The Experience of Faith in a Postsecular Context

The concept of religion and of the divine is very complex; in fact, it is a human construction which is closely related to culture and its development. This is particularly clear when we consider dynamic changes in religious institutions, the Catholic Church included. The same should be said about religious experience. The religious experience was defined by William James at the beginning of the twentieth century in his classic book, The varieties of religious experience. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Charles Taylor took up some of James’ ideas in his book Varieties of religion today. The religious context of time is present in both books, which were the outcome of the Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh University. In traditional descriptions of religious phenomena, atheism and disbelief were usually not taken into account; however, the last two decades have brought a radical change. In this paper I will try to demonstrate that the postsecular context by the end of second decade of the twenty-first century gives us a new opportunity to define religious experience that allows us to overcome the traditional tension between religious and secular worldviews. I will even propose that it is possible to speak about a new paradigm in religious studies.