Reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education: insights from affect theory and the aesthetics of religion

ABSTRACT This article argues that a combined lens of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion provides scholarship with new methodological and theoretical insights for phenomenological religious education. These insights demonstrate the analytic value of understanding religion in terms of its affective and aesthetic dimensions, which offer renewed explanatory power for the variety of religious experiences individuals and communities undergo. In particular, these insights allow educators and students to explore what drives religious practices in everyday life without resorting to essentialist, reductionist or universalist accounts. It is suggested that reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education has the potential to make a vital contribution to developing new sensibilities of the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’, especially in contemporary multi-religious societies. Finally, it is argued that the innovations offered by reframed phenomenological approaches provide a promising theoretical and methodological platform in religious education for engaging with the affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion.