Final Exam: Essay Question
The following question will count as 50% of your Final Exam grade.
It is being provided ahead of time so that you can study, go over class
notes, James, Hufford and the photocopy packet., think about what you a
re going to say and organize your thoughts. Of course during the exam
itself you will not be allowed to use the textbooks, photocopy packet or notes.
Essay Question
Create your own religious experience. It can be humorous. Feel free to have
fun in the process. The experience can be one that occurs in a real religion or
it can be one that’s totally fictional. You can even make it an experience that
occurs in the religion you "created" for the mid-term exam or make it from some
other fictional religion. The experience can be unusual, intense or extreme, or it
can be an "everday" kind of religious experience. As you design the experience
think about how scholars might go about studying it and what kind of observations
and conclusions they might make. Now, as you did for the mid-term, pretend
you are once again a Religious Studies scholar. In your essay examine your
experience in terms of the methods, concepts and ideas used by Douglas,
Obeyesekere, James, the biological (neurological) approach and Hufford. After
doing this compare your religious experience to the others we have seen in the
last few class sessions of the semester. How is it different? How is it similar?
(Hint: Obviously the purpose of this essay is to show how much you really know
and understand the material we've covered on these methods/approaches and
examples. So design your religious experience in such a way that you can
show this with your analysis).
Last Updated: May 7, 1996
Kenneth J. Banner
banner@jupiter.rowan.edu