This article looks at the origins of phenomenological investigations into the problem of religion. Reinach’s Aufzeichnungen drew the attention of Göttingen phenomenologists toward religious experience; at the same time the philosophical discussion was accompanied by the active interest of Husserl’s students in Christianity. This article summarizes psychological research into the problem of religious conversion before reconstructing the history of phenomenological religiosity. The «democratization» of interest in the study of religion and the search for a universal explanatory theory led to a situation in which psychologists of religion lost sight of the phenomenon of «religious awakening» among philosophers. But the dual nature of the phenomenon as a collective process that at the same time was an object of intellectual reflection raises interesting questions about the possible role of academicians in transforming religious meanings within a tradition. This question leads to an exploration of the relationship of the phenomenon to the phenomenological project as a whole. In the final analysis, it becomes possible to point out some questions about theories of religious conversion and to find a new way of problematizing the history of the phenomenological movement.