In this work he used new insights from social anthropology, phenomenology of religion, social psychology and sociology.

He was a major scholar in the phenomenology of religion, the history of modern Christian mission, and inter-religious dialogue.

His approach to research is shaped, in part, by his training in church history, but also in the phenomenology of religion.

His current work deals with the theory of signs, the phenomenology of religion, and the concept of a "Transforming Theology".

In his teaching at Westminster, Bennett was asked to focus on anthropology alongside colleagues whose specialisms were psychology, sociology and phenomenology of religion.

In 1901, Kristensen was appointed the first professorship relating to the phenomenology of religion at the University of Leiden.

In his Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1933), he outlines what a phenomenology of religion should look like:

The phenomenology of religion concerns the experiential aspect of religion, describing religious phenomena in terms consistent with the orientation of the worshippers.

At the Seminar he studied with professors like the patrologist Juan Ayan Calvo and the specialist in the phenomenology of religion, Juan Martin Velasco.

Some of the material from Kristensen's lectures on the phenomenology of religion was edited posthumously, and the English translation was published in 1960 as The Meaning of Religion.

In the context of Phenomenology of religion however, the term was first used by Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye in his work "Lehrbuch der Religiongeschichte" (1887).

Among other great phenomenologists who worked and influenced phenomenology of religion are Kristensen, Henry Corbin, Mahmoud Khatami, Ninian Smart, de la saussaye, Mircea Eliade.

Additionally, he has another M.A. in the history and phenomenology of religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and a B.A. from California State University, Northridge.

His main area of scholarly research is the history of Jewish mysticism but he has brought to bear on that field training in philosophy, literary criticism, feminist theory, postmodern hermeneutics, Eastern mystical traditions, and the phenomenology of religion.

It is the task of the phenomenology of religion to interpret the various ways in which the sacred appears to human beings in the world, the ways in which humans understand and care for that which is revealed to them, for that which is ultimately wholly other mystery.

In his work, mystical practice is virtually ignored, comparative studies and the categories of the emerging phenomenology of religion are kept to the margins, and the implications of mysticism for Jewish theology are touched on only in a series of brief interviews in the very last years of Scholem's life.