Talk of “religious experience” has been a part of religious studies for some time. German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) argued as far back as 1799 that the core of religion is an awe-inspiring experience of God. His work was influential on a wide variety of key figures in the history of religious studies, notably including William James (1842–1910), Rudolph Otto (1869–1937), Joachim Wach (1898–1955), and Mircea Eliade (1907–86). This vein of scholarship teaches us that religious experience is the essence of religion, and that the “outward” things—like creeds, texts, rituals, and so forth—are always secondary manifestations of religious experience. A person might tell a narrative about a religious experience, she might invent a ritual to memorialize it, but these things are always and necessarily secondary (temporally and in importance) to the original experience itself.

Why would religion scholars argue that experience is at the core of religion, especially when we lack empirical evidence both of gods and of the universal experiences they are supposed to have evoked? In part Schleiermacher's theory was motivated by his need to defend Christianity against materialist philosophers who had virtually done away with supernatural claims. Then-popular philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) drew a picture of the nature of the universe that left little if any room for divine beings; Kant believed in a god of sorts, but argued that there is nothing we could know about him.