WHAT: The Phenomenology, Religious Experience and Spiritual Practices International Conference 2025
WHERE: Fordham University, Rose Hill Campus in Bronx, New York.
WHEN: June 15 – 18, 2025
DESCRIPTION: Spiritual practices are central to practically all religious traditions. They often serve as a pathway to religious experience, a way to prepare oneself for revelation or illumination by the divine. Religious practices can shape a self that is open to revelation and thus able to experience the transcendent. Liturgical and ritual practices provide patterns of communal gathering that prepare participants for shared prayer and celebration. Sacramental practices communicate the holy by purifying, feeding, and sanctifying. Rites of repentance and forgiveness enable the processing of failure and guilt. Devotional practices open the self to hearing the divine voice. Ascetic practices sharpen the focus on repentance in the combat with passions and distracting thoughts. Regardless of tradition, personal and communal religious practices—often deeply affective and corporeal—direct, guide, shape, and transform people to be open to the holy other and the human (and nonhuman) neighbor.
SPONSORS: Fordham University (New York) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Munich). Funded by Templeton Religion Trust, “Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology,” University of St. Andrews.