Religious Conversion

Exploring how conversion has been understood by different religions during different eras, this study includes a survey of the textual, legal, ritual, historic and experiential dimensions of the phenomenon of conversion. Religious conversion has always been and remains today a controversial issue in many of the world's reigions. It has been promoted, condoned, banned but almost never ignored. Although it normally appears in a religious context, the language of conversion can be discerned at the heart of the new religious pluralism that is increasingly present at least in many Western societies. This volume explains the practices of various world religions and highlights some of the issues that cut across traditions and emerge in distinctive ways in different ways in different religions and cultural settings. The first three chapters offer students some theoretical perspectives, and are followed by accounts of the history of conversion in Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Chinese religion and Zoroastrianism, as well as descriptions of contemporary practice. Additonal chapters look in depth at personal stories of conversion, both within Christianity and from Christianity Eastern and New Age forms of religion. The book will be of interest to undergraduates as well as the general reader interested in gaining an insight into an enduring controversy that affects all religions.Christopher Lamb is Head of the Centre for Inter-Faith Dialogue at Middlesex University, London. M. Darrol Bryant is Professor of Religion and Culture at Renison College, University of Waterloo, Ontario.