The Conversion Narrative

Abstract

Conversion is often viewed as a sudden and fundamental shift in worldview, which changes the individual in considerable ways. William James wrote in 1906 that to be converted signifies the change “by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right, superior and happy” (Harding 2000:33). In the classic study The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann (1984 [19661) describe the alternation of religious conversion and the transformation of subjective reality. A successful alternation requires, among other things, that the old reality be reinterpreted within the apparatus of the new reality. They argue that this reinterpretation results in a rupture in the subjective biography of the individual in terms of “B.C.” and “A.D.,” that is, pre- and postconversion. Everything in life before the conversion is now understood as leading toward it, and everything following it as flowing from its new reality. Formulations such as “Then I thought… now I know,” which are common in the conversion narratives, reflect this kind of reinterpretation of earlier experiences and actions (ibid.:179). However, for the women in this study there was no “biographical rupture” in the sense of what Berger and Luckmann call a “cognitive separation of darkness and light” (ibid.:180). Naturally, the women reject certain values and ways of living but they seldom express a fundamental denial of their previous life or self. Instead the women reorganize their biography and through a conversion narrative they create self-coherence and continuity by negotiating meaning between past and present, between the one I was then and the one I am today.