Defining religion isn’t as simple as it seems. Is it belief in God, a system of rituals, or a cultural tradition? Scholars have debated this for centuries, offering competing definitions from ...

When is yoga religious, and when is it… not religious enough? In this episode of Crash Course Religions, we’ll find out why these frameworks we call “religions” are so hard to define, and why our ...

Each of the Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — has a mystical path. Jews call their tradition Kabbalah. Muslims have Sufism. And Christians have, well, the mystics. (Though until ...

MYSTICISM — that is, the belief in supernatural connections in the physical and psychical worlds — has always been an interesting object of observation for the psychologist. When the human mind ...

IF by ‘science’ we mean an organized knowledge of the world we live in, adequate to give us some degree of power over that world, and if by ‘mysticism’ we mean the quintessential part of religion, or ...

The Times Opinion columnist discusses religion and belief — at this moment in our politics, and in our lives more generally. This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You ...

Once or twice a month, Bernard McGinn receives an email from someone wanting to talk about their “special” experience. Many pose questions like, “How do I know if I’ve really had a mystical encounter ...

Co-authored with Dr. Ken Baskin. Few things are more important to human psychology writ large than religion. But what does this concept really mean? The more deeply we investigate it, the odder ...