Conversion and How it Relates to Religious Experience

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Conversion and How it Relates to Religious Experience

Conversion has different meanings to different people, and there are

also many different ways to explain it. William James (who wrote ‘The

varieties of Religious Experience (1901)’) describes conversion as “To

be converted is to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience

religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the

process….” What James is saying here is that conversion is to be

completely changed, to gain something you haven’t had before, to know

what it is like to take part in a faith, to be aware that you have a

promise.

When you say somebody is ‘converted’, as a has being a religious term,

it means that the person’s perception has being changed towards life,

the person now has religious aims which crate the regular core of

their energy. The dictionary definition for conversion is “A change

in which one adopts a new religion, faith, or belief” To me, this is

the easiest definition of conversion that you can get as it describes

conversion so clearly and it’s easy to understand. An example of

conversion is in Acts 9:1-19 where Saul(now known as St Paul) was

converted from being against Christians to actually being one and

preaching the word of God.

Bernard Lonergan is one of the greatest Catholic philosophers and

theologians of the 20th century. (He was a Canadian Jesuit priest)

Bernard Lonergan is the author of the book ‘Method in Theology’

(1972), Lonergan stated that “conversion always involves shifting

horizons” To Lonergan, horizon meant anything that set a limitation to

the things people find interesting and their knowledge. Beyond

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...and decide to commit his/herself to the

conversion. Philosophical problems with religious conversions are

also known about. The four I know of are ‘How does the person

experiencing this know it is God they are experiencing? Why are they

not a universal experience? Religious pluralism: Believers from

different religions refer to Jesus speaking to them or Mohammed, etc,

surely this invalidates these experiences? And lastly, The Believers

speaks of the universal experience happening to them but isn’t this an

infringement on free will? Theses are other challenges to conversion.

In conclusion, I think that conversion can be given many different

meanings, by many different people pf religions, but from looking at

all the different perspectives, we can see that overall conversion has

the same meaning in one way or another.

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