Abstract
Present-day scholarship on religious conversions diverts from classic Protestant paradigms of sudden conversions and instant transformations of the self. Instead, it stresses that converts make active choices that are influenced by specific contexts and historical changes. This becomes evident in an ethnographic study of one controversial aspect of the recent refugee influx in Germany: the so-called mass conversions of Iranian refugees from Shia Islam to Christianity, which have been highly publicized and criticized since the height of immigration in 2015. The analysis draws on interview data with Iranian refugee converts and their pastors in Protestant churches in North Rhine-Westphalia between October 2017 and January 2018. The study reveals the need to theorize the symbiotic connection between religious contacts, forced migration, and conversion to Christianity. It applies Rambo’s (1993) stage model of conversion and the analytical concept of secrecy (Jones 2014, Manderson et al. 2015, Simmel 1906) to demonstrate that the Iranian refugees’ conversions are shaped by contexts, crises, encounters, quests, interactions, commitments, and consequences (Rambo 1993) as they negotiate the forces of secrecy, risk, transparency, and the benefits of being a Christian. The goal of this paper is to find thematic patterns in their narratives that can be systematized and can build a foundation for further study.
Highlights
Ebrahim1 sits across from me in a small room in his new Protestant church in North [1]Rhine-Westphalia
He explained that he practiced Christianity in secret and that a police raid of the underground house church he frequented in Teheran lead to his arrest and subsequent forced migration: “In Iran, I was praying in the church
Rambo’s (1993) stage model allows organizing the conversion narratives in the 19 interviews conducted with Iranian refugee converts
Summary
Ebrahim sits across from me in a small room in his new Protestant church in North [1]. This study traces the formation of refugees’ new Christian identities through various stages [8] (Rambo 1993) in narratives collected from interviews These stages involve their first contacts with Christianity in Iran, the Iranian government’s censorship of Christian practices, their social exclusion in Iranian society and in refugee camps in Germany after their forced migration, and their integration into new German church communities. Sociocultural consequences of conversion highlight the converts’ lives beyond their personal [43] religious transformation and their engagement in wider social systems, including the quality of life produced by these systems (Rambo 1993) Up to this point, the events were narrated in a consistent and sequential structure, but there is a rupture in their story (Gómez-Estern and Benítez 2013; see Bruner 1990): their secret identities as Christians are exposed.
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