THINQon : Is religious conversion possible?

The Living Room Religion Is religious conversion possible?

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Ellen Ambrose

Is religious conversion possible?

Latest Post: October 21, 2011 at 9:02 PM

10 followers

This question relates to another discussion post, where the point was made that academic fields are very circumscribed domains, so that a person who wants to succeed typically needs both the support and mentorship of others in the community, and to be able to speak the precise technical language of that field, in a way that the others feel he or she is really in dialogue with them (even if there is disagreement).

I would say that the same is really true of religion as it is practiced today. Certainly someone has his or her personal beliefs, but the moment you want to start involving yourself in liturgy, religious ritual, and all the practices of devotion, this really has to take place in a community. For instance, say that you are Catholic and want to take communion, this depends on many other people, to say nothing of holidays.

Given this, my question is simply, to what extent is it possible to practice religion without any connection to a larger community of acolytes? I don't mean is it possible to be spiritual by yourself, obviously yes. I mean for instance what does it mean to consider yourself devoutly a member of some particular sect without having any dialogue with other members of this community. (A bitter civil war is also a kind of dialogue.)

As a test question, what does it mean to convert? If religion is a matter of personal belief but practicing religion is a matter of involving yourself in a culture, how is converting different than changing citizenship? Even if I get a German passport, I will never be German in the same way that a child who was raised in Germany is German. It would be strange for me to say "We Germans believe..." But the narrative of religious conversion rejects the idea that converts are different. (And perhaps rightly so.) But what makes this difference?

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Ellen Ambrose	in "Can great cooking be taught?"	(Kitchen)
Margaret Wells	in "Is it a good thing that all cities are becoming alike?"	(Travel)
Mike Strong	in "Monogamy? / Monogamy?"	(The Living Room)
John Stevenson	in "Road Traveling alone"	(Travel)
Solveig Wright	in "What does it mean to be foreign? / What does it mean to be foreign?"	(Travel)
Ellen Ambrose	in "When to let go of old beliefs? / When to let go of old beliefs?"	(The Living Room)

Reply to:

Emily Andrews

February 2009

31 followers

Very interesting question. Just a small remark: I think it is often possible for people to have moments later in life when they re-narrativize everything, not unlike what (in a very different context) Molly was talking about in artists' and writers' lives: post. And from that vantage point they can understand everything which happened to them as having had a completely different structure; maybe they see themselves as having belonged to a different kind of system all along. So that what everyone else would see as "conversion" they experience as a continuation. This seems to me to be a much deeper kind of conversion than the typical evangelical rhetoric of "and one day there was a radical break with the past," even if this is also true in the situation I've described.

You don't need to leave home to experience a Copernican revolution...

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Emily Andrews

in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona / Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

(Cinema Room)

ted berryman tagged this post as Brilliant.

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phillip washington

In response to Emily Andrews

November 15, 2010 at 1:01 PM

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Just a short reply to your comment on there being "different systems" well, there certainly are, and they lie wholly outside of one's personal beliefs, by that I mean the language that describes them. There is such a thing as a "spiritual language" even as there are such very useful terms as "Syncretism", and these are words we all need to recognize at the very least, in order to speak coherently and consistently on any subject, including religion.
If Christian conversion is indistinguishable from, say, Buddhist enlightenment, or Timothy Leary's turning on to LSD, then what is language for anyway? Its taken Christian scholars and teachers over two thousand years of hard work in order to even describe what true conversion means in their on terms and from their own experience with it, the truth of these things, and also the syncretism, that is to say, the mixing of Christian teaching or doctrine with the teaching of other religions, which is just what you seem to purpose here.

But I believe, even the language itself, will show that Christian conversion is not only entirely different, but of an whole other order altogether than what you believe it to be.

Just saying....

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Emily Andrews

In response to phillip washington

November 15, 2010 at 2:56 PM

31 followers

Hi Philip,
I don't agree with the ideas you're attributing to me, or in your later post, to Molly (more precisely, they seem like nothing more than straw men), and in particular, I don't see why anyone would take a comment about evangelical Christianity as dismissing an entire belief tradition unless they were looking, again, for straw men. I suspect you and I may come from a different religious place, but especially because of this, don't make the discussion less interesting by presupposing banal points of disagreement. I share the thread's interest in the difficulty of describing religious experience, and if you can contribute a useful way to speak about this, would be happy to hear it.