Recovering religious varieties: Conversion, temperament and trauma (William James)

This study extends the phenomenological investigations of William James that served as the foundation for The Varieties of Religious Experience . The dissertation asks what implications, if any, do biological differences have for religious experience. The phenomenological method extends James's criteria, utilizing an approach that emphasizes experience, pluralism, probabalism, and attention to teleological outcome. The extension of James's phenomenological investigation begins by comparing James's conversion typology to contemporary studies of temperament by research psychologist Jerome Kagan. Following an analysis of source materials employed by James in Lectures IV through X of The Varieties, the investigation extends the same categorical classifications utilizing autobiographical, biographical and confessional accounts of conversion or spiritual healing, neuro-hormonal and neuro-cognitive studies, and resiliency and traumatic studies. Results of that investigation are compared to major Christian relational theologies, concluding with James's views on the role of spirituality in evolution. The thesis then proposes a reclamation of religious response to differing experiential backgrounds---vocation as process and practice---informed by James W. Fowler's work on vocation and contemporary studies in hermeneutics. It proposes a practice of vocation, based on the life of Christ and honoring experiential difference, as a post-modern response to the call to full spiritual development.