A New Model of Religious Conversion

2014

Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, -. Edited by Johannes Hahn and others. Pp.  +  black-and-white and colour plates. Münster: Aschendorff, . €.     ;   JEH () ; doi:./S As these essays show, the dissociation of Christianity from its pagan milieu was effected sometimes by the rejection, sometimes by the transformation of existing models. Johannes Hahn ('Tausend Schrecken des Gesetze') concludes that Coptic zealots of the fourth century were not instruments of imperial or ecclesiastical policy. Anne-Isabelle Bouton-Touboulic ('Poésie et mythe dans le Contra Academicos') finds the equivalent of a Platonic myth in Augustine's account of the primitive Academy, which (like his quotations of poetry) is designed to guide the reader from love of beauty to love of wisdom. Daniel Röthlisberger ('Die capitis velatio') observes that, in requiring men to pray with heads uncovered, Paul denies them the social status that was conferred on the pagan celebrant by his veil. All the examples of the formula pro voto suo collected by Ulrike Emig ('Pro voto suo') come from Christian sites. According to Elizabeth Panell ('Entwicklung der Ikonographie'), the pagan iconography of marriage was first adopted by Christian artists in their depictions of the saints. Gerhard Steigerwald ('Die edelsteingeschmückten Städte Jerusalem') deciphers a mosaic in which the Jerusalem of this world is adorned with the sapphires that apocalyptic bestows on the heavenly city. Peter Grossman ('Zur Entstehung des ḫ urus') identifies the seventh century as the era in which a room was first set apart for the use of the clergy in the basilica. Rainer Warland ('Byzanc und der Alemannia') discovers a peculiar appropriation of pagan heroic imagery in a Gothic disc of similar date. M. J. EDWARDS CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD Religious conversion. History, experience and meaning. Edited by Ira Katznelson and Miri Rubin. Pp. ix +  incl.  figs. Farnham-Burlington, VT: Ashgate, . £.      JEH () ; doi:./S Ira Katznelson and Miri Rubin's collective volume offers a welcome addition to scholarship on religious conversion, a subject that poses distinctive challenges and opportunities for historians. With its 'centre of gravity' in medieval and

Course Description: This seminar will explore the nature of religious and spiritual change and transformation from the perspectives of anthropology, history, psychology, religious studies, theology, and sociology. Conversion and religious/spiritual transformation are central to Christianity, but to other religions as well. This seminar will introduce students to a wide range of experiences and phenomena that are not only personally profound, but culturally and historically significant. The contours of the contemporary world are, to some degree, shaped by the forces of religious conversion and transformation stimulated by the endeavors of Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and many other religious movements. This class will combine the resources of various disciplines to explore these rich phenomena. The format of the class is a graduate seminar. Each student will conduct his or her own research and present it to the class. o Or; We invite you to submit a brief (1 page maximum) written proposal for a third option that fulfils this course requirement: If you select this option, you must submit your written proposal to the faculty by noon on Friday, November 16. Your proposal should include a description of how your project fulfils the assessment criteria. If your proposal is approved, the faculty will notify you via eMail by 11/23.

Religião & Sociedade, 2010

By maintaining that it is not for the anthropologist to disempower native discourses, whatever the propositions of the latter may be, this work aims to take into account diverging statements concerning the processes of religious conversion. Different instances of conversion are not mobilized to be explained by the models presented, but to reveal both the presuppositions and the applicability of these models. In this way, and drawing support from ethnographic examples, the work looks to resituate certain questions about what a conversion is and how it occurs. Lastly, it analyses how the movements of conversion contemplated involve a challenge to the notions of acculturation or social change.

The Journal of Theological Studies, 2009

Entangled Religions, 2024

Religious conversion is a phenomenon that has intrigued scholars, theologians, and sociologists for centuries. As the conscious choice of a particular form of religion over another, it is fundamentally a form of religious contact. Religious conversion may be approached psychologically, sociologically, and conceptually. The contributions of this special issue show all three approaches and cover a wide array of geographical, socio-cultural, and religious contexts.

Pastoral Psychology, 2016

This article provides an introduction to the essays in this issue on the Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, edited by Lewis Rambo and Charles Farhadian. After briefly discussing the origins of these essays in a session sponsored by the Religious Conversions Group at the 2015 American Academy of Religion annual meeting, as well as some of the broad historical trends and problems in the study of conversion(s), the essay provides a summary of each author's contributions and suggests that one particular topic— healing—deserves more attention in the study of conversion than it has heretofore enjoyed.

L. Meddi, The Spirituality of Conversion, in «The Person and the Challenges», 6 (2016) 2, 225–257 This quotation from the Book of Wisdom clearly emphasizes some aspects of the theme of this reflection. It lies within the bounds of the great religious reforms that occurred between the sixth and second centuries BC between the Indus Valley and Egypt, passing through the mystic reforms in Greece. Pastoral ministry and catechesis are called upon to collaborate with Wisdom so that the message enters the heart to form true believers.

European Journal of Philosophy, 2019

People can think about the same things in different ways. Initially, you might see the drawing as a rabbit, while I see it as a duck. You might think that the durian looks tasty, while I have never got past the smell. You might think that the situation is such that our friendship demands that I help you, while my concern is merely with the opportunity this situation provides. Such differences in how the same things are thought about can come about because there can be widespread differences in how people think. We can differ in our beliefs, values, interests, goals, preferences and moral psychologies. How we see things can be different. But in none of these respects is our thinking fixed.

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, 2014

This chapter divides the way historians describe the process of conversion to Christianity and conversion to Islam into four categories: acculturation, adhesion or hybridity, syncretism, and transformation. Acculturation is when religious change accompanies the incorporation of a people and its territory into a conquering empire or socioeconomic system. Adhesion or hybridity is when the person or group adopts new beliefs and practices alongside the old. Syncretism occurs when the convert(s) reconcile or fuse old and new beliefs and practices to create a new religious synthesis. Transformation is when converts attempt to completely replace the old with the new. Conversion is also accompanied by the conversion of sacred spaces. Analyzing conversion from ancient to modern times, this chapter presents these four categories of conversion, offers historical examples of each, applies the term "conversion" to the transformation of space, and concludes with a final example to illustrate these interrelated aspects of religious change.