Includes bibliographical references and index.

From experience to meaning -- From meaning to power -- Three indispensable concepts -- Meaning and power -- Experience and meaning -- Experience and power.

Print version record.

Three understandings of the nature of religion - religion as experience, symbolic meaning, and power - have dominated scholarly discussions, in succession, for the past hundred years. This book examines influential proponents of the three visions and argues that each approach has something substantial and lasting to contribute to the study of religion, although each requires revision. It articulates a social practical theory of religion that can account for all three aspects, even as it incorporates them into a single theoretical framework: religion as a social practice.