Religious Experience

“I have tried to show that the two antithetical principles of valuation which differentiate art and science are one-sided limitations of the religious valuation-principle. If this be correct, it follows that the scientific and the aesthetic empiricism are both partial empiricisms. Both presuppose yet cannot deal with the group of facts which is the focus of religious valuation, and which concerns the mutual relationship of human beings and the sharing of a common experience between them. The inclusion of this group of facts, and its centrality in the religious field, makes a religious empiricism more complete than the limited empiricisms of science and art. The religious empiricism provides the synthesis of the opposite and partial attitudes of art and science, and this synthesis is necessary to the rationality of practical life.”

- John Macmurray, The Structure of Religious Experience, 1936 – a key text for the OWC and Braziers Park communities.