A Smorgasbord of Dangers and Delights

Hosted by Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at Boston University's Danielsen Institute

Wesley J. Wildman, a School of Theology associate professor of philosophy, theology, and ethics, addresses the spectrum of human religious and spiritual experiences in the third lecture in a six-part series, Religious Experiences: From the Mundane to the Anomalous. Having already explored the scientific and philosophical natures of such occurrences in previous lectures, Wildman outlines in this talk a psychological framework that “does justice to the vast variety of religious and spiritual experiences.”

Wildman explains the requirements for such a system: it must take into account experiences across cultures, should complement evolutionary theory, and should try to explain the existential significance of spiritual experiences to the people who have them. He determines that such experiences really encompass three different phenomena: religious experiences, which we identify with our chosen faith; ultimacy experiences, which have a profound effect on our psyche or behavior; and anomalous experiences, which involve an altered state of consciousness such as an out-of-body or near-death experience.

By looking at these three types of experiences and the ways in which they intersect in our religious and spiritual lives, Wildman delves into the psychology of spiritual experience. He focuses the second half of his lecture on “intense experiences,” which he hypothesizes are manifestations of our evolutionary need “to both speak and to be silent, to move and to be still” when confronted with overwhelming thoughts.

Part of a research project at the Danielsen Institute’s Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology, the lecture series is funded by a Templeton Foundation grant from the Metanexus Institute, which administers the Templeton Research Lectures.

December 10, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Photonics Center

Video length is 01:29:01.

About the Speaker:
Wesley J. Wildman is an associate professor of theology and ethics at the Boston University School of Theology, where he directs the doctoral programs in Christian theology, in comparative theology, and in science, philosophy, and religion. Wildman has a bachelor’s in mathematics from Flinders University and a graduate degree in divinity from the University of Sydney, both in Australia. He earned a doctorate in philosophical and systematic theology and philosophy of religion from the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California. He has published more than 60 articles and the book Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century. Wildman is the coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, as well as a collection of debates on contemporary issues in religion and science. He has studied the nature and problems of religious experience for over a decade through his involvement with the Divine Action Project at Boston University, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, and the Crosscultural Comparative Religious Ideas Project at BU. An ordained minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, Wildman has served churches in Sydney, Australia, and Piedmont, California.

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