Sir Alister Hardy’s Legacy: The Study of Religious Experience Today

An online conference on current research and study of religious and spiritual experence. Keynote address by Prof Wesley J. Wildman, of the Center for Mind and Culture in Boston, MA, a leading thinker and writer in the fields of science and religion, and of religious and spiritual experience.

Awareness of the need for a spiritual dimension to human life, of the religious in the very broadest sense, is increasingly recognised as an essential element of human well-being. Building on the pioneering investigations of Sir Alister Hardy in the 1970s into the spiritual nature of humanity, this conference offers an excellent opportunity to review current trends and activity in the field.

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Programme

Online access will be available from13:45

14:00 Welcome

Prof Bettina Schmidt, drector of the Religious Experience Research Centre

Prof Leslie Francis, chair of The Alister Hardy Trust

The Dimensions of Spiritual Inventory

The Alister Hardy Lampeter Lecture

Prof Wesley J. Wildman

Center for Mind and Culture, Boston, MA

Respondent: Prof Jeff Astley, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK

followed by questions and discussion

16:00-16:30 Break

16:30 Current Research on Spiritual and Religious Experiences: three presentations and round table

The psychological types of people narrating religious and spiritual experiences

Revd Richard Vroom, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

A bridge between traditional and modern: characteristics of mystical experiences

Dr Zsuzsanna Szugyiczki, University of Szeged, Hungary

Extraordinary spiritual experiences and models of meaning-making

Revd Dr Seth Jones, New York

followed by Round Table discussion with all speakers.

19:00 End of Conference

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Details of the papers and the speakers

Session One: The Alister Hardy Lampeter Lecture

Prof Wesley J. Wildman

The Dimensions of Spirituality Inventory

The keynote lecture will introduce the innovative dimensions of spirituality inventory. It will further reflect on the intense experiences among the nonreligions and show how the dimensions of spirituality inventory can be used to study the spiritual styles of a range of people including the nonreligious.

Wesley Wildman, a leading philosopher of religion, has worked on many aspects of science and religion. He is particularly interested in what light can be shed on religious behaviours, beliefs, and experiences from the biological and human sciences. His specializations are philosophy of religion and computational social sciences. He is the director of Boston University’s innovative humanities-science doctoral program in Religion and Science and deeply committed to multidisciplinary research and training. Among his most recent publications are Modeling Religions: Simulating the Transformation of Worldviews, Lifeways, and Civilizations (with F. Leron Shults, Bloomsbury, 2024), The Winding Way Home (Wildhouse Fiction, 2023), and Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering (with Kate J. Stockly, St Martin’s Press, 2021).

Respondent: Prof Jeff Astley, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK

Jeff Astley is an honorary professor at Durham University, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln and York St John University. He studied biology and theology at Cambridge, and theology at Birmingham and Durham. His doctorate is in the philosophy of religion. He is an Anglican priest and was director of the ecumenical North of England Institute for Christian Education for three decades. His current primary interests are in practical theology (especially ‘ordinary theology’), the science and religion debate (especially with respect to evolutionary biology) and the study of religious and spiritual experience. In addition to over 150 journal articles and essay chapters, he is the author or editor/co-editor of over 40 books on theological, educational and religious issues, including the SCM Studyguide to Religious and Spiritual Experience (2020).

Session Two: Current Research on Spiritual and Religious Experiences

Revd Richard Vroom

Psychological Type and Religious and Spiritual Experiences (RSEs): an analysis of the records within the Alister Hardy Database of Accounts of Religious and Spiritual Experiences

Looking for particular ‘signs’ of RSEs to use as a lens to look at the written accounts, this study considered the field of psychology of personality, and concluded that Carl Jung’s theory and the developed MBTI framework are appropriate to analyse the accounts. It seeks to find the preferences of Introversion/Extraversion, Sensing/intuition, Thinking/Feeling and, if possible, Judging/Perceiving. Not all accounts lend themselves to analysis. The cause can be that the text is too short, or does not contain an RSE within defined criteria.

The Revd Richard Vroom is currently at Radboud University, Nijmegen, researching how psychological type is apparent in reported religious and spiritual experience within the Alister Hardy Archive. Previously he served in various parishes in the Netherlands (Old-Catholic Church, Union of Utrecht) and for ten years in Tywyn for the Church in Wales. He has studied in Amsterdam, Leuven, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in Warwick. Currently he works on his PhD at the University of Nijmegen (Radboud).

Dr Zsuzsanna Szugyiczki

A bridge between traditional and modern: characteristics of mystical experiences

The presentation aims to explore four sets of characteristics of mystical experiences through the Alister Hardy Database of accounts of Religious and Spiritual Experiences. First, words of opposite meanings, showcasing the perceived uniqueness and ineffability of mystical states. Second, expressions that point to shifts in temporal perception. Third, the language that reflects altered perceptions and the profound impact these experiences have on individuals. Fourth, immediate feelings, uncontrollable bodily reactions, and actions, that are associated with the intensity of the experience. Furthermore, it is assumed that these characteristics are present not only in traditional examples but in modern mysticism as well.

Dr Zsuzsanna Szugyiczki is an Assistant Professor, and non-formal educational trainer at the University of Szeged, Hungary. Her main area of research is mysticism in modernity. In 2023 she defended her doctoral dissertation, Mysticism beyond time: A comparative study of traditional vs. modern mysticism.

Revd Dr Seth Jones

Extraordinary Spiritual Experiences and Models of Meaning-Making

Within the study of the extraordinary, the liminal, and the strange, we often focus on the experience itself. My work focuses on the integration of the experience into our daily lives. Through my work in the field of theology and semiotics, I have discerned a pattern of meaning-making that can help us navigate the topography of the extraordinary. The simple pattern is not meant to be thought of as stages, but rather points or aspects on a shifting map of liminal spaces. The four aspects we will explore are: Set and Setting, Appearance, Revelation, and Disclosure. Each aspect has a tendency toward particular modes of expression, and each provides avenues of meaning-making. This allows us to traverse the weird, the unusual, and the experiential in a way that allows multiple points of access to meaning and understanding. Extraordinary Spiritual Experiences (ESEs) in particular, provide a multifaceted, diverse realm for the exploration of meaning and how we integrate it into our lives.

Revd Dr Seth Jones has had a circuitous path in the worlds of spirituality and academia. After graduating with a Master of Arts in Religious Studies, he joined a martial arts commune and taught Tai Chi Chuan for many years. Realizing he was called to ministry, he received his Master of Divinity from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. He served churches in beautiful locations for fifteen years. He received his Doctor of Ministry in Semiotics, Church, and Culture from Portland Seminary, Oregon, in 2022. His doctoral project was on Extraordinary Spiritual Experiences. This project was born out of his participation in the Johns Hopkins/NYU Spiritual Leader study in psychedelics. Seth lives in Brooklyn, NY, and works in AI data training, writes at his blog, psychedelicpastor.com, and visits art museums with his wife.