Phenomenon

A fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause is in question;
The observable aspects of a happening; that is experienced.

Phenomenology

The study of the structure of the experience (consciousness); distinct from philosophy that examines the ultimate reality – nature and content of being.
Phenomenology “is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.” Smith, D. W. (2008). Phenomenology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
The historical movement of phenomenology was launched since 1900’s by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, et al.
The methods and characterization of the discipline were widely debated.

Phenomenology of Religion:

The phenomenology of religion studies the experiential aspect of religion, describing religious phenomena in terms consistent with the orientation of the worshippers, proceeding from the […]

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ASSORTED DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION:
• “A man’s religion is what he would die for rather than abandon.” (H. Bosanquet) (Meaning: whatever man believes in, he holds firm on to…)
•“A body of samples which impede the free exercise of our faculties” (Salomon Reinach)
•“[T]he feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (William James).
•Religion is the “opium of the people” (Karl Marx).

•“The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.  Religion is the consciousness that the whole of our spontaneous activity comes from a source outside of us ” (F. Schleiermacher 1768-1834).
•“Religion is the quest of life by means of symbols” (Lord Raglan).
•“Religion is morality tinged with emotion” (Mathew Arnold).

•“Religion is a set of beliefs, practices and institutions which men have evolved in various societies” (T. Parsons).
•“Religion is the recognition that […]

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EMILE DURKHEIM’S CONCEPT OF THE SACRED & THE PROFANE:

The Sacred is ideal and transcends everyday existence; it is extra-ordinary potentially dangerous, awe-inspiring, fear inducing.
The sacred refers to things set apart by man including religious beliefs, rites, duties or anything socially defined as requiring special religious treatment.
Almost anything can be sacred: a god, a rock, a cross, the moon, the earth, a king, a tree, an animal or bird.
Once established as sacred they become symbols of religious beliefs, sentiments and pratices.
Eating the totemic animal or plant is usually forbidden and as a sacred object the totem is believed to have divine properties.

Émile Durkheim and Joseph Ward Swain. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology (George Allen & Unwin, 1915). 

The profane is the realm of routine experience.
The profane or ordinary or unholy embraces those ideas, persons, practices and things that are regarded with an everyday attitude of commonness, […]

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In religious traditions, the Sacred is perceived as The Holy.  And in some religions, the Holy is personal – GOD.  Rudolf Otto explores the perception and experience of the Holy.
The HOLY is at the same time (1) Numinous, (2) Mysterium Tremendum, et (3) Fascinans
The Holy as numinous:
•‘Numinous’ = numen (latin) = something that is perceived by the mind beyond the senses (beyond appearances).  Something that is known a priori (Kant).
•Hebrew: qadosh, Greek: hagios, Latin: sanctus/sacer = the absolute good – the wholly other!
•The experience of it is “ineffable – in the sense that it completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts” (Otto, 1950 p.5). The experience is of its own kind (sui generis).

•Creature-consciousness: what Schleiermacher called, ‘feeling of absolute dependence’. It not just a feeling but openly expressed, and experienced as the present, a numen praesens:
§Abraham pleading with God (Gen 18:27): “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak […]

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Weber: WHAT IS CHARISM?
“a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader. . . . What alone is important is how the individual is actually regarded by those subject to charismatic authority by his followers or disciples.” (Weber 1947, 358–359).
CHARISMA & IRRATIONALITY:

Charisma exhibits a strangeness (unusual) and irrationality.
Status quo, institutional authority, bureaucratic authority seems very rational – usual and regular.
Charisma seems irregular and unsystematic.

LEGITIMIZATION OF CHARISM

Depending on the exceptional personal qualities or the demonstration of extraordinary insight the charismatic person gathers followers.  Thus s/he gathers a charismatic authority.
As the followers increase the charismatic authority gets […]

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