近來英語宗教學界對施賴爾馬赫的《論宗教》作了一種有別於黑格爾、巴特式的「主體主義」批判，它認為施氏把宗教看作一種純「私人的」事件，把宗教完全限制在宗教個體的內在領域，從而使它完全與公共領域隔離，即與宗教社會、文化和歷史的可觀察的領域相隔離。本文對這種批判提出質疑。筆者認為施賴爾馬赫所描述的宗教情感必須與普遍關聯的宇宙觀相結合才能獲得準確的理解。由於宗教情感不僅是對宇宙關聯的感知，而且會進一步激發人們通過情感溝通去完善已有的關聯，因此宗教情感必然導向宗教的會社性。我們也不能脫開宗教的情感性而討論宗教的會社性。因為後者正是建立在宗教情感溝通之上的，是這種溝通的自然產物，而且其主要特徵也是以情感溝通之特徵為基礎。

Recently, Schleiermacher’s On Religion has been attacked by contemporary scholars of religion as showing a form of subjectivism that has characteristics from those of Hegel and Barth. These scholars think that religion according to Schleiermacher is a purely private affair, that it is restricted to the interior of the religious individual, and is insulated altogether from the public, observable realm of society, culture, and history. The paper criticizes this view. In author’s opinion, religious feeling must be connected to the worldview that reality is a universal network of interdependence as laid out in On Religion. As religious feeling—as there described—is not only the perception of the relationships, but also leads to the creation of new relationships through communication of feeling, it necessarily leads to a religious society. On the other hand, the depiction of a religious society cannot be separated from that of religious feeling, because it must actually be based on the communication of religious feeling, and becomes the natural product of that religious feeling. Furthermore, the main characteristic of a religious society is determined by that of the communication of religious feeling.