Religious Experience Reconsidered

Ann Taves's 'Religious Experience Reconsidered' argues for analyzing religious experiences by focusing on how people come to classify and interpret experiences as religious.

She examines the cultural, historical, and cognitive processes that make certain events salient and memorable as religious.

The book challenges notions of a fixed category of 'religious experience' and instead foregrounds the practices and interpretations that produce such classifications.

Taves draws on case studies and cognitive theory to show how religion-related categories emerge and function.

Her work has become influential in the cognitive science of religion for reframing how scholars approach reports of religious or anomalous experiences.