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Journal articles on the topic 'Religious conversions'
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Sgibneva, Olga. "Religious conversions in contemporary Russia." Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Serija 7. Filosofiya. Sociologiya i socialnye tehnologii 16, no. 1 (April 2017): 80–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu7.2017.1.9.
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Rajeshwar, Yashasvini, and Roy C. Amore. "Coming Home (Ghar Wapsi) and Going Away: Politics and the Mass Conversion Controversy in India." Religions 10, no. 5 (May 9, 2019): 313. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10050313.
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This article addresses two recent socio-religious trends in India: mass conversions to Hinduism (Ghar Wapsi) and mass conversions from Hinduism. Despite officially being a secular nation, organizations allied with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are actively promoting mass conversions to Hinduism. Other religions organize mass conversions, usually of Dalits, away from Hinduism and its legacy of caste discrimination. While several states have controversial laws placing restrictions on mass conversions from Hinduism, mass conversions to Hinduism are often seen as being promoted rather than restricted.
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Drury, Abdullah. "Religious conversions in the Mediterranean world." Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 25, no. 4 (June 4, 2014): 526–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2014.924220.
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Kalam, Mohammed A. "Religious conversions in Tamil Nadu (India)." Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Journal 10, no. 2 (July 1989): 343–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602008908716126.
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Mercadante, Linda A. "Italian-American Immigrants and Religious Conversions." Pastoral Psychology 60, no. 4 (July 24, 2010): 551–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11089-010-0304-9.
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Pachuau, Lalsangkima. "Ecumenical Church and Religious Conversion." Mission Studies 18, no. 1 (2001): 181–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157338301x00126.
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AbstractIn this article, Lalsangkima Pachuau responds to contemporary accusations in India that Christian missionaries are forcing conversions, and thereby turning Indians away from their culture. While the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to "propagate" religion, and therefore to accept the movement from one religion (e.g. Hinduism) to another (e.g. Christianity), what is important to understand that "conversion" is not primarily a call to move from one religion to another--much less to abandon one's culture--but is a movement away from self and the "world" toward God. Conversion understood as "changing religions" is much more the product of seventeenth and eighteenth century evangelicalism than it is a true understanding of the Bible. Mission is always about conversion, and entails the invitation to enter the Christian community; such invitation, however, should always be distinguished from a proselytism that only focuses on a change of religious allegiance.
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Hamed-Troyansky, Vladimir. "Becoming Armenian: Religious Conversions in the Late Imperial South Caucasus." Comparative Studies in Society and History 63, no. 1 (January 2021): 242–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417520000432.
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AbstractIn the nineteenth-century South Caucasus, hundreds of local farmers and nomads petitioned Russian authorities to allow them to become Christians. Most of them were Muslims and specifically requested to join the Armenian Apostolic Church. This article explores religious conversions to Armenian Christianity on Russia's mountainous southern border with the Ottoman Empire and Iran. It demonstrates that tsarist reforms, chiefly the peasant reform and the sedentarization of nomads, accelerated labor migration within the region, bringing many Muslims, Yazidis, and Assyrians into an Armenian environment. Local anxieties over Russian colonialism further encouraged conversions. I argue that by converting to Armenian Christianity many rural South Caucasians benefited from a change in their legal status, which came with the right to move residence, access to agricultural land, and other freedoms. Russia's Jewish communities, on the other hand, saw conversion to Armenian Christianity as a legal means to circumvent discrimination and obtain the right to live outside of the Pale of Settlement. By drawing on converts’ petitions and officials’ decisions, this article illustrates that the Russian government emerged as an ultimate arbiter of religious conversions, evaluating the sincerity of petitioners’ faith and how Armenian they had become, while preserving the empire's religious and social hierarchies.
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Seregina, Anna. "The “Life of Lady Falkland”: a biography or a conversion story?" Adam & Eve. Gender History Review, no. 29 (2021): 265–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.32608/2307-8383-2021-29-265-281.
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The article presents an introduction to a first Russian translation of the “Life of Lady Falkland” written in the mid-17th century by the nuns of the English Benedictine Abbey at Cambrai (the Cary sisters), which told the life of their mother, Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess of Falkland – a translator, poet and polemicist, and also a Catholic convert. It has been argued that the “Life” combines the traits of biography and conversion story, and that the conversions described there – of Lady Falkland and her children fell into the category of the so-called “intellectual conversions” brought about by reading books and debating the fine points of religious doctrines. “Intellectual conversions’ were seen to be reserved to men. However, the Cary sisters used this model to establish their position within the Cambrai religious community, which consisted of many nuns with wide intellectual interests. The authors of the “Life” also demonstrated that intellectual efforts of their mother led to conversions of others to Catholicism, thus making her a Catholic missionary in all but a name.
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Tam, Truong Phan Chau. "Religious Conversion of the Ethnic Minorities in the South of Vietnam." Tattva - Journal of Philosophy 8, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 27–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.12726/tjp.15.3.
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Religious conversion is a phenomenon that has frequently occurred in human history. As part of religious life, religious conversion reflects fluctuations and changes in social existence, especially changes in the economic, cultural, social, religious factors and one‟s own subjective religious convictions. Religious conversions are taking place in the ethnic communities in Southern Vietnam, but in a context that is space and time specific. So the process of evolution, the nature, dynamics and characteristics of the case of religious conversion here is different and unique. Currently, the study of religious conversion in Vietnam in general and the South in particular, is modest. There have not been many studies regarding case specific religious conversion of people and no studies have done a full assessment of the nature and characteristics of religious conversion on social life in Southern Vietnam as well as forecasted the evolution and impact of the same. This article is intended to present and describe three cases of religious conversion in the south of Vietnam. These are the conversion to Protestantism of ethnic communities Khmer (originating from Cambodia)
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Sengers, Erik. "'Do You Want To Receive A Missionary At Home?': Conversion And The Religious Market." Exchange 35, no. 1 (2006): 4–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157254306776066942.
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AbstractThis paper offers an introduction in religious market theory on the basis of the theme of conversion. Conversions have everything to do with the religious market. Where people are looking for religious satisfaction, they will turn themselves to religious organisations that are willing to give that on certain conditions. Starting from the assumption of the rational actor, the theory makes some strong hypotheses on religious organisations and the religious market. What does the religious market look like, what are the basic characteristics of this market, and how can religious organisations interact with that market? However, when we discuss social-scientific research on conversion in Europe, the limits of religious market theory come to the fore. In the conclusion, the main questions that arise from religious market theory for the project Conversion Careers and Culture Politics in Pentecostalism are being discussed.
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Dewhurst, Kenneth, and A. W. Beard. "Sudden religious conversions in temporal lobe epilepsy." Epilepsy & Behavior 4, no. 1 (February 2003): 78–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1525-5050(02)00688-1.
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Ramachandran, Jayakumar. "Conversion Agenda and Secularism: An Analysis from Christian Missions in India and Nepal." Mission Studies 34, no. 3 (October 9, 2017): 345–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341523.
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Abstract This article is an attempt to understand how Hindus perceive and respond to the conversions of people in India and Nepal to Christian faith and to find a way in which the evangelicals may fulfill their mission mandate in a pluralistic context in which conflicts and challenges are imbedded. For this purpose, a panoramic presentation of the political realities, classified communities of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, and the views and perceptions of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians toward conversions in India and Nepal, is presented in the first part. This section is followed by a theological and biblical analysis with a word study on conversion and discipleship. The last section of this article is a brief presentation of unethical practices involved in conversion events which cause adverse reactions from other religious adherents. The paper concludes with suggestions to Christians as to how they should execute the commission of the Lord of the Bible in the prevailing religious, political, and social contexts of Nepal and India.
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Johnson, Todd M., and Gina A. Bellofatto. "Migration, Religious Diasporas, and Religious Diversity: A Global Survey." Mission Studies 29, no. 1 (2012): 3–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157338312x637993.
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Abstract Vast efforts are put into the collection of statistics in every country of the world relating to religious adherence. Quantitative tools in the context of demography – births, deaths, conversions, defections, immigration, and emigration – provide a comprehensive view of demographic changes in religious diasporas, which are created by the migration of people worldwide. Utilizing the taxonomies of religions and peoples from the World Christian Database (WCD) and World Religion Database (WRD), a preliminary examination of religious diasporas shows 859 million people (12.5% of the world’s population) from 327 peoples in diasporas around the world. The continuing trend of religious migration around the world is both increasing and intensifying religious diversity, especially in the former Christian West. This paper outlines some key issues relating to religious diversity in the twenty-first century and how the movement of peoples worldwide contributes to those issues.
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Stiles Maneck, Susan. "The Conversion of Religious Minorities to the Bahá’í Faith in Iran: Some Preliminary Observations." Journal of Baha’i Studies 3, no. 3 (1991): 35–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.31581/jbs-3.3.4(1991).
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In the period between 1877–1921 significant numbers of non-Muslims converted to the Bahá’í Faith in Iran. This was an essential development, for the emergence of the Bahá’í Faith as an independent religion possessing a distinct identity apart from Islam. These conversions were largely confined to the Zoroastrian and Jewish communities and did not involve Iran’s largest religious minority, the Christians. This study attempts to address some of the factors that were involved in this conversion process. These will include the manner in which Bahá’ís made the transition from Islamic particularism to a universalism that would attract non-Muslims, as well as the manner in which actual conversions took place and the factors surrounding them. Major emphasis will be placed upon examining what factors may have inclined certain minorities rather than others to convert.
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Czimbalmos, Mercédesz. "Rites of Passage: Conversionary in-Marriages in the Finnish Jewish Communities." Journal of Religion in Europe 14, no. 1-2 (May 24, 2021): 1–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18748929-20211502.
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Abstract Debates over intermarriages and conversions are at the heart of Jewish concerns today. International studies outline a growing number of intermarriages or their considerations within several European countries and the United States. Yet, the Nordic context in general and the Finnish context specifically are understudied. The current study seeks to fill the gap in the existing research by contributing to the field of conversion studies in general and the research in Jewish intermarriages and conversions in particular in Europe and in Finland by analyzing newly gathered ethnographic materials from the years 2019–2020 through adapting Sylvia Barack Fishman’s typology on conversionary in-marriages to the Finnish context.
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Owens, Alexandra. "Protecting Freedom of and from Religion: Questioning the Law's Ability to Protect Against Unethical Conversions in Sri Lanka." Religion & Human Rights 1, no. 1 (2006): 41–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187103206777493401.
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AbstractIn recent years, the issue of improper and unethical conversions has attracted much attention in Sri Lanka. The issue is a highly emotive one, with members of the majority Buddhist population calling for measures to protect their religion from 'threats' from other minority religions, and members of these other religious groups expressing growing feelings of discrimination and unequal treatment. This article examines recent case law in the field of unethical conversions in Sri Lanka. An analysis of the decisions of Sri Lanka's Supreme Court relating to the incorporation of Christian organizations suggests that the legal system in Sri Lanka has struggled in its attempt to secure the right to freedom of religion and the right to manifest a religion for all people. Moreover, it is argued that the law has ultimately fuelled the growing religious tensions across the island. This article questions the law's ability to protect against unethical conversions in Sri Lanka, and therefore seeks to add weight to the calls for a non-legislative approach to the issue in order to allow for respect for the human rights of all concerned.
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Ngong, David. "Contesting Conversions in African Christian Theology: Engaging the Political Theology of Emmanuel Katongole." Mission Studies 36, no. 3 (October 9, 2019): 367–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341675.
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Abstract This article argues that Emmanuel Katongole’s theology focuses on contesting conversions in African Christianity. To him, conversions that have so far taken place in much of African Christianity, especially those informed by the theology of inculturation, have not adequately emphasized the formation of critical Christian social imagination that would challenge the violent politics of the postcolonial nation-state in Africa. The article engages Katongole’s theology by showing how his understanding of conversion aligns him with a form of African Christianity which he criticizes – the neo-Pentecostal and Charismatic variety of African Christianity. It critiques Katongole’s proposal by suggesting that the social and political transformation he seeks may be enhanced by forms of conversion rooted in the theology of inculturation which he minimizes.
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STROUMSA, Sarah. "Between Acculturation and Conversion in Islamic Spain The case of the Banū Ḥasday." Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge, no. 1 (March 1, 2016): 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.21071/mijtk.v0i1.5171.
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The High Middle Ages in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus) is often described as a golden age in which Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in harmony. The attested dynamics of conversions to Islam disturb this idyllic, static picture, revealing the religious and social pressures exerted on the religious minorities. The different reactions of the Jewish and Christian communities of al-Andalus to these pressures allow us to refine our understanding of conversion in the Medieval Islamic world. A close examination of the Jewish family of Banū Ḥasday shows more nuances and ambivalence than ‘conversion’ normally suggests.
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Gupta, Charu. "Intimate Desires: Dalit Women and Religious Conversions in Colonial India." Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 3 (July 14, 2014): 661–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021911814000400.
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Religious conversions by Dalits in colonial India have largely been examined as mass movements to Christianity, with an implicit focus on men. However, why did Dalit women convert? Were they just guided by their men, family, and community? This paper explores the interrelationship between caste and gender in Dalit conversions afresh through the use of popular print culture, vernacular missionary literature, writings of Hindu publicists and caste ideologues, cartoons, and police reports from colonial north India. It particularly looks at the two sites of clothing and romance to mark representations of mass and individual conversions to Christianity and Islam. Through them, it reads conversions by Dalit women as acts that embodied a language of intimate rights, and were accounts of resistant materialities. These simultaneously produced deep anxieties and everyday violence among ideologues of the Arya Samaj and other such groups, where there was both an erasure and a representational heightening of Dalit female desire. However, they also provide one with avenues to recover in part Dalit women's aspirations in this period.
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Nitsche, Martin. "Transformative Impact: The Environmental Significance of Religious Conversions." Open Theology 5, no. 1 (January 1, 2019): 241–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2019-0020.
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Abstract This paper concentrates on the transformative impact of religious conversions. I understand religious conversions here as all individual spiritual transformations that either create an essentially new religious experience or substantially intensify an existing religiosity. The transformative impact of these transformations consists not only in modifying life perspectives or values, but also (and more substantially) in altering the very structure of personal experience. They can even bring significant changes in the phenomenal character of individual life-worlds, which are then experienced as perceived “differently”. This reflects on the possibilities the phenomenological method possesses to describe (and understand) these changes, and mainly discusses the applicability of Husserl’s analyses in Ideas 2 of the double constitution of body. On this basis, I suggest an explanatory model of transformative localizing/layering.
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Halama, Peter, and Júlia Halamová. "Process of Religious Conversion in the Catholic Charismatic Movement: A Qualitative Analysis." Archive for the Psychology of Religion 27, no. 1 (January 2005): 69–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/008467206774355385.
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The study deals with a religious conversion of members of the Catholic Charismatic movement. This movement is characterised by the integration of those aspects of spirituality, which draw on traditional religious life as well as on the spirituality of new religious movements. The consensual qualitative research was used for analyses of thirty stories of personal conversions from the members of this movement. The stories were described in a public bulletin, published by the movement. They were analysed in regard to the precedents of conversion, course of conversion and the consequences of conversion in personal life. The results of analysis showed that the typical process of religious conversion in this movement is preceded by some contact with religious issues in childhood and experiencing some problem in the period before conversion. The conversion is stimulated by meeting a religious person and attendance at prayer meetings, which lead to the experience of God's presence, and a cognitive insight into religious matters. Consequences of conversion include radical changes in spiritual life, increasing subjective well-being, improving social life and solving the antecedent problem. The results are discussed with regard to the previous theories and research on religious conversion as well as their limitations originating from the nature of the data.
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Clément, Fabrice. "The Pleasure of Believing: Toward a naturalistic explanation of religious conversions." Journal of Cognition and Culture 3, no. 1 (2003): 69–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853703321598581.
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AbstractFrom a cognitive point of view, the adhesion to religious beliefs, especially those involving adult subjects, are quite mysterious. Religious representations entail paradoxical claims that should imply skepticism or cautious doubts in any rational mind. Nevertheless, it is not rare that they prompt an act of total commitment from the converts. The aim of this paper is to propose a naturalist explanation of the conversion phenomenon. The argument relies on the postulated existence of an emotional signal selected by evolution to motivate the child to look for the underlying structure of the world by providing a strong positive feeling when a solution is found. By the use of different examples of historical conversions, the author shows how this emotional mechanism can be triggered in the presence of religious representations, causing in the subjects the feeling that they have discovered a good solution to problems they were confronted with.
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Owen, Alexandra. "Using Legislation to Protect Against Unethical Conversions in Sri Lanka." Journal of Law and Religion 22, no. 2 (2007): 323–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0748081400003933.
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The year 2006 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. In her recent report to the United Nations General Assembly, Asma Jahangir, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, stated that despite the time that has elapsed since the Declaration was drafted, it “seems evident that contentious religious issues have not only evolved but also become more acute in many societies.” In a report submitted to the Commission on Human Rights in late 2004, the Special Rapporteur listed “the continuing violations of human rights of members of certain religious minorities, as well as the still widely applied practice of forced conversion” among the main concerns in the area of freedom of religion. Jahangir said that she considers that “such a practice breaches the strongest and most fundamental part of freedom of religion or belief and should be given greater attention by the international community.”In May 2005 the Special Rapporteur made an in situ visit to Sri Lanka—a country where the issue of unethical conversions has fueled religious tensions in recent years. Approximately 69% of Sri Lanka's population are Buddhists, followed by Hindus (15%), Christians (8%), Muslims (7%) and others (1%). Despite such a majority, the ethnic conflict which has affected Sri Lanka for decades, and which began to escalate again in December 2005 and throughout 2006-07, has been largely devoid of a religious element: relations between the different religious groups have for some time been relatively peaceful. This religious co-existence has, however, begun to deteriorate, due largely to the issue of unethical conversions and a desire to protect the majority religion.
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Kalpagam, U. "Book Review: Conversions and Religious Identities in Colonial India." Cultural Dynamics 12, no. 2 (July 2000): 261–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/092137400001200208.
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Ensor, Marisa Olivo. "Disaster Evangelism: Religion as a Catalyst for Change in Post-Mitch Honduras." International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters 21, no. 2 (August 2003): 31–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/028072700302100202.
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Although religion clearly plays an important role in framing the way people interpret and cope with disasters, religion is virtually absent in policy debates and disaster reconstruction planning. Researchers have also tended to neglect the role of religion as a source of emotional and social support, and a vehicle of community building and group and individual identity for affected populations. This paper examines the connection between post-disaster resettlement and reconstruction, and the changing religious beliefs and practices of the women and men of Morolica, a town in southern Honduras swept away by the floods caused by Hurricane Mitch in October 1998. In Morolica, rates of conversion to Evangelism increased after the disaster, as several Evangelical missions collaborated with the local population on the reconstruction of their community. My data indicate that women and men had different reasons for being attracted to Evangelism, and that conversion entailed a transformation of the social norms and proper behavior that was different for each gender. Furthermore, these conversions can be understood as gendered survival tactics in a context of dislocation and catastrophic loss. Given the multiple and complex processes taking place in Post-Mitch Honduras in general, and Morolica in particular, I suggest that survival strategies and religious conversions are gender-differentiated, and need to be explored within a framework of shifting political ecological conditions, religious pluralism, and displacement.
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Gugelot, Frédéric. "Conversions et apostasies." Archives Juives 35, no. 1 (2002): 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.3917/aj.351.0004.
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Roer-Strier, Dorit, Roberta G. Sands, and Joretha Bourjolly. "Family Reactions to Religious Change: The Case of African American Women who Become Muslim." Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 90, no. 2 (April 2009): 220–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.3877.
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This paper presents a study of family reactions to African American adult daughters’ conversions from Christianity to Islam. Examining qualitative data from interviews with Christian mothers and Muslim daughters in 17 family units, we explored reactions to a family member's religious conversion initially and over time. We also identified the specific challenges facing African American families when a daughter converts to Islam. We found a wide range of initial emotional responses to an adult daughter's conversion. Over time, the families showed marked changes, predominantly in the direction of increased respect and acceptance. Reactions to the change and the challenges facing the families are discussed in relation to several theories, including ambiguous loss, and implications for practice are described.
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Widyawati, Fransiska. "Being a Muslim In a Catholic Family and Vice Versa: Religious Education in Mixed-Faith Families in Flores, Eastern Indonesia." Ulumuna 26, no. 2 (December 28, 2022): 337–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.20414/ujis.v26i2.548.
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This study explores religious education and identity formation among families within mixed-faith families in Flores, Eastern Indonesia, specifically, Muslim-Catholic families. This ethnographic research observes and holds in-depth interviews with eight mixed-faith families comprising four to eight family members. This study finds that mixed-faith families continue to carry out the process of faith education and identity formation for all their members. However, the presence of family members with different religions gives a distinctive character because there are always negotiations, adaptations, and even transformations. The form, intensity, and model of faith education between families differ depending on the context of a mixed-faith family formation, one's position and power in the family, one's way of thinking about religion, and the spiritual environment around the family. Faith education in a mixed-faith family can positively deepen faith, strengthen religious identity, increase knowledge about other religions, foster tolerance, and appreciate diversity. This can also fade away the identity and belief of the minority and even can lead to conversion. However, the bond of family love does not cause differences, fights and conversions into one meaningful conflict.
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Asmi, Rehenuma. "Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait." American Journal of Islam and Society 35, no. 3 (July 1, 2018): 83–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v35i3.485.
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There is a tendency in academic literature to compare and contrast reli- gions to try to understand the motivations of the convert. What are the costs and benefits of conversion? What is gained and what is lost? Thinking in these utilitarian terms can lead to a focus on causality and materiality, rather than the metaphysical and ephemeral aspects of religious thought and practice. Furthermore, religious conversion to Islam is often mired in the same prejudices and stereotypes of the orient found in western and predominantly Judeo-Christian depictions of the Middle East, the region that Islam is most often associated with. In Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait, Attiya Ahmad moves away from the emphasis on what distinguishes religious traditions and discursive communities to focus on what religious conversion means to the individual convert. Ahmad seeks to counter the notion that conver- sion must have some material benefit to the convert and instead looks at the quotidian character of religious transformation. Ahmad argues in her eth- nographic work that conversion can be understood through the minutiae of daily interactions, conversations, and affections that develop over time. She follows the lives of migrant domestic workers in the Gulf and their relationships with their employers as well as their own families over the course of their conversions and argues that it is neither the strength of the da'wa movement in Kuwait, nor the benefits gained by conversion to the employee/employer relationship that effectively describes the reason the women convert (although Ahmad is admittedly not looking for causality). Instead, Ahmad writes: “I have sought to tell a more modest and mundane set of stories that convey moments of slippage, tension and traces of feel- ings, thoughts and impressions of everyday conversion” (194). The strengths of Ahmad’s ethnography lie in its attention to detail and equanimity in representing the challenges of migration and domestic labor. Ahmad is careful not to create victims, nor inflate the value of the women’s migration and conversion to their economic or personal well-being. In this approach, there are hints of Lila Abu-Lughod’s and Saba Mahmood’s work with women who appear to be in marginal or precarious positions. Like these feminist ethnographers, Ahmad is attuned to the ethics and politics of representation, but with an eye towards transnational and cultural stud- ies. In its theoretical framing, the ethnography calls to mind the work of Michel DeCerteau in The Practice of Everyday Life, which rejects theories of production to focus on the consumer. Furthermore, by placing conversion in light of transnational migration, Ahmad also shows how the individu- al convert navigates her conversion through the complex nexus of Kuwait City as well as her own home town. Thus, the individual convert as artist of her own conversion is the primary subject of Ahmad’s book. My one cri- tique of the book would be in the area of theory, where Ahmad is hesitant to challenge others who have written on the subject of Islamic religious faith and practice, despite the theoretical weight evident in her ethnography. In the introduction, Ahmad begins with Talal Asad and Saba Mah- mood’s seminal arguments in the field of anthropology of Islam, which she argues “relativize and provincialize secular modern understandings of sub- jectivity, agency and embodied practice” (9). She distinguishes her work from Asad and Mahmood’s by utilizing a transnational feminist framework that highlights the process of “mutual constitution and self-constituting othering, as well as sociohistorical circumstances” (10). Ahmad wants to go beyond discursive narratives of secular liberalism and the Islamic piety movement. Specifically, Ahmad follows the approach of Eve Sedgewick, who eschews Judith Butler’s “strong theory” in exchange for an approach that looks at factors that “lie alongside” gender performativity (23). Ahmad does this by showing “how religious conversion also constitutes a complex site of interrelation through which religious traditions are configured and reconfigured together” (24). Instead of showing conflict or contrasting discursive traditions, Ahmad contends that the best way to understand the lives and stories of her interlocutors are in the quotidian affairs of the households they work and live in. She divides the chapters into the affec- tive experiences the women have as a result of their migration experiences, which in turn spur their conversions. Chapters one and two cover the political and geographic terrain that the women must cut across, which produces an overwhelming feeling of being neither here nor there, but temporarily suspended between states, households, and religions. Chapter one paints a somewhat grim picture of the politically precarious position of migrant women within the kefala sys- tem, labor laws, and bans on migrations often creating impossible condi- tions for migrant woman. Chapter two sets out to “discern, document and describe” (66) the migratory experience and why it produces uncertainty about one’s place in the world. It follows the women back and forth between Kuwait and their home countries, emphasizing the socio-historical context that requires a transnational feminist framework. The four women that Ah- mad follows throughout the book share their migratory journeys and their sense of “suspension” between two households. This chapter segues neatly into chapter three, where the women share how being a female migrant and domestic laborer requires knowledge of cross-cultural norms regarding gender, all of which require the women to be naram, “a gendered, learned capability of being malleable that indexes proper womanhood” (122). In their own eyes, a successful domestic worker from South Asia bends to the norms of the society they are in, and they attribute male and female migrant failure to being too sakht, or hard and unyielding. Here, I would have liked a stronger connection between how she describes naram and how Mahmood describes malaka. Does being naram lay the groundwork for women’s conversion to Islam, a religion which requires the ability to engage in rituals entailing patience, modesty, and steadfastness? Ahmed hints at this connection in the conclusion to the chapter—“Being naram resonates with the fluid, flexible student-centered pedagogies of Kuwait’s Islamic dawa movement, thus facilitating domestic worker’s deepening learning of Islamic precepts and practices” (123)—but she could have spent more time discussing the overlap in the concepts in either chapter three or five, where she discusses the da'wah movement. Chapters four and five deal directly with questions of religious thought and practice and illustrate how the women grapple with Islamic practices in the household as their relationships with their employers deepen. Chapter five is about the household and the everyday conversations or “house talk” that Ahmad argues are the touchstones for the women’s conversion. The daily relations in the household make blending and layering practices of Is- lam onto older traditions and rituals seem easy and natural. Ahmad argues that “the work undertaken by domestic workers—such as tending to family members during trips and caring for the elderly or the infirm—necessari- ly involves the disciplining and training of their comportment, affect and sense of self ” (129) and makes Islamic practices easier to absorb as well. Chapter 6 is a foray into the da'wah movement classroom. Like Mahmood’s Politics of Piety, Ahmad shows how the teachers and students use the space to create “intertwining stories” of patience in the face of hardship and the eventual rewards that come from this ethical re-fashioning, which mirror their own hardships as converts and help them deal with the dilemmas of being female migrant and domestic workers. The chapter ends with a sense of uncertainty, returning to the themes of temporality and suspension that began the book. Ahmad can’t say whether the conversions will remain fixed pieces or will bend and move with the women as their circumstances change. In the epilogue, Ahmad follows the “ongoing conversions” of her inter- locutors as some of them return home as Muslims and encounter new chal- lenges. As a book that focuses on the everyday, it is fitting to end on a new day and possibly, a new conversion. The strength of Ahmad’s ethnography is in giving center-stage to the considerable creativity and diligence mi- grant women show in piecing together their own conversions. This piecing together is perfectly captured by the book’s cover, which features Azra Ak- samija’s “Flocking Mosque”. The structure of a flower illustrates how believ- ers form a circular and geometric shape when gathered in devotion to God. Like Aksamija’s patterns, which build into a circular design, Ahmad’s chap- ters each represent a key piece of the story of migrant domestic workers’ conversion to Islam as a gradual process that blends nations, households, and individuals together to create a narrative about the women’s newfound faith. Scholars should read this book for its textured and detailed observa- tions about migrant women’s daily lives and for its treatment of religious conversion as a gradual process that unfolds in the everyday experiences of individuals. It would also be a great book for students as theory takes a back seat to the ethnography. The book is a refreshing, graceful approach to the subject of religious conversion and Islamic faith. Ahmad stays focused on telling her interlocutors’ stories while navigating often conflicting posi- tions.
Rehenuma AsmiAssistant Professor of Education and International StudiesAllegheny College
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Asmi, Rehenuma. "Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait." American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 35, no. 3 (July 1, 2018): 83–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajiss.v35i3.485.
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There is a tendency in academic literature to compare and contrast reli- gions to try to understand the motivations of the convert. What are the costs and benefits of conversion? What is gained and what is lost? Thinking in these utilitarian terms can lead to a focus on causality and materiality, rather than the metaphysical and ephemeral aspects of religious thought and practice. Furthermore, religious conversion to Islam is often mired in the same prejudices and stereotypes of the orient found in western and predominantly Judeo-Christian depictions of the Middle East, the region that Islam is most often associated with. In Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait, Attiya Ahmad moves away from the emphasis on what distinguishes religious traditions and discursive communities to focus on what religious conversion means to the individual convert. Ahmad seeks to counter the notion that conver- sion must have some material benefit to the convert and instead looks at the quotidian character of religious transformation. Ahmad argues in her eth- nographic work that conversion can be understood through the minutiae of daily interactions, conversations, and affections that develop over time. She follows the lives of migrant domestic workers in the Gulf and their relationships with their employers as well as their own families over the course of their conversions and argues that it is neither the strength of the da'wa movement in Kuwait, nor the benefits gained by conversion to the employee/employer relationship that effectively describes the reason the women convert (although Ahmad is admittedly not looking for causality). Instead, Ahmad writes: “I have sought to tell a more modest and mundane set of stories that convey moments of slippage, tension and traces of feel- ings, thoughts and impressions of everyday conversion” (194). The strengths of Ahmad’s ethnography lie in its attention to detail and equanimity in representing the challenges of migration and domestic labor. Ahmad is careful not to create victims, nor inflate the value of the women’s migration and conversion to their economic or personal well-being. In this approach, there are hints of Lila Abu-Lughod’s and Saba Mahmood’s work with women who appear to be in marginal or precarious positions. Like these feminist ethnographers, Ahmad is attuned to the ethics and politics of representation, but with an eye towards transnational and cultural stud- ies. In its theoretical framing, the ethnography calls to mind the work of Michel DeCerteau in The Practice of Everyday Life, which rejects theories of production to focus on the consumer. Furthermore, by placing conversion in light of transnational migration, Ahmad also shows how the individu- al convert navigates her conversion through the complex nexus of Kuwait City as well as her own home town. Thus, the individual convert as artist of her own conversion is the primary subject of Ahmad’s book. My one cri- tique of the book would be in the area of theory, where Ahmad is hesitant to challenge others who have written on the subject of Islamic religious faith and practice, despite the theoretical weight evident in her ethnography. In the introduction, Ahmad begins with Talal Asad and Saba Mah- mood’s seminal arguments in the field of anthropology of Islam, which she argues “relativize and provincialize secular modern understandings of sub- jectivity, agency and embodied practice” (9). She distinguishes her work from Asad and Mahmood’s by utilizing a transnational feminist framework that highlights the process of “mutual constitution and self-constituting othering, as well as sociohistorical circumstances” (10). Ahmad wants to go beyond discursive narratives of secular liberalism and the Islamic piety movement. Specifically, Ahmad follows the approach of Eve Sedgewick, who eschews Judith Butler’s “strong theory” in exchange for an approach that looks at factors that “lie alongside” gender performativity (23). Ahmad does this by showing “how religious conversion also constitutes a complex site of interrelation through which religious traditions are configured and reconfigured together” (24). Instead of showing conflict or contrasting discursive traditions, Ahmad contends that the best way to understand the lives and stories of her interlocutors are in the quotidian affairs of the households they work and live in. She divides the chapters into the affec- tive experiences the women have as a result of their migration experiences, which in turn spur their conversions. Chapters one and two cover the political and geographic terrain that the women must cut across, which produces an overwhelming feeling of being neither here nor there, but temporarily suspended between states, households, and religions. Chapter one paints a somewhat grim picture of the politically precarious position of migrant women within the kefala sys- tem, labor laws, and bans on migrations often creating impossible condi- tions for migrant woman. Chapter two sets out to “discern, document and describe” (66) the migratory experience and why it produces uncertainty about one’s place in the world. It follows the women back and forth between Kuwait and their home countries, emphasizing the socio-historical context that requires a transnational feminist framework. The four women that Ah- mad follows throughout the book share their migratory journeys and their sense of “suspension” between two households. This chapter segues neatly into chapter three, where the women share how being a female migrant and domestic laborer requires knowledge of cross-cultural norms regarding gender, all of which require the women to be naram, “a gendered, learned capability of being malleable that indexes proper womanhood” (122). In their own eyes, a successful domestic worker from South Asia bends to the norms of the society they are in, and they attribute male and female migrant failure to being too sakht, or hard and unyielding. Here, I would have liked a stronger connection between how she describes naram and how Mahmood describes malaka. Does being naram lay the groundwork for women’s conversion to Islam, a religion which requires the ability to engage in rituals entailing patience, modesty, and steadfastness? Ahmed hints at this connection in the conclusion to the chapter—“Being naram resonates with the fluid, flexible student-centered pedagogies of Kuwait’s Islamic dawa movement, thus facilitating domestic worker’s deepening learning of Islamic precepts and practices” (123)—but she could have spent more time discussing the overlap in the concepts in either chapter three or five, where she discusses the da'wah movement. Chapters four and five deal directly with questions of religious thought and practice and illustrate how the women grapple with Islamic practices in the household as their relationships with their employers deepen. Chapter five is about the household and the everyday conversations or “house talk” that Ahmad argues are the touchstones for the women’s conversion. The daily relations in the household make blending and layering practices of Is- lam onto older traditions and rituals seem easy and natural. Ahmad argues that “the work undertaken by domestic workers—such as tending to family members during trips and caring for the elderly or the infirm—necessari- ly involves the disciplining and training of their comportment, affect and sense of self ” (129) and makes Islamic practices easier to absorb as well. Chapter 6 is a foray into the da'wah movement classroom. Like Mahmood’s Politics of Piety, Ahmad shows how the teachers and students use the space to create “intertwining stories” of patience in the face of hardship and the eventual rewards that come from this ethical re-fashioning, which mirror their own hardships as converts and help them deal with the dilemmas of being female migrant and domestic workers. The chapter ends with a sense of uncertainty, returning to the themes of temporality and suspension that began the book. Ahmad can’t say whether the conversions will remain fixed pieces or will bend and move with the women as their circumstances change. In the epilogue, Ahmad follows the “ongoing conversions” of her inter- locutors as some of them return home as Muslims and encounter new chal- lenges. As a book that focuses on the everyday, it is fitting to end on a new day and possibly, a new conversion. The strength of Ahmad’s ethnography is in giving center-stage to the considerable creativity and diligence mi- grant women show in piecing together their own conversions. This piecing together is perfectly captured by the book’s cover, which features Azra Ak- samija’s “Flocking Mosque”. The structure of a flower illustrates how believ- ers form a circular and geometric shape when gathered in devotion to God. Like Aksamija’s patterns, which build into a circular design, Ahmad’s chap- ters each represent a key piece of the story of migrant domestic workers’ conversion to Islam as a gradual process that blends nations, households, and individuals together to create a narrative about the women’s newfound faith. Scholars should read this book for its textured and detailed observa- tions about migrant women’s daily lives and for its treatment of religious conversion as a gradual process that unfolds in the everyday experiences of individuals. It would also be a great book for students as theory takes a back seat to the ethnography. The book is a refreshing, graceful approach to the subject of religious conversion and Islamic faith. Ahmad stays focused on telling her interlocutors’ stories while navigating often conflicting posi- tions.
Rehenuma AsmiAssistant Professor of Education and International StudiesAllegheny College
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Zeldes, Nadia. "The Mass Conversion of 1495 in South Italy and its Precedents: a Comparative Approach." Medieval Encounters 25, no. 3 (July 3, 2019): 227–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340045.
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Abstract Forced mass conversions were relatively rare in the Middle Ages but they have a central place in both medieval narratives and modern historiography. A distinction should be made between conversions ordered by Christian rulers, and pressure to convert coming from popular elements. Some well-known examples of the first category are the baptism ordered by the Visigothic rulers in Spain and the forced conversion of the Jews in Portugal. The mass conversion of the Jews of the kingdom of Naples in 1495 belongs to the second category. The article proposes to analyze the causes leading to the outbursts of violence against Jews in 1495 and the resulting mass conversions by making use of primary sources such as contemporary Italian and Hebrew chronicles, rabbinic responsa, and Sicilian material. Finally it proposes a comparison with other events of mass conversion, and principally that of 1391 in Castile and Aragon.
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I. Choudhary, Ajay. "BUDDHIST IDENTITY: A CASE STUDY OF BUDDHIST WOMEN’S NARRATIVES IN NAGPUR CITY." POLITICS AND RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA 7, no. 1 (June 1, 2013): 113–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.54561/prj0701113c.
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Indian women rarely observed as independent identity due to its caste hierachization. Thus a woman identity along with an identity of being lower caste simultaneously makes her a victim of a rigidly imbibed patriarchy and the caste system in our society. Lots of conversion had taken place to transform the life of human beings. But the investigative studies done on these kinds of religious conversions mostly focused on men and gave less importance on its impact on women identity. Among these conversions, Dr. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism had succeeded to a great extent in providing a new respectable identity to many. Yet the status of Buddhist women, among the Buddhist community, remained the most unexamined part of this conversion. Thus, this paper tries to examine whether the Buddhist identity succeeded to provide a sense of self respect and equal status to Buddhist women or what extent the Buddhist identity stood able to replace their stigmatized identity in public sphere by investigating the narrative provided by the Buddhist women about their own identity.
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Rambo, Lewis R. "Book Review: Conversions: The Christian Experience." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 9, no. 3 (July 1985): 136. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/239693938500900325.
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Conn, Walter E. "Adult conversions." Pastoral Psychology 34, no. 4 (June 1986): 225–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01794548.
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Pariyar, Bishnu, Sushma Chhinal, Shyamu Thapa Magar, and Rozy Bisunke. "Pedalling Out of Sociocultural Precariousness: Religious Conversions amongst the Hindu Dalits to Christianity in Nepal." Religions 12, no. 10 (October 12, 2021): 856. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12100856.
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Christian conversion has become a major topic of discussion amongst academics, religious leaders, and policymakers alike in recent decades, especially in developing countries. Nepal has witnessed one of the highest rates of Hinduism to Christianity conversion in South Asia. Whilst there are no legal restrictions for religious conversion in Nepal, the conversion from Hinduism to Christianity appears to be disproportionately higher amongst Dalit communities in Nepal. However, religious conversion amongst Nepalese Dalits is yet to be fully understood. This research uses mixed methodologies of data collection and analysis to explore various issues related to religious conversion amongst Hindu Dalits into Christianity in Nepal. Results indicate whilst elderly and female Dalits tended to convert to Christianity, a range of factors specific to personal and communal biographies including social, cultural, emotional, and spiritual interplay together to shape the process of religious conversion amongst the Dalits. The paper concludes that the study of religious conversion should consider a range of sociocultural factors to fully understand the dynamics of religious conversion amongst Dalits.
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Rose, Lena, and Zoe Given-Wilson. "“What Is Truth?” Negotiating Christian Convert Asylum Seekers’ Credibility." ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 697, no. 1 (September 2021): 221–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00027162211059454.
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The arrival of more than five million refugees in Europe since 2015 has led to increasing investigations into Europe’s management of multiculturalism and religious pluralism. Studies to date have chiefly focused on the integration of the cultural and religious “other,” but we take a different approach by analyzing asylum proceedings in Germany, based on conversions from Islam to Christianity. Negotiations of credibility of newly converted Christian asylum seekers help to show how European legal authorities conceive of their own historically Christian identity and their expectations of newcomers. We show how these negotiations are influenced by the power dynamics in the courts, understandings of cultural and religious contexts, and assumptions about conversion and Christianity. Our interdisciplinary approach provides insights into how European legal authorities navigate the challenge of cultural and religious others to Europe’s cultural cohesion, “values,” and secularism.
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Schnitker, Sarah A., Tenelle J. Porter, Robert A. Emmons, and Justin L. Barrett. "Attachment Predicts Adolescent Conversions at Young Life Religious Summer Camps." International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 22, no. 3 (June 2012): 198–215. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.670024.
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LUCKMANN, Thomas. "The Religious Situation in Europe: the Background to Contemporary Conversions." Social Compass 46, no. 3 (September 1999): 251–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/003776899046003002.
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Cooey, P. "Women's religious conversions on death row: theorizing religion and state." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70, no. 4 (December 1, 2002): 699–718. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaar/70.4.699.
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LaMothe, Ryan Williams. "Malcolm X’s Conversions: The Interplay of Political and Religious Subjectivities." Pastoral Psychology 60, no. 4 (September 30, 2009): 523–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11089-009-0256-0.
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Hidayatulloh, Dedi. "STRATEGI PEMBINAAN DALAM MENANAMKAN NILAI-NILAI RELIGIUS PADA MUALAF ETNIS TIONGHOA DI ORGANISASI PERSATUAN ISLAM TIONGHOA INDONESIA (PITI) SURABAYA." JURNAL AL-IJTIMAIYYAH 7, no. 2 (December 31, 2021): 259. http://dx.doi.org/10.22373/al-ijtimaiyyah.v7i2.10534.
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Abstract: This research is based on religious phenomena that occur in Indonesia, especially regarding religious conversion. The religious conversion is dominated by other religions who want to embrace Islam, where the majority of religious conversions occur in the ethnic Chinese environment. The Indonesian Chinese Islamic Association (PITI) in Surabaya is one of the institutions that oversees the development of converts to Islam and has a special strategy in fostering converts, especially the Chinese. This research is a qualitative research with a case study approach to determine the strategy of converting converts in the Indonesian Chinese Islamic Association Organization (PITI) Surabaya. Collecting data in this research is observation, interview and documentation. This study aims to answer, describe and analyze the problem of general description regarding the strategy of fostering ethnic Chinese converts at the Indonesian Chinese Islamic Association (PITI) Surabaya. The results showed that the general description of the strategies applied in instilling religious values in fostering ethnic Chinese converts to the Chinese Indonesian Islamic Association Organization (PITI) Surabaya included: 1) teaching; 2) habituation; 3) exemplary; 4) motivation; and 5) regulations.Keywords: Development Strategy; Chinese Ethnic Converts; PITI Surabaya.Abstrak: Penelitian ini didasarkan pada fenomena agama yang terjadi di Indonesia terkhusus perihal konversi agama. Konversi agama tersebut didominasi oleh agama lain yang ingin memeluk agama Islam, di mana perpindahan agama tersebut mayoritas terjadi di lingkungan etnis Tionghoa. Persatuan Islam Tionghoa Indonesia (PITI) Surabaya merupakan salah satu lembaga yang menaungi pembinaan mualaf dan memiliki strategi khusus dalam membina mualaf terkhusus etnis Tionghoa. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi kasus untuk mengetahui strategi pembinaan mualaf di Organisasi Persatuan Islam Tionghoa Indonesia (PITI) Surabaya. Pengumpulan data dalam penelitian ini adalah observasi, wawancara dan dokumentasi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjawab, mendeskripsikan serta menganalisis permasalahan gambaran umum mengenai strategi pembinaan mualaf etnis Tionghoa di Persatuan Islam Tionghoa Indonesia (PITI) Surabaya. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan temuan bahwa gambaran umum mengenai strategi yang diterapkan dalam menanamkan nilai-nilai religius membina mualaf etnis Tionghoa di Organisasi Persatuan Islam Tionghoa Indonesia (PITI) Surabaya meliputi: 1) pengajaran; 2) pembiasaan; 3) keteladanan; 4) motivasi; dan 5) peraturan.Kata Kunci: Strategi Pembinaan; Mualaf Etnis Tionghoa; PITI Surabaya.
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Tan, Kang-San. "Dual Belonging: A Missiological Critique and Appreciation from an Asian Evangelical Perspective." Mission Studies 27, no. 1 (2010): 24–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157338310x497973.
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AbstractMulti-religious belonging is a phenomenon of individuals who identify themselves as followers of more than one religious tradition. People of faiths may find themselves in dual or multi-religious backgrounds due to inter-religious marriages of parents, exposures to multi-religious traditions or conversions to another faith. In Asia, there is a growing phenomenon of insider movements or devotees of Jesus from other religious traditions such as Islam and Hinduism. Previously, Christian theology has tended to treat non-Christian religions as tight and separate religious systems. Such a treatment is increasingly problematic as it does not reflect the multi-religious realities in Asia where influences and cross fertilization of religious beliefs are daily faith experiences. In particular, there is a need to take into account the experiences and struggles of Christian converts from Asian religions, namely, the converts’ own relationship with their previous faiths.The paper seeks to explore the notion of multi-religious belonging and evaluate whether it is theologically possible for a Christian to follow Christ while retaining some form of identification with one’s previous religion such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Chinese religions. Instead of a total rejection of past faiths, is it possible for a Christian, without falling into syncretism, to belong to more than one religious tradition?Firstly, the paper will evaluate three models of multi-religious belonging. Secondly, after discussing some methodological considerations, we will explore whether dual belonging is syncretistic. Finally, we hope to suggest a critical and missiological appreciation of dual belonging.
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Iyadurai, Joshua. "The Step Model of Transformative Religious Experiences: A Phenomenological Understanding of Religious Conversions in India." Pastoral Psychology 60, no. 4 (May 28, 2010): 505–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11089-010-0287-6.
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Aydinalp, Halil, and Kaskyrbek Kaliyev. "A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF CONVERSIONS IN KAZAKHSTAN." Bulletin of Toraighyrov University. Humanities series, no. 2,2021 (June 28, 2021): 94–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.48081/aljq7510.
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Kazakh society went through such policies as Russification and Christianization during the Russian occupation period, atheism during the Soviets period, and religious revival after its independence. After the independence, missionary work of the Christian religion along with Islam increased. As a result of the missionary activities that are increasing today, Kazakhs who have changed their religion have started to appear in the society. This research explores the Kazakhs who changed their religion as a result of the intensive missionary work that emerged after independence from a sociological perspective. Then, the qualitative research method of sociology was used to investigate the current and complex events of religious change. There are three (complementary) techniques that we have used in qualitative research. They are: Interview, document examination and observation. In our research, 25 individuals were interviewed and personal information about them was provided. The process of changing religion and the reasons they changed religion were examined.
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Paldam, Ella. "Chumash Conversions: The Historical Dynamics of Religious Change in Native California." Numen 64, no. 5-6 (September 28, 2017): 596–625. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341482.
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Abstract The historical dynamics of religious change among the Chumash constitute a compelling case for the academic study of conversion. Within 250 years the community has experienced two major cultural transitions: first, European colonization after 1772, and second, indigenous revitalization since 1968. Although both events implicate changes in religiosity, ethnohistorians and anthropologists tend to regard religious conversion as a byproduct of other cultural forces. This paper takes a different approach because conversion is understood as a force that in itself contributes to cultural transition. The relative distribution of the four most significant religious traditions since colonization is traced using a model that synthesizes prevailing insights from conversion research into an analytical matrix that may be applied to historical and contemporary qualitative data. Approaching cultural change among indigenous peoples as conversion brings a renewed focus on religiosity as a cultural strategy at the same time as it contributes to a cross-cultural perspective on conversion.
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Viswanath, Rupa. "The Emergence of Authenticity Talk and the Giving of Accounts: Conversion as Movement of the Soul in South India, ca. 1900." Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 1 (January 2013): 120–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417512000606.
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AbstractIn 2002, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu passed a law that illustrates the centrality of what may be called “authentic religious selves” to postcolonial Indian statecraft. It banned religious conversions brought about by what it termed “material allurement,” and it especially targeted those who might attempt to convert impoverished Dalits, descendants of unfree laborers who now constitute India's lowest castes. Conversion, thus conceived, is itself founded upon the idea that the self must be autonomous; religion ought to be freely chosen and not brought about by “allurement.” Philosophers like Charles Taylor have provided accounts of how selfhood of this kind became lodged in the Western imaginaire, but how was it able to take hold in very different social configurations, and to what effect? By attending to this more specific history, this essay brings a correlated but widely overlooked question to center stage: under what distinctive circumstances are particular selves called upon to actively demonstrate their autonomy and authenticity by divulging putatively secreted contents? In colonial South India, I will argue, the problem of authentic conversion only captured the public imagination when Dalit conversions to Christianity in colonial Madras threatened the stability of the agrarian labor regimes to which they were subject. And today, as in nineteenth-century Madras, it is Dalit selfhood that remains an object of intense public scrutiny and the target of legal interventions.
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DeSimone, Russell J. "The Conversions of Saint Augustine." Augustinian Studies 17 (1986): 191–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/augstudies19861714.
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Akcapar, Sebnem Koser. "Religious conversions in forced migration: Comparative cases of Afghans in India and Iranians in Turkey." Journal of Eurasian Studies 10, no. 1 (January 2019): 61–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1879366518814666.
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This article examines closely the crucial link between religious conversions of two groups of refugees from Islam to Evangelism by taking up the cases of Afghan and Iranian refugees in India and in Turkey, respectively. India hosts many refugees from different parts of the world despite the absence of international protection laws, whereas Turkey is the country hosting the highest number of refugees since 2015, mainly due to the Syrian conflict. In this article, I first analyze the reasons why Afghan and Iranian refugees decide to change religious group membership from different sects of Islam and become members of the “born-again” evangelical Christian groups operating in South Asia and West Asia. By combining forced migration and religious identity issues in two different settings, I suggest that a combination of contextual and institutional factors explain this religious change and help us understand the sociocultural and political impacts of conversions.
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Powell, John. "Testimony in High Places: The Conversion of Bertram Wodehouse Currie." Recusant History 19, no. 2 (October 1988): 198–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034193200020240.
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The role of religion in history is an inherently difficult topic. Historians have rightly approached it with caution. Nevertheless, excessive caution has sometimes impaired our understanding of both individuals and broad historical developments. Ignoring personal religious experiences, especially when they have followed deliberate conversions, may be more dangerous to the truth than imperfectly assessing those experiences. I am not proposing an interdisciplinary approach, although that too is needed. Rather, I am suggesting that the religious experience of individuals be more fully incorporated, where possible, into traditional historical writings. It is in this spirit that I here examine the 1896 conversion, from agnosticism to Catholicism, of the influential London banker, Bertram Wodehouse Currie.
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Langewiesche, Katrin. "Conversion as Negotiation. Converts as Actors of Civil Society." Religions 11, no. 7 (June 30, 2020): 322. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11070322.
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This article focuses on the religious movement of the Ahmadiyya and its civil society organization, Humanity First, in West-Africa and in Europe. Particular attention is paid to the place of converts within these two institutions. Conversions to an Islamic minority and the actions of this minority are studied through the prism of social commitment. I examine the intersections between religious values, the ideas of solidarity in the societies under scrutiny and, the kaleidoscopic range of Muslim charities. The paper investigates conversion as negotiation in regard to gender, social mobility, and power. Conversion is approached here as a matter of social relations and not personal belief. I argue that converts have to use various strategies of recognition, either as individuals or as a group, which places them in a permanent state of negotiation with their entourage.