Toward Faith: A Qualitative Study of How Atheists Convert to Christianity
The study of religious conversion has historically neglected how nonbelievers (i.e. atheists) come to adopt a belief in a god or gods, and thus cannot address whether findings and theories from previous research apply to atheists. In order to assess how atheists converted to Christianity, we perform...
Authors: | ; ; |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Creighton University
2019
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In: |
The journal of religion & society
Year: 2019, Volume: 21 |
Further subjects: | B
Atheism
B Christianity B Qualitative B Conversion B Religious Change |
Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Summary: | The study of religious conversion has historically neglected how nonbelievers (i.e. atheists) come to adopt a belief in a god or gods, and thus cannot address whether findings and theories from previous research apply to atheists. In order to assess how atheists converted to Christianity, we performed a thematic analysis of 111 biographical narratives obtained from the open Internet. Our analysis yielded 10 recurring thematic elements, which we termed: hardship; authentic example; unfamiliarity/pseudo-familiarity (with Christianity or Christians); contra atheism; religious study; intellectualism; numinous experiences; openness to experience; ritual behaviors; and social ties. We draw logical connections between these themes and connect them to previous research. Our results impress the need for a more flexible, and therefore less sequential or stage-based, theoretical approach to conversion. |
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ISSN: | 1522-5658 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of religion & society
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Persistent identifiers: | HDL: 10504/121316 |