Religious Experience and the LIfeworld: Phenomenology in Dialogue

SOCIETY FOR THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Second Regional Berkeley Conference, January 26-27, 2018

Location: Graduate Theological Union, Jesuit School of Theology, Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute

http://sophere.org/conferences/regional-conferences/

CALL FOR PAPERS

Paper submissions directly pertinent to the theme are particularly encouraged, but papers on any area of current research in phenomenology of religious experience and related studies will be considered for inclusion in the program. Completed papers will be given strong priority. Detailed abstracts will be considered; a short curriculum vitae should accompany abstracts. Papers should be no more than 4,500 words/30 minutes reading time. Please format papers for anonymous review and send with a cover letter to conference@sophere.org

The key note speakers are Michael Barber (St. Louis University) and Marc Jean-Bernard (University of Puerto Rico). The conference is divided into two main sections: critical issues in the phenomenological research of religious experience, and the phenomenology of religious experience in various domains of the lifeworld, such as ministry, preaching, corporate world, ecology, health practices, and pastoral and clinical counseling.

In the first section we welcome contributions which advance research of religious experience by articulating the areas of special reflection, as well as the areas of new and visionary problematic. How do we thematize the problem of religious experience? How does the traditional phenomenological first-person authority play itself out in the phenomenology of religious experience? Should phenomenological research of religious experience be in dialogue with natural science research?  What are the spheres, regions and horizons in which we can understand religious experience? How do traditional topics of phenomenological philosophy, such as the ego, subjectivity, embodiment, or intersubjectivity, relate to the study of religious experience? We invite these and other questions to be treated not only in light of classical phenomenological scholarship, but also within interpretive and critical approaches; we also welcome contributions coming from the perspectives of theological phenomenology such as, for example, perspectives connected with the work of Schleiermacher or Troeltsch, French phenomenology, and the phenomenology of life.

In the second section, we would like to read papers which discuss the positioning of religious experience in various lifeworlds. How do religious realities manifest across the different traditions and practices? What regional ontologies of knowledge create the contexts for successful phenomenological research of religious experience? How can phenomenology clarify the role of religious experience in the world of business, in emergent theologies of hope, or in healthcare?  SOPHERE collaborates with the De Gruyter Academic Publishers Open Theology open access journal. The conference papers will be considered for publication in a special topical issue.   Deadline for submission: December 1, 2017

All inquiries conference@sophere.org