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Religious experience in childhood: A study of adult perspectives on early spiritual awareness
Abstract
Developmental psychology suggests that children are incapable of experiencing, perceiving or thinking as mature adults. But the first systematic study of religious experience, conducted in Great Britain, revealed evidence of profound levels of spiritual awareness in childhood which continued to be of significance in later adult understanding. The purpose of this study was to answer the following questions: (1) What is the nature of this 'unlearned' or 'direct' knowledge in childhood? (2) How is it related to 'learned' forms of knowledge, both in the short and the long-term? (3) How do individuals integrate/synthesize these two forms (and how do they fail)? (4) How does education assist or made difficult this integration? (5) How is this 'direct' knowledge related to other talents? Qualitative research methods were used. In-depth phenomenological interviewing was chosen as the methodology best suited to this subject. Eight adults participated in the study. A broad range of spiritual experiences and insights in childhood were described. These were unique, yet had many similar elements. The similarities were found to exist in the kinds of 'a priori' knowledge they described, and in the difficulties this knowledge created for them in environments which denied its existence. The educational process, (public school), was seen as destructive of their need to comprehend and integrate their insights. Involvement in imaginative activities was described as the primary means in which an integration of 'learned' and 'unlearned' knowledge could take place. All of the participants described this integration as a life-long process, and they described their early spiritual awareness as having on-going relevance to that process. These findings suggest that the developmental model is inadequate to explain the nature of personal 'maturity'. A 'visional', as opposed to a 'juridical', model is proposed. The need for a rapprochement between 'objective' and 'participant' ways of knowing is discussed as one of the most important issues for education that this study reveals.
Subject Area
Preschool education|Educational psychology|Religious education
Recommended Citation
Farmer, Lorelie Joy, "Religious experience in childhood: A study of adult perspectives on early spiritual awareness" (1988). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8906277.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8906277