Religious Conversion

Religious conversion occupies a foundational position in the depth-psychology and psychology-of-religion corpus, functioning simultaneously as a clinical datum, a philosophical problem, and an archetypal event. William James, whose Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) remains the inescapable point of departure, treats conversion as the paradigmatic instance of the ‘twice-born’ transformation — a reorganization of the self’s center of energy around a new object of ultimate concern, often preceded by a period of disintegration and surrender. Pargament’s coping-theoretical framework reframes conversion as a radical religious response to the confrontation with human limitation, distinguishing it from lesser adjustments (reconstruction, re-valuation) by its ambition to reconstitute both the means and ends of significance simultaneously, effecting a total transformation oriented toward the sacred. Between these poles, the literature records a persistent tension: whether conversion constitutes genuine psychological reorganization or merely a ‘switch of valences’ within an unchanged motivational structure; whether its benefits are durable or transient; whether the pathways through crisis, surrender, and incorporation of the sacred are universal or culturally mediated. Kurtz’s historical account of Alcoholics Anonymous demonstrates conversion’s practical legacy in therapeutic culture, while phenomenological passages across the corpus reveal the experience’s irreducible subjective texture — sudden illumination, voluntary surrender, cessation of compulsive behaviors, and a felt empowerment through association with the unlimited.

In the library 20 passages

Religious Conversion: From Self to Sacred Concern… probably no subject in the scientific study of religion has generated as much attention and debate over the last 100 years as the topic of conversion.

Pargament positions religious conversion as the most theoretically contested and empirically studied mechanism of radical coping, framing it as a total transformation of both means and ends of significance oriented toward the sacred.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis

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religious conversions offer the same hope to the potential convert: the chance to resolve the tensions brought on by the encounter with personal limitations… By surrendering to ‘unlimitedness,’ the self can take part in unlimited possibilities.

Pargament argues that conversion functions as a well-designed coping response in which surrender to the sacred resolves the existential tension between personal limitation and the search for significance.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis

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The function of conversion is more far-reaching. Consciously or unconsciously, the potential convert is hoping to relinquish an old life and replace it with something new… Transformation comes closer.

Pargament distinguishes genuine conversion from superficial value-switching, insisting on transformation as the defining criterion and illustrating it through Christian imagery of death to the old self and rebirth into the new.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis

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the conversion experience: that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high-water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what constitutes its importance,—an importance which backsliding cannot diminish.

James argues that the significance of conversion lies not in its permanence but in the quality and nature of the psychic reorganization it briefly achieves, making even transient conversions paradigmatically important.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902thesis

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In the case of religious conversion, admissions of personal limitations are followed by surrender to a particular kind of object—the sacred.

Pargament identifies the distinctive structure of religious conversion as a sequence moving from acknowledged limitation through voluntary surrender to incorporation of the sacred as a new object of devotion.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis

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Of all the religious coping methods, conversion has probably received the most mixed reactions from psychologists and other social scientists.

Pargament surveys the contested reception of conversion within the social sciences, framing it as the most ambivalently evaluated of all religious coping mechanisms and contextualizing the empirical debate that follows.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis

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Following conversion, people consistently report psychological, social, and behavioral changes for the better… increased self-esteem, a greater sense of joy, fewer feelings of despair, and more sensitivity and closeness to family and friends.

Drawing on interview-based studies, Pargament documents the consistently positive self-reported psychological, social, and behavioral sequelae of religious conversion, while acknowledging the methodological limits of retrospective design.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting

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‘The effect of conversion is to bring with it a changed attitude toward life which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings fluctuate’ (p. 360).

Starbuck’s early empirical work, cited by Pargament, establishes that post-conversion life continues to involve struggle and fluctuation, yet the fundamental attitudinal reorientation effected by conversion tends to persist.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting

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the spiritual converts reported greater stress in their lives prior to their conversion than the ‘no change’ group… the converts also described greater identification with the sacred and greater change on several dimensions of self-functioning.

Zinnbauer and Pargament’s empirical study confirms that antecedent stress and post-conversion identification with the sacred are distinctive markers of religious conversion relative to gradual religious deepening.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting

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The conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind are of course mainly those of very commonplace persons, kept true to a pre-appointed type by instruction, appeal, and example… every imitative phenomenon must once have had its original.

James distinguishes between socially conditioned, imitative conversions and their ‘first-hand and original’ forms, privileging the sporadic adult case as the proper object of psychological inquiry.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting

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I committed myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individuality was going to be destroyed, that he would take all from me, and I was willing. In such a surrender lies the secret of a holy life.

This first-person conversion account illustrates James’s central thesis that complete voluntary surrender of individual will constitutes the operative mechanism of transformative religious experience and behavioral change.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting

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it was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before… My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being.

James presents this experiential testimony as evidence that the conversion event is phenomenologically characterized by a qualitatively unprecedented inward apprehension rather than any external vision, distinguishing genuine from imitative conversion.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting

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only most slowly, warily, and late was Wilson able to speak with any comfort of ‘conversion.’ On this latter, he was more at ease with his New York alcoholics’ joking over his ‘hot flash’ than with any more exact reference to his ‘conversion experience.’

Kurtz documents Bill Wilson’s strategic avoidance of the language of conversion despite its centrality to his experience, revealing the cultural resistance to conversion terminology within the therapeutic milieu of early Alcoholics Anonymous.

Kurtz, Ernest, Not God A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010supporting

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many of these 19th century mutual aid societies espoused a model of treatment and recovery which involved religious conversion, personal transformation, and often provided

The passage situates religious conversion within the historical lineage of addiction recovery movements, establishing it as a recognized therapeutic mechanism in pre-AA mutual aid culture.

Benda, Brent B., Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting

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Suddenly he felt he was in the presence of Reverend Moon, and heard the minister speaking to him directly ‘as real as we’re talking now.’… The similarities between Ed’s experience and an encounter with the divine are striking.

Pargament uses this case of conversion within the Unification Church to demonstrate that the sacred object of conversion need not be a deity per se, but may be a charismatic religious figure, without altering the essential phenomenological structure of the experience.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting

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The twice-born look down upon the rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being ‘mere morality,’ and not properly religion… The ‘heroic’ or ‘solemn’ way in which life comes to them is a ‘higher synthesis.’

James situates conversion within his typology of once-born and twice-born souls, arguing that the twice-born path — characterized by crisis, dissolution, and reconstitution — achieves a wider and more complete religious consciousness.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting

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it was to the thought of William James that members of Alcoholics Anonymous early and consistently turned whenever they self-consciously sought to understand themselves and their program in terms of intellectual context and content.

Kurtz establishes James’s Varieties as the primary intellectual framework through which early AA members understood their own conversion-like spiritual experiences, mediating between Evangelical Pietism and Humanistic psychology.

Kurtz, Ernest, Not God A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010supporting

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the most distinctive of them is the sort of joy which may result in extreme cases from absolute self-surrender. The sense of the kind of object to which the surrender is made has much to do with determining the precise complexion of the joy.

James identifies surrender and its attendant joy as the affective signature of peak religious experience, noting that the nature of the object of surrender modulates the phenomenological character of the resulting state.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902aside

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what pertains most exclusively to their method is just what no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul.

Al-Ghazzali’s autobiography, cited by James, affirms that the transformative core of mystical experience — structurally analogous to conversion — cannot be transmitted through intellectual study but only through direct experiential transformation.

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902aside

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