Search

Notes My usual research focus has been on early modern and modern Jewish history, but over the years I have had the opportunity to benefit from exposure to philological methods [...]

The view that some or all of the Khazars, a central Asian people, converted to Judaism at some point during the ninth or tenth century is widely accepted. A careful examination of the sources, however, shows that some of them are pseudepigraphic, and the rest are of questionable reliability. Many of the most reliable contemporary texts that mention Khazars say nothing about their conversion, nor is there any archaeological evidence for it. This leads to the conclusion that such a conversion never took place. Key words: Khazars, conversion, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, historiography, From the middle of the seventh century until sometime in the tenth century, the Khazars ruled an empire that spanned the steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas. (1) Not [...]

À partir de données ethnographiques collectées auprès de nouvelles musulmanes rencontrées en France et au Québec, nous examinons le processus de conversion comme une forme d'herméneutique (Foucault). Nous montrons que [...]

A brief description highlighting the rich ethnographic data about people's relationship to a priest and their mixed feelings towards the Catholic Church by Peter Cahn is presented. He pays little attention to the economic marketplace model in Latin America but suggests that social concerns are the main reason why Mexicans remain Catholic.

The Catholic church in Tzintzuntzan retains a quasi-monopoly on religious production in the area and with Protestantism less than a decade old in the town, the social costs of conversion are relatively high. However, until the Protestant population of the town reaches a critical mass like that in Latin America, the social costs of conversion will continue to be high for most Catholics.

Peter Cahn offers an interesting comment on the current research on religion in Mexico. His focus on why Catholics do not convert is a refreshing change from the onslaught of research on the causes of conversion. He indicates that in Tzintzuntzan only a small percentage of the population has converted to other religions while the great majority of people in Mexico are Catholics.

Peter Cahn, in his article, 'A Standoffish Priest and Sticky Catholicism: Questioning the Religious Marketplace in Tzintzuntzan, Mexico' disagrees with the religious marketplace theory. The theory, also known as 'rationale choice' theory, argues that churches compete for religious consumers in a religious free market where choosy consumers select among competing spiritual goods for the 'product' that best satisfies them and perceives their needs.

This study examined the nature of spiritual conversion in a sample of 130 Christian college students. More specifically, this study offered a definition of spiritual conversion and tested it by comparing the ways in which spiritual conversion differs from both gradual increases in religiousness, and from no religious change. Spiritual converts, nonconverts who increased in religiousness gradually, and religious adherents who did not experience religious change were selected using a screening questionnaire. A questionnaire battery was used in the assessment of the research questions, and was supplemented with 10 interviews which provided personal examples of the students' religious experiences. There were significant differences between the religious change groups and the group not experiencing religious change in terms of their pre-change experiences, post-change experiences, and amount of pre-post change. However, the study did not strongly differentiate between spiritual converts and nonconverts who had experienced religious change. The theoretical implications of these results were discussed.

Italian anthropologist Ernest De Martino (1908-1965) devoted much of his writing to the analysis of 'the crisis of presence,' an existential dilemma evidenced in a disturbed sense of self and often expressed as illness, emotional distress, or 'alienation.' This article describes De Martino's conceptualization of the crisis of presence as a problem of consciousness with moral and emotional dimensions and applies it in interpreting the conversion narratives of three Italian Pentecostal Christians. The resolution of the crisis, for these Christians, entails the construction of a new sense of self, and particularly a new relationship to time and history. [De Martino, Pentecostalism, religion, existential crisis, Italy]

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the high rates of religious switching in the United States, but no study has tested these theories against each other. This study uses data from the 1988 General Social Survey to estimate event history models of religious switching. It is found that religious exogamy and homogamy, parental religious exogamy, lapses in religious practice, denomination of origin, and generation are the most important factors affecting religious switching. Intergenerational mobility is found to have a negative effect on switching rates, but educational differences from respondents' denominations of origin increase switching rates significantly. Lastly, it is shown that dynamic models are an improvement over static logistic regression models. [C] 1991 Academic Press, Inc.

* The family of the gunman who opened fire and killed seven and wounded seven others at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth has donated $10,000 to the Texas congregation. [...]

Religion being multifarious and multiplex and not to be explained by one single psychology, cultural psychology is presented as a way to access the specificity of spiritual phenomena being constituted by diverse (sub)cultures. As an example of a religious 'form of life' hitherto not approached - even considered impossible to approach - by psychology, the article introduces The bevindelijken, a group of experience-oriented conservative Calvinists in the Netherlands. Contemporary theorizing about 'embodiment' is pointed out as viable in its exploration. After reflecting on methodological difficulties that had to be dealt with in empirical research, social constructionism, especially in its rhetorical-responsive version, is drawn on to explain some of the paradoxes of the peculiar concept of 'conversion,' central to bevindelijke spirituality. As in many non-Western countries, but also with several more or less traditional religious groups in the West - where religion is a major shaping force in various, sometimes even almost all, domains of private and public life, and where people more often than not fail to distinguish between the two - bevindelijke believers have embodied (Bourdieu) knowledge of the third kind (Shotter) about their religion. Bevindelijke identity does not just consist in membership in some church, in affirming specific theological doctrines, in joining an inner circle or even in being able to account for one's religious experiences in a certain stylized way, but predominantly in an all-pervading style, belonging to a specific life form (Wittgenstein), displaying itself in and through the body.