This introduction and overview to the Phenomenology of Religion describes, analyses and evaluates the ideas of key thinkers in the phenomenology of religion. The author places the ideas of these key thinkers into historical and social context by examining the formative influences on their thinking and by indicating how their ideas have helped to create the debates at the core of religious studies today. The book's focus on the phenomenology of religion confirms the central and even overriding role phenomenology has played in shaping religious studies as a discipline distinct from theology, sociology or anthropology. The author examines the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American 'schools' of religious phenomenology, and also looks at the criticism levelled against the phenomenology of religion during the past twenty-five years by advocates of reductionism. He concludes by reviewing alternatives to the polarised positions so characteristic of current debates in Religious Studies and by making a case for what he calls a 'reflexive phenomenology'.