RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. The term religious experience has been used in three often overlapping senses in the twentieth century: (1) to refer descriptively to the subjective aspect of a tradition or religion in general; (2) to describe the "common core" of religion in general; and (3) to assert a claim with respect to the source of religious knowledge or certainty. In the first instance, it has competed with the terms piety, devotion, and spirituality. In the second and third instances, it has competed with mysticism.

These usages have been associated with key preoccupations of the modern era. In the first case, where the emphasis is on the subjective experience of the individual, experience has been linked with the rise of individualism and the democratization of religious authority. In the second usage, where the emphasis is on the nature of religion, religious experience has been bound up with the problems of...