Psychology of Religion

An attempt to apply scientific methods to the study of the facts of the religious consciousness. Interest in and concern for “religious affections” has always been present in the Christian Church, but the Romantic Movement, coming in the wake of Kant's* denial of the possibility of the knowledge of God, led to a concern for “religion” considered as a postulation or projection of the existence of God (for a variety of reasons) and for a delineation of those states of consciousness that ought properly to be called “religious.” The views of Schleiermacher* and Feuerbach are of importance here.