Abstract
Due to its recent major revival in the post-Soviet period, the Orthodox Church can today be described as a church of new believers. While this seems to be acknowledged at a general level, there is a strong tendency to avoid speaking of new members with an Eastern European background as ‘converts’. Although they have often gone through much greater transformations – from atheism to Orthodoxy – than those with a Western background, who generally seem to have a Christian past, the term convert is generally reserved for the Westerners. ‘It is not our custom to call them converts’, one of the priests in Norway commented. Conversion stories which gain international publicity are generally about Westerners, and even the few academic studies on converts to Orthodoxy have focused solely on those with a Western background.Based on fieldwork among the Orthodox in Norway, I will compare newcomers with a Western background with those with an Eastern European background, and I will argue that convert as an analytical concept may be equally useful in relation to members of both groups. This concept covers, however, a wide range of transformations, and it is thus important to identify precisely what kinds of converts there are among the many new Orthodox believers.
Highlights
Due to its recent major revival in the post-Soviet period, the Orthodox Church can today be described as a church of new believers
Eastern European new believers like Tatiana are continuously being joined by a steady trickle of Western newcomers
Seems to be acknowledged at a general level, there is a strong tendency to avoid speaking of people with an Eastern European background as ‘converts’
Summary
In contemporary society a great number of people seem to be on the move religiously/spiritually. Danièle Hervieu-Léger notes that there is a sharp increase in conversions in Western societies (2008). Millions of people convert (Roy 2013, 177). The fact that so many people convert has, in turn, had an impact on what conversion nowadays involves. As Marzouki points out, there is often a significant difference between past and present conversions (2013, 2)
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