Shared Light: Spiritual Experience Across and Beyond Faith

Dr Marianne Rankin is coming to the MultiFaith Centre at the University of Derby on Monday 9 November, from 2pm to 4pm. The session is called Shared Light: Spiritual Experience Across and Beyond Faith, and it's part of Interfaith Week 2026, which runs from 8 to 15 November — a national focus on strengthening interfaith relations and raising awareness of the UK's diverse faith communities. The MultiFaith Centre is hosting this one.

Rankin builds the talk around her book An Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience (Bloomsbury, 2008) and the Occasional Paper An Introduction to Religious Experience. She brings in the experiences of the founders of the world's major religious traditions alongside accounts from ordinary people today, and from there she asks whether there's a common core to spiritual experience and what such experiences might tell us about the existence of God or the possibility of life after death. She then turns to consciousness, religion, and what it means to be human.

She comes to it from a particular background: a linguist by training, Rankin lived in the Far East for almost twenty years, completed a PhD at the University of Warwick on The Fruits of Spiritual Experience, and spent eleven years as Director of Communications for the Alister Hardy Trust. That mix of linguistic training, time spent in Asia, and a PhD on the subject gives her a broad base to work from, and the session draws on both the big-name founders and the everyday accounts.

It's a free event, though booking is essential. It runs from 2pm to 4pm on Monday 9 November at the MultiFaith Centre, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby, DE22 1GB, in Meeting Space 1 and 2.