience by bringing an impressive range of psychological and neurological studies into the conversation. However, she does not directly address the skepticism about the viability of appeals to experience and consciousness that has come about in the wake of the linguistic turn in the humanities, remaining content just to acknowledge briefly the skepticism on occasion (e.g., <italic>Religious Experience Reconsidered</italic>, 5, 84). She engages Sharf, the primary focus of the present essay, at points throughout <italic>Religious Experience Reconsidered</italic>, but she never responds to his own arguments in favor of discourse about experience instead of experience, and she gives the most attention not to his essays on experience, but to his treatment of ritual in Robert H. Sharf, “Ritual,” in <italic>Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism</italic>, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn7">
            <label>
               <sup>6</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Robert H. Sharf, “Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience,” <italic>Numen</italic> 42, no. 3 (1995): 228–83, “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,” in <italic>Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism</italic> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), and “Experience,” in <italic>Critical Terms for Religious Studies</italic>, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Sharf’s more recent treatment of experience is found in Sharf, “Ritual.” His focus in this essay is on ritual, not experience, and whereas he gives a nonexperiential interpretation of enlightenment in the context of one particular Buddhist ritual, he does not make strong claims about experience in general. (His generalizations in this essay concern ritual, not experience.) To be sure, I will contest nonexperiential interpretations that are supposed to apply to <italic>all</italic> narratives and reports of enlightenment, but I have no reason to contest nonexperiential interpretations of <italic>any particular</italic> narrative about enlightenment, so I will leave aside Sharf’s “Ritual” for the purposes of this essay.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn8">
            <label>
               <sup>7</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Rudolf Otto, <italic>The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational</italic>, trans. John W. Harvey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 7–8.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn9">
            <label>
               <sup>8</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Zen of Japanese Nationalism.”</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn10">
            <label>
               <sup>9</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Buddhist Modernism,” 241.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn11">
            <label>
               <sup>10</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Experience,” 104.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn12">
            <label>
               <sup>11</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 113–14.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn13">
            <label>
               <sup>12</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 104.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn14">
            <label>
               <sup>13</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 104, 114.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn15">
            <label>
               <sup>14</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 113.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn16">
            <label>
               <sup>15</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 103, 110.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn17">
            <label>
               <sup>16</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 107.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn18">
            <label>
               <sup>17</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 107–8.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn19">
            <label>
               <sup>18</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 109.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn20">
            <label>
               <sup>19</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 110.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn21">
            <label>
               <sup>20</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 113.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn22">
            <label>
               <sup>21</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 111.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn23">
            <label>
               <sup>22</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Buddhist Modernism,” 260.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn24">
            <label>
               <sup>23</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 259.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn25">
            <label>
               <sup>24</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Experience,” 107, 113.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn26">
            <label>
               <sup>25</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Buddhist Modernism,” 259–60.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn27">
            <label>
               <sup>26</sup>
            </label>
            <p>See, e.g., Russell T. McCutcheon, <italic>Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion</italic> (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 9–10; and Donald S. Lopez Jr., “Belief,” in <italic>Critical Terms for Religious Studies</italic>.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn28">
            <label>
               <sup>27</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Robert Brandom, <italic>Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment</italic> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Iris Marion Young, <italic>On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays</italic>, Studies in Feminist Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn29">
            <label>
               <sup>28</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Two notable texts that helpfully emphasize the need to attend to causes and objects of experiences are Wayne Proudfoot, <italic>Religious Experience</italic> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Peter Byrne, “Mysticism, Identity, and Realism: A Debate Reviewed,” <italic>International Journal for Philosophy of Religion</italic> 16, no. 3 (1984): 237–43.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn30">
            <label>
               <sup>29</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ninian Smart, <italic>The Phenomenon of Religion</italic> (New York: Herder &amp; Herder, 1973), 62, 67.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn31">
            <label>
               <sup>30</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Griffith, <italic>God’s Daughters</italic>, 81, 108.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn32">
            <label>
               <sup>31</sup>
            </label>
            <p>For a non-Cartesian account of hallucination, see Mark Johnston, “The Obscure Object of Hallucination,” <italic>Philosophical Studies</italic> 120 (2004): 118–83.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn33">
            <label>
               <sup>32</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Jan Vansina, <italic>Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology</italic> (New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2006), 77, 80–81.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn34">
            <label>
               <sup>33</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Tomoko Masuzawa, <italic>The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism</italic> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn35">
            <label>
               <sup>34</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Sharf, “Experience,” 98.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn36">
            <label>
               <sup>35</sup>
            </label>
            <p>It would be premature to suppose from the outset that religious experiences were mere epiphenomena of other social forces, with no causality of their own. This isn’t to deny or downplay the social precursors that elicit experiences, just to say that the presence of experiences can make a difference in individuals and social groups.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn37">
            <label>
               <sup>36</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Rosalind Shaw, “Feminist Anthropology and the Gendering of Religious Studies,” in <italic>The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion</italic>, ed. Russell T. McCutcheon (London and New York: Cassell, 1999), 104–13.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn38">
            <label>
               <sup>37</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Griffith, <italic>God’s Daughters</italic>, 207.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn39">
            <label>
               <sup>38</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 77.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn40">
            <label>
               <sup>39</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Ibid., 81, 108.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn41">
            <label>
               <sup>40</sup>
            </label>
            <p>For a gender-based explanation of conversion to Pentecostalism, see Elizabeth E. Brusco, <italic>The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia</italic>, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). For the other types of explanation, see André Droogers, “Paradoxical Views on a Paradoxical Religion: Models for the Explanation of Pentecostal Expansion in Brazil and Chile,” in <italic>More than Opium: An Anthropological Approach to Latin American and Caribbean Pentecostal Praxis</italic>, ed. Barbara Boudewijnse, A. F. Droogers, and Frans Kamsteeg (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998), 1–34.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn42">
            <label>
               <sup>41</sup>
            </label>
            <p>Daniel Míguez, <italic>Spiritual Bonfire in Argentina: Confronting Current Theories with an Ethnographic Account of Pentecostal Growth in a Buenos Aires Suburb</italic> (Amsterdam: CEDLA, 1998), 168.</p>
         </fn>
         <fn id="fn43">
            <label>
               <sup>42</sup>
            </label>
            <p>R. Andrew Chesnut, <italic>Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty</italic> (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 6.</p>
         </fn>
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