The Conversion Crisis PDF Download

Author: Emanuel Feldman
Publisher: Ktav Publishing House
ISBN: 9781602801615
Category : Conversion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Aharon Lichtenstein
Publisher: Ktav Publishing House
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Author: Susan Heller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Proselytes and proselyting, Jewish
Languages : en
Pages : 6

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Author: Donald L. Gelpi
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809137961
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Using reflections, exercises, and suggestions for prayer and group sharing, this practical book explores five forms of conversion, the seven dynamics that structure the process and the significance for conversion of sacramental worship.

Author: Yaakov HaLevi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
At first glance the information in this book may seem negative and pessimistic, this is not my intent. Judaism is a wonderful way of life, sanctified by G-d's commands and eternal Truths. All too many converts have unreasonable expectations about the Jewish community and what the reception they receive will be. Usually, their exuberance will be met with suspicion or even animosity. For many Jews, Judaism is an ethnicity more than a religion. They feel that one can no more convert to being a Jew than one can convert to being a member of a different race. Many people have low self-esteem and their major source of pride is in their ancestry from the Matriarchs and Patriarchs. The convert has no such ancestry and these people will have the feeling of "what are you doing here?" Many rabbis realize that their welcoming in converts will be seen as a black mark on their resumes and simply avoid dealing with conversion candidates. Others see the conversion candidate as a potential "cash cow", committing to years of expensive lessons in Judaism. One female convert, whom I know, was recently told by her rabbi "if someone asks you to marry him, accept him no matter what. You'll probably never get another proposal." All of these factors have nothing to do with Torah. Many newcomers to Judaism are deeply disappointed with the organized community. The Torah, the Prophets, and the Talmudic rabbis all condemned these ideas and urged love and acceptance for the convert. Sadly, I have found that the motto of the Orthodox community is conformity rather than spirituality. One should only convert because they seek a deeper connection with G-d in their everyday lives. Judaism promises this, and delivers. One needs to constantly look straight ahead, rather than looking back to see who is applauding. In this book I will take you on a journey, seeing conversion as it appears in the Torah, the Talmud, and it's evolution through the ages. I will explore the modern convert, their trials, and tribulations, and give you insight into what has led us here. I hope you will find these insights helpful.

Author: Jonathan Strom
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271080469
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
August Hermann Francke described his conversion to Pietism in gripping terms that included intense spiritual struggle, weeping, falling to his knees, and a decisive moment in which his doubt suddenly disappeared and he was “overwhelmed as with a stream of joy.” His account came to exemplify Pietist conversion in the historical imagination around Pietism and religious awakening. Jonathan Strom’s new interpretation challenges the paradigmatic nature of Francke’s narrative and seeks to uncover the more varied, complex, and problematic character that conversion experiences posed for Pietists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Grounded in archival research, German Pietism and the Problem of Conversion traces the way that accounts of conversion developed and were disseminated among Pietists. Strom examines members’ relationship to the pious stories of the “last hours,” the growth of conversion narratives in popular Pietist periodicals, controversies over the Busskampf model of conversion, the Dargun revival movement, and the popular, if gruesome, genre of execution conversion narratives. Interrogating a wide variety of sources and examining nuance in the language used to define conversion throughout history, Strom explains how these experiences were received and why many Pietists had an uneasy relationship to conversions and the practice of narrating them. A learned, insightful work by one of the world’s leading scholars of Pietism, this volume sheds new light on Pietist conversion and the development of piety and modern evangelical narratives of religious experience.

Author: Donald Robert Gommesen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conversion
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Author: Anne Hunsaker Hawkins
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725234084
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This sensitive and imaginative study explores the phenomenon of conversion in three major religious autobiographies: the Confessions of Saint Augustine, Grace Abounding by John Bunyan, and Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. These three religious figures could hardly be more different, and yet, as Hawkins shows, their conversion narratives are remarkably similar in patterns of theme, figure, and action. This archetypal approach is particularly appropriate to spiritual autobiography, which is less concerned with "self" than with "soul" and which seeks to relate the individual to a divine reality that is universal and timeless. Hawkins' approach to these texts is sophisticated, yet free of jargon and doctrinaire psychologizing. Here, archetypal analysis becomes not an end in itself, but also a means to investigate the complexity of the individual text. Hawkins' archetypal analysis serves not only to discern continuities, but also to explore cultural, ideological, and psychological variations. Adapting William James's distinction between crisis and lysis conversion, Hawkins shows that the conversion paradigm central to each autobiography determines its religious meaning, its formal structure, and its archetypal emphases. The author approaches the phenomena of conversion with a blend of critical detachment and imaginative sympathy. She is always careful to honor the authenticity of religious experience, and for this reason her commentary succeeds in illuminating it. The result is an interdisciplinary study that will appeal to the psychologist and literary critic as well as the student of religion. But these narratives of conversion offer paradigms that apply to any deeply significant change, for they are of interest and concern to all readers seeking to find meaning in their lives. Hawkins makes us feel both the immediacy and the permanence of these texts, for "What is human in them speaks to what is human in us."

Author: Deal Wyatt Hudson
Publisher: Crossroad Publishing
ISBN: 9780824521264
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The publisher and editor of the influential "Crisis" magazine tells for the first time his story of how his conservative upbringing led him to convert to Roman Catholicism.

Author: Lewis R. Rambo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199713545
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 829

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.