Here we have a very detailed schema of the conversion process. This is what I love about Western academics...so thorough! This model also applies to paradigm and worldview shifts that often happen in the course of a lifetime.
Stage 7
CONSEQUENCES
Personal bias in assessment
Nature of consequences
- Affective
- Intellectual
- Ethical
- Religious
- Social/political
Sociocultural and historical consequences of conversion
Religious landscapes
Unintended sociocultural consequences
- -Nationalism
- Preservation of the vernacular
- Secularization
Psychological consequences
- -Progression
- Regression
- Stasis
Stories of conversion
Theological consequences
Stage 6
COMMITMENT
Decision making Rituals
- Separation
- Transition
- Incorporation
Surrender
- Desire
- Conflict
- “Giving in”: relief and liberation
- Sustaining surrender
Testimony: biographical reconstruction integrating personal and community story
Motivational reformulation
- Multiple
- Malleable
- Interactive
- Cumulative
Stage 5
INTERACTION
Encapsulation
- Physical
- Social
- Ideological
Relationships
- Kinship
- Friendship
- Leadership
- Discipleship/teacher
Rituals-choreography of the soul
- Deconstruction
- Reconstruction
Rhetoric-systems of interpretation
- Attribution
- Modes of understanding
Roles-reciprocal expectations and conduct
- Self and God
- Self and others
1 comment:
Conversion and deconversion are both interesting processes. I've read about each and experienced such processes myself.(See "The Uniqueness of the Christian Experience" by Edward T. Babinski online; and "If It Wasn't For Agnosticism I Wouldn't Know WHAT to Believe").
Also check out the following fascinating stories from women who were devout Christians, ministers, and/or theologians, but who later "debunked" various aspects of their Christian beliefs in print and/or in film. Click here and here.
Cheers!
By the way, the Anabaptists were WAY ahead of their time when it came to separation of church and freedom of individual conscience, while Luther and Calvin and the popes were still busy burning Anabaptists and attempting to make entier nations believe whatever the prince believed, and enforce their particular orthodoxies, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, et. al. But I bet you already knew that part of the history of the Anabaptists.
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