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Religious Conversion
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Religious Conversion

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2022) | Viewed by 13080

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Henri Gooren

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309, USA
Interests: anthropology of religion; religious conversion; Pentecostalism; Protestantism; Mormonism; Adventism; Roman Catholicism in Latin America

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on “Religious Conversion” will feature articles dealing with recent developments in the field of religious conversion in a broad sense. “Religion” here is broadly understood to encompass not only institutionalized religion(s) but also ethical, ritual, practical, political or social issues that form a part of the religious perspective or of lived religion. Some examples are the articulation between conversion and political claims, religious change and disaffiliation in a neoliberal era, conversion and identity transmission, religious conversion in the mass and social media, and the pathologization of conversion.

The peer reviewers and guest editor will prioritize articles that focus on something new, meaning some development that has either taken shape fairly recently or gained strength recently, a religion that has been understudied up to now, or articles that raise new questions that have not been covered much in the literature so far.

Geographical area, country, and religion are all open. Articles may focus on a specific country (e.g., “Current Controversies Surrounding Religious Conversion in India”), on a region (e.g., “New Trends in Religious Conversion in Europe”), or on any religion (e.g., “Religious Conversion and Deconversion in Scientology”).

Same classical questions remain: Why and how do people change their religion? What are some of the main patterns, processes, and factors involved? How do the new recruits manage the expectations and requirements of their new religion? It is important to distinguish between affiliation, (formal) membership in a religious organization or community, and conversion: a change of religious worldview and identity that can sometimes be quite radical (see Henri Gooren, Religious Conversion and Disaffiliation, Palgrave 2010).

Contributions of sound scholarship arising from any academic discipline relevant to the Special Issue’s focus are welcome, including but not limited to anthropology, sociology, political science, psychology, history, religious studies, theology, women’s studies, cultural studies, or media studies.

The intent of this Special Issue is to provide readers with well-written articles based on sound scholarship that advance the understanding of current developments in religious conversion around the world.

Dr. Henri Gooren
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • religion
  • religious conversion
  • affiliation
  • disaffiliation
  • deconversion
  • identity
  • mass media

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 541 KiB  
Article
From Orthodox Christianity to “Jewish Law”: Unusual Conversion in the Russian Empire of the Early 19th Century
by Tatiana Khizhaya
Religions 2022, 13(8), 717; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080717 - 08 Aug 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1521
Abstract
This article is a piece of microhistorical research of a court case investigating religious conversion in Russia in the 1820s. It presents the story of an Orthodox Christian girl who adopted ”Jewish law” and married a Jewish man. The article attempts to define [...] Read more.
This article is a piece of microhistorical research of a court case investigating religious conversion in Russia in the 1820s. It presents the story of an Orthodox Christian girl who adopted ”Jewish law” and married a Jewish man. The article attempts to define the background and peculiarities of the conversion and clarify the context in which this was taking place. The work uses various methods: narrative, comparative, contextual analysis, text interpretation, etc. Analysis of the court case establishes that the girl’s change of faith was the result of: (1) close contacts with the Jews and lack of social ties within the Christian community; (2) poverty and extremely low social status; (3) lack of “religious capital”. Jewish social assistance practices, ways to legalize a new status, finding a job, and personal freedom turned out to be attractive to the serf woman. The novelty of this study involves the introduction of a previously unknown archival source representing a very rare phenomenon of conversion to Judaism in imperial Russia. In addition, the article presents the paradoxical case of an attempt at re-socialization by transitioning from the dominant confession to the faith of a religious minority and integration into a community whose rights in Russia were heavily curtailed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conversion)
21 pages, 1063 KiB  
Article
Pedalling Out of Sociocultural Precariousness: Religious Conversions amongst the Hindu Dalits to Christianity in Nepal
by Bishnu Pariyar, Sushma Chhinal, Shyamu Thapa Magar and Rozy Bisunke
Religions 2021, 12(10), 856; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100856 - 12 Oct 2021
Viewed by 3253
Abstract
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conversion)
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12 pages, 244 KiB  
Article
Envisioning a Catholic Past, Present and Future: Conversion, Recuperation and Andean Christianity in Talavera, Peru
by Christine Lee
Religions 2021, 12(9), 696; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12090696 - 30 Aug 2021
Viewed by 2026
Abstract
In the colonial era, many Spanish missionaries in the Andes sought a total temporal and cultural break between the pagan past and desired a Christian future of indigenous Andeans. Discussions of Christian conversion in the modern-day Andes have often echoed this line of [...] Read more.
In the colonial era, many Spanish missionaries in the Andes sought a total temporal and cultural break between the pagan past and desired a Christian future of indigenous Andeans. Discussions of Christian conversion in the modern-day Andes have often echoed this line of thinking, portraying conversion—whether to Protestantism or to Roman Catholicism—as an event of radical discontinuity, and mapping the rupture of conversion onto the rupture of the Spanish invasion and subsequent evangelisation of the Americas. In doing so, however, scholars have often portrayed Catholicism as a veneer over the ‘authentic’ Andes—which was assumed to not be Catholic, and indeed could never be. Recently, however, in the south-central Peruvian Andean parish of Talavera—under the guidance of a first generation of an indigenous Catholic priesthood, made up entirely of men born and raised in the local area—discourses surrounding conversion portray the past as a source of continuity rather than discontinuity with Catholicism. Drawing from historical and ethnographic sources, this article demonstrates that although conversion has been and continues to be an important point of reference in contemporary Roman Catholicism in the Andes, the question of what people convert from has shifted. Today, the Andes are spoken of as already inherently and profoundly Catholic; conversion, in the sense of the need to make the Andes ‘really’ Catholic, is considered long accomplished. As the article discusses, in a national context where Catholicism is dominant and ubiquitous to the point of hegemony, this is an inherently political stance which runs counter to longstanding harmful stereotypes of indigenous Andeans as not ‘real’ Catholics and thus unable to be ‘real’ Peruvians. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conversion)
10 pages, 1029 KiB  
Article
A Comparative Analysis of Berith and the Sacrament of Baptism and How They Contributed to the Inquisition
by Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota
Religions 2021, 12(5), 346; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12050346 - 13 May 2021
Viewed by 2093
Abstract
In 1391 Spanish Jews were forcibly converted to Catholic Christianity, and Portuguese Jews suffered the same fate in 1497. Jewish law rendered involuntary converts as anusim and voluntary converts as meshumadim. Christians without Jewish ancestry called them by various names, New Christians, [...] Read more.
In 1391 Spanish Jews were forcibly converted to Catholic Christianity, and Portuguese Jews suffered the same fate in 1497. Jewish law rendered involuntary converts as anusim and voluntary converts as meshumadim. Christians without Jewish ancestry called them by various names, New Christians, alboraique, xuetas, and marranos, to name a few. In the fifteenth century, Catholic clerical authorities debated whether the New Christians were indeed Christians, albeit coerced. Canonic law rendered the sacrament of baptism as irrevocable. As such, any belief or practice not in accordance with Catholic doctrine was tantamount to heresy. Consequently, the Inquisition sought to rid the Church of the “Judaizing heresy.” On the one hand, the Sinaitic covenant (berith) considered anusim as Jews, even though there were Christians. This paper analyzes Jewish law and canonic law on respective religious identities. It includes an examination of rabbinic texts and rabbinic responsa, and an examination of the sacrament of Christian baptism. Both religious traditions fought for the souls of the anusim, characterizing what Victor Turner calls liminality and communitas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conversion)
15 pages, 816 KiB  
Article
Deconversion Processes in Adolescence—The Role of Parental and Peer Factors
by Małgorzata Łysiak, Beata Zarzycka and Małgorzata Puchalska-Wasyl
Religions 2020, 11(12), 664; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11120664 - 11 Dec 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2895
Abstract
The phenomenon of abandonment of faith, which in psychology is referred to as deconversion, is observed today. Deconversion is particularly widespread in young people. In this paper we examine the parents’ religiosity, parents’ care, and social support as potential predictors of deconversion in [...] Read more.
The phenomenon of abandonment of faith, which in psychology is referred to as deconversion, is observed today. Deconversion is particularly widespread in young people. In this paper we examine the parents’ religiosity, parents’ care, and social support as potential predictors of deconversion in adolescents. Specifically, we aimed to analyse whether or not parents’ religiousness, individual differences in childrens’ attachment to their parents, and received support from family, friends, and significant others differentiate adolescents in deconversion processes. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 232 adolescents in a cross-sectional study, which applied three scales. The Adolescent Deconversion Scale, Parental Bonding Instrument, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. The results showed that adolescents having both caring and religious parents are less prone to abandon faith and to moral criticism than those having caring but not religious parents or those having religious but not caring parents. The low social support group was more likely to abandon faith and moral criticism than moderate or high social support groups. Regression analyses revealed that deconversion in adolescence is negatively predicted by the mother’s care and friends’ support. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conversion)
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