The Variety of Religious Experiences

The primary effort of this study is to help move sociological studies of religious experience out of the realm of abstract theory and into quantitative analysis. While this is certainly not the first study to do this, the breadth of experiences assessed by the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey provides more detailed information on the topic than has previously been presented. Results indicate that over 65% of American adults claim to have had at least one of the religious experiences assessed. The different socio-demographic patterning found among specific experiences indicates that using a broad, all-encompassing question to analyze religious experiences is inadequate. A theoretical distinction is also proposed between experiences involving only feelings and those extending to other sensory sensations such as seeing, speaking, hearing, or healing. While income level does not influence claiming more normative religious experiences of feeling, it is an important predictor of more intense, deviant religious experiences.