Influence of religious experiences

• Influence of religious experiences on pilgrimage

  Lourdes was established as a place of pilgrimage due to St Bernadette's visions and claims. The spring water from the grotto is believed to possess healing properties and the Catholic Church has confirmed 67 healings. Thousands visit yearly to pray, heal and strengthen their faith
• Religious experiences can be the foundation of religions: John Wesley


  Wesley has travelled the length of country preaching the Christian gospel and converting tens of thousands of people. He created the Methodist church to allow poor uneducated people to read and write. He was involved in the ragged school movement, started the national temperance movement in Preston, was highly influential in persuading William Wilberforce to petition the government on slavery and set up social areas for the Jamaican community in the 1950s, as well as being a host to much of the homeless work in the UK. He has changed many lives
• Religious experiences are life changing

  Gram Seed went from an alcoholic ex offender to someone who inspires young people imprisoned in youth detention centres and encourages them to turn their lives around
• Religious experience as value for religious faith

  - affirm peoples faith as the religious community hear of how God's present and active in peoples lives - provide a focus for the religious experience- inspire members of the religious community to develop their own spiritual life as they seek to have similar experiences - reveal messages from God that can be shared with religious community, such as words of knowledge or future prophecies- change HRE direction of people's lives for the better