The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion
Author: Lewis R. Rambo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 829
Release: 2014-03-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199713545

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.

Understanding Religious Conversion

Understanding Religious Conversion
Author: Lewis Ray Rambo
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300065152

Looking at a wide variety of religions, this work offers an exploration of religious conversion. The phenomena is approached from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, theology and anthropology.

Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama

Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama
Author: Lieke Stelling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2019-01-03
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1108477038

A cross-religious exploration of conversion on the early modern English stage offering fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known plays.

Religious Conversion

Religious Conversion
Author: Christopher Lamb
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 353
Release: 1999-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0826437133

Conversion has been an important issue for most of the universal religions - those usually associated with a founder, such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism - which have a mission to spread their message. Other religions have been less concerned with conversion except in so far as it has been a negative force for them to confront. This study explores how conversion has been understood by different religions during different eras, and includes a survey of the textual, legal, ritual, historic and experiential dimensions of the phenomenon of conversion.

A New Model of Religious Conversion

A New Model of Religious Conversion
Author: Ines W. Jindra
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2014-02-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900426650X

Based on the analysis of 52 conversion narratives to various religious groups, A New Model of Religious Conversion utilizes case studies for comparison of converts' backgrounds, network influence, and conversion narratives. The author convincingly illustrates a "fit" between the converts' background and the religion they convert to, such as between disorganized family backgrounds and highly structured religions. Conversely, those from highly structured backgrounds often convert to more "open" groups. The book also makes it clear that not all conversions are influenced by networks or align themselves with a social constructivist view of a conversion as an "account." Taking converts' trajectories seriously, the author makes a strong case for the application of biographical sociology to the study of conversion and (American) sociology overall.

Religious Conversion

Religious Conversion
Author: Sarah Claerhout
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2022-05-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000571130

This book re-examines the issue of religious conversion, which has been a site of conflict in India for several centuries. It discusses wide-ranging themes such as conversion, education, and reform in colonial India; the process and practices of conversion in Christian Europe; Gandhi, conversion, and the equality of religions; perspectives from Hindu nationalism, secularism, and religious minorities; religious freedom and the limits of propagating religion; and conversion in constitutional law, commissions, and courts, to chart new directions for research on religion, tradition, and conversion. Tracing developments from the 19th-century colonial era to contemporary times, the book analyses cultural background frameworks and the origins of religious conversion and its conceptualisation in Western Christianity. It further delves into how Indian culture and its traditions have shaped responses to conversion. Part of the Critical Humanities Across Cultures series, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of critical humanities, religion, cultural studies, sociology of religion, comparative religion, philosophy, anthropology, theology, Indology, history, politics, postcolonial studies, critical theory, and South Asian studies.

Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany

Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany
Author: David M. Luebke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857453769

The Protestant and Catholic Reformations thrust the nature of conversion into the center of debate and politicking over religion as authorities and subjects imbued religious confession with novel meanings during the early modern era. The volume offers insights into the historicity of the very concept of “conversion.” One widely accepted modern notion of the phenomenon simply expresses denominational change. Yet this concept had no bearing at the outset of the Reformation. Instead, a variety of processes, such as the consolidation of territories along confessional lines, attempts to ensure civic concord, and diplomatic quarrels helped to usher in new ideas about the nature of religious boundaries and, therefore, conversion. However conceptualized, religious change— conversion—had deep social and political implications for early modern German states and societies.

Religious Conversion: An African Perspective

Religious Conversion: An African Perspective
Author: Brendan Carmody
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2018-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9982241168

Religious Conversion: An African Perspective includes a selection of key texts which are not easily accessible elsewhere. Most of the chapters discuss the long-standing thesis of Robin Horton who argues that religious change results from social transformation. The contributors provide different perspectives on what remains an ongoing provocative, though inconclusive debate. The book has chapters on conversion in Africa from such authorities as Robin Horton, Humphrey Fisher, and Richard Gray. It also contains chapters on Zambia by Elizaebeth Colson, Brendan Carmody, Austin Cheyeka, Felix Phiri and W Van Binsbergen. This collection of chapters provides an introduction to the discussion surrounding the query: Did the Christian and Muslim messages bring something fundamentally new to the African religious horizon? What has indigenisation meant? What is the role of traditional religion?

Religious Conversion and Identity

Religious Conversion and Identity
Author: Massimo Leone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2004-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1134402465

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.