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Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature
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Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2025) | Viewed by 4460

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Matthew Wickman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Humanities, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Interests: literature and spiritual experience; religion/theology and literature; post-secular theory and criticism; Scottish literary and intellectual history; critical and literary theory; the Enlightenment and its legacy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Persons who undergo religious and spiritual experiences often describe them as full, profound, meaningful, and enlightening. Involving intensified feelings of vitality, such “ultimate” experiences describe neurocognitive states of heightened attention and pleasure, feelings of transcendence and purpose, and aspirations toward wholeness and flourishing. Additionally, for many, religious and spiritual experiences serve as both a sign of and vehicle for what is sacred; they are a medium through which we commune with the divine.

Literature gives powerful expression to such experiences. And yet, relatively few serious discussions of religious and spiritual experience exist within literary studies. When such discussions occur, they tend to confine themselves to representations rather than to presentations of religious and spiritual life; that is, scholarly discussions often distance us from religious and spiritual experience by mediating it through the kind of deliberative, critical rhetoric that dispels the energies it analyzes. This runs contrary to scholarly practices in the field of spirituality studies. There, rather than hermetically sealing off spirituality through an approach of disinterested objectivity, scholars draw upon their own religious and spiritual lives as tools of understanding. The result is a deeper engagement of religious and spiritual experiences and a more nuanced appreciation of the porous boundaries separating traditions.

How might such openness to religious and spiritual experiences increase our understanding of literature and help us engage it more creatively? And how might literature help us discern the diversity and implications of intense, ultimate experiences? How might literature, in Rita Felski’s words, bring to our attention “things as we know them to be, yet reordered and redescribed, shimmering in a transformed light”? How might it, citing Felski again, bear the form of religious revelation, inducing in us “moments of wonder, reverence, exaltation, hope, epiphany, or joy”?

This Special Issue of Religions attends to the expansive range of religious and spiritual experiences either represented within or generated—presented—by literature. Research areas may include (but not be limited to) the following:

  • Religious and/or spiritual experience in literature;
  • Religious and/or spiritual experience as an effect of literature;
  • Religious and/or spiritual experience as a way to engage literary texts;
  • Religious and/or spiritual experience in or across theoretical approaches or schools of criticism.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing the essay they would like to submit. Please send these proposals to the Guest Editor, Matthew Wickman (Matthew_Wickman@byu.edu), or to the Assistant Editor of Religions, Ms. Violet Li (violet.li@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Prof. Dr. Matthew Wickman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • religious experience
  • spiritual experience
  • spirituality
  • religion and literature
  • literary criticism
  • literary theory

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 223 KiB  
Article
The Sacred in the Mud: On Downward Transcendence in Religious and Spiritual Experience
by Yue Wu
Religions 2025, 16(4), 530; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040530 - 18 Apr 2025
Viewed by 189
Abstract
Although there has been an increasing focus on religious and spiritual experience in literary studies within the context of post-critical and post-secular movements, much of the research is framed around the idea of “upward transcendence” in redemption narratives. This focus tends to overlook [...] Read more.
Although there has been an increasing focus on religious and spiritual experience in literary studies within the context of post-critical and post-secular movements, much of the research is framed around the idea of “upward transcendence” in redemption narratives. This focus tends to overlook the negative aspects of life, such as absurdity, meaninglessness, and existential anxiety. Furthermore, it frequently resonates with capitalist ideals that champion a “seamless existence” while dismissing the unrefined essence of materiality. This article engages in two main tasks: First, it emphasizes the negative dimensions of religious and spiritual experience, drawing on Slavoj Žižek’s interpretation of theological and non-theological literature. Second, it expands the definition and scope of religious and spiritual experience, proposing an alternative paradigm based on absurdity and meaninglessness. This paradigm, “downward transcendence,” rejects the redemptive promise of “ascension” and redefines the sacred by engaging with the disruptive and unsettling fabric of existence, reconstructing the coordinates of the sacred within the fissures of reality. Through the case study of Sartre’s Nausea, the article explores how existential absurdity and meaninglessness can reconfigure the sacred, particularly through marginality and the transformative potential of negative experiences. It ultimately proposes downward transcendence as a radical reimagining of spiritual and existential freedom. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
20 pages, 303 KiB  
Article
Metaphors for Metamorphosis: The Poetics of Kenosis and the Apophasis of Self in Saint John of the Cross
by George Faithful
Religions 2025, 16(4), 455; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040455 - 1 Apr 2025
Viewed by 208
Abstract
Spanish mystic Saint Juan (John) of the Cross (1542–1591) began writing poetry while imprisoned by his own monastic order. He developed manuals for contemplation, in part, in the form of commentaries on his principal poems. Their first-person narrators were women who underwent metamorphoses [...] Read more.
Spanish mystic Saint Juan (John) of the Cross (1542–1591) began writing poetry while imprisoned by his own monastic order. He developed manuals for contemplation, in part, in the form of commentaries on his principal poems. Their first-person narrators were women who underwent metamorphoses in order to pursue love: one became a dove in her despair; another became flame itself; the last disguised herself as a knight. Juan explained that all three represented the soul that is seeking God. For readers, these metaphors could engender cognitive dissonance, through which they might step outside of themselves and move closer to union with the Divine. This process of human self-emptying and self-negation mirrored the self-emptying (kenosis) of Christ in traditional Christology and the negation (apophasis) of human pretense at knowledge about God in apophatic (“negative”) mysticism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
21 pages, 1949 KiB  
Article
‘something understood’: Spiritual Experience and George Herbert’s Sonnets
by Amber Bird
Religions 2025, 16(4), 434; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040434 - 27 Mar 2025
Viewed by 231
Abstract
Drawing from The Temple, a seventeenth-century volume of devotional poems written by George Herbert, this essay sets out to unfold how deliberately choosing constraint can lead to a spiritual experience. Beginning with a formal analysis of Herbert’s shape poem “The Altar” to [...] Read more.
Drawing from The Temple, a seventeenth-century volume of devotional poems written by George Herbert, this essay sets out to unfold how deliberately choosing constraint can lead to a spiritual experience. Beginning with a formal analysis of Herbert’s shape poem “The Altar” to demonstrate how form and content simultaneously create meaning in lyric poetry, the remainder of the essay focuses on Herbert’s most formally constrained poems: the sonnets. Using Herbert’s treatment of the sonnet form as evidence of deliberately choosing constraint, Herbert’s poetics transform our conceptual understanding of the elements that make up a Christian religious experience. Titled by the same words that provide the foundation for Christian spiritual experience, the sonnets “Prayer”, “Love”, and “Redemption”, among others, renew our understanding of religious experience by refocusing our attention via the constraints of the poetic form. By pairing together key religious concepts with the constrained attentive demands of poetry, Herbert’s sonnets challenge notions of passivity and call instead for a renewed understanding of the Christian experience. Characterized by the need for careful attention and neurological intensification—a specific quality of religious experience—Herbert’s sonnets become rooms, or perhaps, poetic chapels, where readers have the chance to experience the spiritual ultimacy of “something understood”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
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16 pages, 332 KiB  
Article
The Ultimate in Verbalization: How Japanese Writer Furui Yoshikichi Reads Western Mystical Experiences
by Seungjun Lee and Do-Hyung Kim
Religions 2025, 16(3), 354; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030354 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 456
Abstract
This study examines how the Japanese writer Furui Yoshikichi engages with Western mystical experiences, particularly through his reading of Martin Buber’s Ecstatic Confessions and his broader engagement with Meister Eckhart and medieval German mysticism. Furui’s literary inquiry revolves around the inherent tension between [...] Read more.
This study examines how the Japanese writer Furui Yoshikichi engages with Western mystical experiences, particularly through his reading of Martin Buber’s Ecstatic Confessions and his broader engagement with Meister Eckhart and medieval German mysticism. Furui’s literary inquiry revolves around the inherent tension between the ineffability of mystical experiences and their articulation through language. He critically engages with the paradox of verbalization, recognizing that while mystical experiences transcend linguistic and temporal boundaries, they nevertheless achieve resonance through written and spoken expressions. His reflections converge with Buddhist notions of Sūnyatā, underscoring intersections between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Drawing upon his background as a translator of German literature, Furui mediates mystical experiences within a comparative framework, navigating cultural and linguistic boundaries. His approach elucidates the concept of the multiplicity of qualities in mystical experiences, demonstrating particularity and universality simultaneously. By analyzing Furui’s interpretation of mystical texts, this study contributes to broader discussions on the limitations of language in conveying transcendence and the role of literary imagination in rendering the ineffable. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
11 pages, 194 KiB  
Article
“Decide This Doubt for Me”: William Cowper’s Olney Hymns (1779)
by James Bryant Reeves
Religions 2025, 16(3), 322; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030322 - 4 Mar 2025
Viewed by 1278
Abstract
This paper proposes that William Cowper’s Olney Hymns (1779) instantiate a curious form of modern belief. Cowper’s hymns are riddled with personal confessions of doubt, unbelief, and a sense of exile from the broader Christian church. At the same time, the public nature [...] Read more.
This paper proposes that William Cowper’s Olney Hymns (1779) instantiate a curious form of modern belief. Cowper’s hymns are riddled with personal confessions of doubt, unbelief, and a sense of exile from the broader Christian church. At the same time, the public nature of his hymns—an emergent genre in eighteenth-century England—placed such private misgivings in a communal context. As congregations collectively sang their individual doubts, those doubts were transformed into tentative affirmations of faith. To believe meant one first had to admit his or her unbelief, joining voices with those who likewise declared that they, too, lacked faith and did not belong in God’s church. This sense of exile was abiding for Cowper, and his hymns thereby suggest that a crucial aspect of faith and communal religious identity is Christians’ insistence that they can never quite believe what it is they are singing. Belief is, therefore, inextricably tied to a sense of belonging with those who do not belong. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
18 pages, 289 KiB  
Article
Surprised by Hope: Possibilities of Spiritual Experience in Victorian Lyric Poetry
by Denae Dyck
Religions 2025, 16(2), 255; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16020255 - 18 Feb 2025
Viewed by 574
Abstract
This article reconsiders literature’s capacity to express and evoke spiritual experiences by turning to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, especially his discussion of mysticism and his suggestion that poetry can bring about such states. James’s ideas are especially promising given [...] Read more.
This article reconsiders literature’s capacity to express and evoke spiritual experiences by turning to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, especially his discussion of mysticism and his suggestion that poetry can bring about such states. James’s ideas are especially promising given recent developments in postsecular and postcritical scholarship that problematize a religious/secular divide and call into question a hermeneutics of suspicion. Bringing James into conversation with Paul Ricoeur, I aim to show how receptivity to spiritual experiences in literature might generate expansive models of both poetics and hermeneutics. To pursue these possibilities, my study analyzes three examples of Victorian lyric poems that probe the edges of wonder: Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush”, Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Nondum” and Dollie Radford’s “A Dream of ‘Dreams’”. These case studies strategically select work by writers of various belief or unbelief positions, highlighting the dynamism of the late nineteenth-century moment from which James’s writings emerged. I argue that this poetry facilitates a re-imagination of hope, beyond a faith/doubt dichotomy, as well as a re-framing of revelation, from proclamation to invitation. Building on insights from both James and Ricoeur, my discussion concludes by making the case for cultivating an interpretive disposition that does not guard against but opens toward poetry’s latent potential to take readers by surprise. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
13 pages, 246 KiB  
Article
Can Reading the Life of a Self-Abusive Visionary Make Sense Today?
by Mary Frohlich
Religions 2025, 16(2), 244; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16020244 - 16 Feb 2025
Viewed by 425
Abstract
The Autobiography of Saint Marguerite-Marie Alacoque recounts her many visions, ecstasies, and sufferings as she became God’s messenger, initiating the highly successful modern form of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Reading the Autobiography today is difficult, however. She constantly practices forms of obedience, [...] Read more.
The Autobiography of Saint Marguerite-Marie Alacoque recounts her many visions, ecstasies, and sufferings as she became God’s messenger, initiating the highly successful modern form of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Reading the Autobiography today is difficult, however. She constantly practices forms of obedience, self-control, and self-abuse that are offensive to today’s sensibilities. Her image of Jesus is as her “Master’ and “Sovereign” who desires and demands suffering on the part of those who love him. Her theology of the necessity of repairing God’s wounded honor by suffering is likewise outdated. Finally, the reliance of her message on visions does not inspire trust in an era that generally views visions as symptoms of pathology. This essay proposes that it is possible to discover authentic inspiration in the Autobiography by reading it with the help of several mediating theories. First, Hubert Hermans’ Dialogical Self Theory offers insight into traditional, modern, and postmodern styles of self-construction, thus situating Alacoque’s stories and practices within her time (at the cusp between traditional and modern styles) while offering a glimpse of how she can be understood within our time (at the cusp between modern and postmodern styles). Second, a historically contextualized eucharistic theology of embodied self-giving helps to see past the problematic elements of her theology. Finally, an ecotheological theory of visions suggests a way to understand her visions that may unveil their significance for our own time of crisis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature)
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