Introduction

A vastly greater number of persons concern themselves with what is put under the heading of spirituality and religious experience than with the concepts or content of belief, or indeed with the Bible. Many who would be reluctant to give adherence to formal creeds and churches or even to claim much in the way of religious conviction are ready to testify to experience identified as religious, however hard it is to define or account for. Rivalled only by ethics, this is the area in which religious reflection and activity have their most typical and pervasive expression. That expression ranges from inchoate yet often deeply felt private longings to the most meticulously worded and staged public liturgies. What these have in common is the quest for God or for ‘the Other’, or else (as it may rather be put) the response to the Other's quest for human creatures. Here we encounter the democratic heart of religion. In this sphere people of the whole gamut of intellectual capacity and of the complete social spectrum are brought to a certain equality. In this area too, deep discernment and foolish credulity may be mixed surprisingly at all levels of mental ability or apparent religious professionalism. From the investigative point of view, this is the prime field for the kind of enquiry that falls within the scope of the anthropology of religion and, in part, of the sociology of religion. The focus of this Part, however, is on religious thought, rather than on religion as a human phenomenon; but in this aspect above all, it would be wrong to lose sight of the inarticulate and even irrational hinterland behind its articulate manifestations.