The Personal Religious Experiences of Cistercian Monks
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Abstract
Nearly seventy-five percent of the monks interviewed at a Cistercian monastery in the southeastern United States reported having had religious experiences. A micro-sociological approach was used to describe the retrospective accounts of their religious experiences, the after-the-fact interpretations they constructed, how they made those experiences meaningful, and the role cultural systems and settings play in structuring people’s experiences. Religious experiences played an influential role in the monks’ lives and vocation journeys. Their most common religious experiences were of a quasi-sensory nature. The monks rarely, if ever, discussed their religious experiences with others.
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Keywords
religious experiences, Cistercian monks, Trappists
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Yamane, David. 2000. “Narrative and Religious Experience.†Sociology of Religion 61(2):171- 189.
Bianco, Frank. 1991. Lives of the Trappists Today. New York: Anchor Books.
Chase, Susan E. 2011. “Narrative Inquiry: Still a Field in the Making.†Pp. 421-434 in The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Collins, Randall. 2014. “The Micro-Sociology of Religion: Religious Practices, Collective and Individual.†Retrieved June 2, 2014 (http://www.theARDA.com).
Cummings, Charles. 1986. Monastic Practices. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.
Cunningham, Lawrence S., and Keith J. Egan. 1996.
Christian Spirituality: Themes from the Tradition. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Davis, Caroline Franks. 1989. The Evidential Force of Religious Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.
Delisi, Anthony. 2003. What Makes a Cistercian Monk? Conyers, GA: Monastery of the Holy Spirit.
de Waal, Esther. 1998. The Way of Simplicity: The Cistercian Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books.
Ehrman, Bart D. 2014. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne.
Groeschel, Benedict J. 1993. A Still, Small Voice: A Practical Guide on Reported Revelations. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press.
Hardy, Alister. 1979. The Spiritual Nature of Man: A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hillery, George A. 1992. The Monastery: A Study in Freedom, Love, and Community. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Hollenback, Jess Byron. 1996. Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Hood, Ralph W. 2005. “Mystical, Spiritual, and Religious Experiences.†Pp. 348-364 in Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, edited by Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park. New York: The Gilford Press.
James, William. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Modern Library.
Lekai, Louis J. 1977. The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press.
Luhrmann, T. M. 2012. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Martin, James. 2010. The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Maynes, Mary Jo, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett. 2008. Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
McGinn, Bernard. 2006. The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism. New York: Modern Library.
McGuire, Meredith. 1982. Pentecostal Catholics: Power, Charisma, and Order in a Religious Movement. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Merton, Thomas. 1996. Contemplative Prayer. New York: Image Books.
Poulain, Augustin. 1910. The Graces of Interior Prayer. Translated by Leonora L. Yorke Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Poulain, Augustin. 1998. Revelations and Visions: Discerning the True and the Certain from the False or the Doubtful. Translated by Leonora L. Yorke Smith. Edited by Frank Sadowski. Staten Island, NY: Alba House.
Proudfoot, Wayne. 1985. Religious Experience. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. 1993. Narrative Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Smith, William L. 2016a. “Family Encouragement and Life Experiences: The Road to the Monastic Life.†Journal for the Sociological Integration of Religion and Society 6(1):14-29.
Smith, William L. 2016b. “Vocation Stories of Cistercian Monks.†Michigan Sociological Review 30:69-90.
Smith, William L. 2017. “Prayer in an American Cistercian Monastery.†Pp. 116-133 in Monasticism in Modern Times, edited by Isabelle Jonveaux and Stefania Palmisano. New York: Routledge.
Spickard, James V. 1993. “For a Sociology of Religious Experience.†Pp. 109-128 in A Future for Religion? New Paradigms for Social Analysis, edited by William H. Swatos. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Taves, Ann. 1999. Fits, Trances, & Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taves, Ann. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Underhill, Evelyn. 1911. Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.
Wach, Joachim. 1951. Types of Religious Experience Christian and Non-Christian. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Wiebe, Phillip H. 1997. Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wiebe, Phillip H. 2004. God and Other Spirits: Intimations of Transcendence in Christian Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wiebe, Phillip H. 2015. Intuitive Knowing as Spiritual Experience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wuthnow, Robert J. 2011. “Taking Talk Seriously: Religious Discourse as Social Practice.†Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(1):1-21.
Yamane, David. 2000. “Narrative and Religious Experience.†Sociology of Religion 61(2):171- 189.
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