Conversion Narratives Research Articles

Augustine’s Ostia Revisited: a Plotinian or Christian Ascent in Confessiones 9?

ABSTRACTAugustine converted to Christianity in 386 and described his conversion in his Confessiones a decade later. Much ink has been spilled concerning the question of the specific nature of Augustine’s conversion and the ‘historical accuracy’ of his description thereof 10 years later. The Confessiones seem to describe a volte face: he radically embraced Christianity. But to what kind of Christianity did he convert? We will readdress this question, not by investigating his conversion, but by a close exegesis of Confessiones 9, in which he describes the so-called Ostia-ecstasy (Ostia in 387). In the first part of our article, we discuss the description of the latter experience in Confessiones 9 and situate it within his conversion narrative, with attention to the symbolical language he used. The second part compares the Ostia-experience with the ascent of the soul as described in Plotinus’ Enneads, and with similar ‘Neoplatonic ascents’ present in the Confessiones (7, 16; 7, 23; 10, 10–12) and in writings penned by Augustine prior to or simultaneous with the Confessiones (de animae quantitate 33, 70–76; de doctrina Christiana 2, 9–11) in order to elucidate the relationship between Augustine’s ‘Christian’ conversion and ‘Ostia-ecstasy’ with the Neoplatonic anabasis.

Images of God, Religious Involvement, and Prison Misconduct among Inmates

ABSTRACTThe authors examine an offender’s images of God – beliefs concerning God’s forgiveness, engagement, and judgment – in relation to prison misconduct. They test whether these beliefs are related inversely to misconduct and, if so, whether the relationships are mediated by an inmate’s religious involvement. The authors apply latent-variable structural equation modeling to analyze data from a survey of inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Controlling for sociodemographic and criminal backgrounds, they find an inmate’s belief in God’s engagement and forgiveness to be inversely associated with disciplinary convictions, though belief in God’s judgment is not related to misconduct. The authors also find the relationship between an inmate’s image of a forgiving God and misconduct to be mediated by the inmate’s conversion narrative.

Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates' Tragic Relationships

We analyze how twenty graduates of a Batterer Intervention Program constructed autobiographical stories about their relationships with women they assaulted. We focus on the presentation of gendered selves via narrative manhood acts, which we define as self‐narratives that signify membership in the category “man” and the possession of a masculine self. We also show how graduates constructed self‐narratives as a genre that was oppositional to organizational narratives: rather than adopting the program's domestic violence melodrama or preferred conversion narrative, graduates used the larger culture—especially “bitch” imagery and sometimes racialized discourse—to construct tragedies. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative analysis for research on batterers' accounts and manhood acts, and also shows how oppositional genre‐making can be a method to resist organizational narratives.

Conversational Narratives at Quixote House: How Released Offenders and Religious Members Build Community and Find a New Identity in Winnipeg

One of the most worrisome situations in current societies is the failure of their correctional system. Even though jails and imprisonment institutions, at least in developed countries, do not have the shameful conditions which characterized them in the past, the high rate of recidivism shows that the correctional function that morally justifies their existence, with its big budget, has not been successful. Individuals that enter into the correctional system barely escape from it during life. However, there is a house in Winnipeg that is making a difference. This essay is about this house, Quixote House, named after Don Miguel de Cervantes’ novel hero, and my engagement to build community in it through conversational narratives. Also this essay shows how conversational narrative plays a role in healing trauma and building a community through which released offenders can find a new identity. For this purpose, it is necessary to set first a theoretical context, addressing the situation of recidivism and parole releases and the efforts to reinsert former offenders into society, which entail many challenges such as clean and affordable housing. Then, there is an explanation of how storytelling addressing trauma and community building, the importance of emotions in this kind of narrative, and the possibility of storytelling in ordinary life, especially in finding personal identity. Following Lonergan’s approach, there is a description about Quixote House and my engagement as priest but also as a another member of the community in which parolees can find a new identity.

That Hideous Strength and Till We Have Faces : C.S. Lewis, Evangelism, and the Role of Story

C.S. Lewis and other Christians have often struggled with the apparent conflict between culture, or the arts, and evangelism. Lewis, however, concluded that while evangelism is the duty of all Christians, culture could serve as a road to conversion for some, particularly as a praeparatio evangelica. Evangelicals, however, approach culture and evangelism with the desire to use the work as an explicitly evangelistic tool and therefore tend to interpret Lewis's works in such a light. Using Lewis's own conversion narrative, non-fictional writings, and his fictional depictions of conversion in That Hideous Strength and Till We Have Faces, this article explores conversion as a necessary but gradual process in which the non-believer is prepared both imaginatively and mentally, through works of literature, for a more explicit and direct gospel presentation. These works are each inseparable from the influence of literature, fairy-tale, story, and myth, demonstrating how culture may act as a pre-conversion stimulus, but also, as a work itself, may also stimulate such a transformation in the reader.

Conversational Storytelling in Chinese Speech Acts

Conversational narrative or storytelling is a prevalent activity in everyday talk. This paper, drawing on the speech act theory and conversational analysis methodology, examines the conversational storytelling in performing a few types of illocutionary acts like assert, warn, object, advise in Chinese everyday talk. It is found that storytelling plays several significant roles in performing some types of illocutionary acts, i.e. to make a point, to build rapport among friends and even to reduce the face threat. Conversational storytelling may occur immediately after the expression of an illocutionary act, and sometimes before it to indicate certain illocutionary force.

Homeopathy 'for Mexicans': Medical Popularisation, Commercial Endeavours, and Patients' Choice in the Mexican Medical Marketplace, 1853-1872.

This paper focuses on homeopaths’ strategies to popularise homeopathy from 1850 to 1870. I argue that homeopaths created a space for homeopathy in Mexico City in the mid-nineteenth century by facilitating patients’ access to medical knowledge, consultation and practice. In this period, when national and international armed conflicts limited the diffusion and regulation of academic medicine, homeopaths popularised homeopathy by framing it as a life-enhancing therapy with tools that responded to patients’ needs. Patients’ preference for homeopathy evolved into commercial endeavours that promoted the practice of homeopathy through the use of domestic manuals. Using rare publications and archival records, I analyse the popularisation of homeopathy in Ramón Comellas’s homeopathic manual, the commercialisation of Julián González’s family guides, and patients’ and doctors’ reception of homeopathy. I show that narratives of conversion to homeopathy relied on the different experiences of patients and trained doctors, and that patients’ positive experience with homeopathy weighed more than the doctors’ efforts to explain to the public how academic medicine worked. The fact that homeopaths and patients used a shared language to describe disease experiences framed the possibility of a horizontal transmission of medical knowledge, opening up the possibility for patients to become practitioners. By relying on the long tradition of domestic medicine in Mexico, the popularisation of homeopathy disrupted the professional boundaries that academic physicians had begun to build, making homeopaths the largest group that challenged the emergent medical academic culture and its diffusion in Mexico in the nineteenth century.

Religious Transformations in the Middle Ages: Towards a New Archaeological Agenda

UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS CHANGE between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Reformation forms one of the cornerstones of medieval archaeology, but has been riven by period, denominational, and geographical divisions. This paper lays the groundwork for a fundamental rethink of archaeological approaches to medieval religions, by adopting an holistic framework that places Christian, pagan, Islamic and Jewish case studies of religious transformation in a long-term, cross-cultural perspective. Focused around the analytical themes of ‘hybridity and resilience’ and ‘tempo and trajectories’, our approach shifts attention away from the singularities of national narratives of religious conversion, towards a deeper understanding of how religious beliefs, practices and identity were renegotiated by medieval people in their daily lives.

Reading Like a Jew: Chaucer's Physician's Tale and the Letter of the Law

Abstract Drawing from medieval Christian depictions of Jewish literalism and materialist reading, this article offers a reevaluation of Chaucer's Physician and his tale's protagonist Virginius, as men who read like Jews, even though they remain distinct from the racialized characterization of the Prioress's Tale. This article argues that Chaucer depicts “reading Jewishly” as an intellectual flaw, one into which Christian and pagan men might fall, with tragic results for themselves, but potentially edifying ones for those who witness their failures of perception. The Physician's Tale is thus to be read as a narrative of conversion, and it concerns the conflict between a literalist “Jewish” hermeneutic and a figural Christian epistemology premised on faith.

Royal Marriage and Conversion in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

The prevailing view in modern scholarship is that Bede reduced the role of women in his narrative of Anglo-Saxon conversion, in contrast to Gregory of Tours with whom Bede is unfavourably compared. In Gregory’s account of the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, he allowed an overt role for the king’s wife, Clotild, whereas in Bede’s presentation of mixed marriages between Christian queens and pagan kings his queens did not actively convert their husbands. This essay presents a counter thesis arguing that the importance of Christian queens can be detected in Bede’s Historia when attention is paid to scriptural imagery and exegetical allusions in his text. Bede’s Historia is the only early source that refers to Christian queens at pagan courts and his presentation indicates that these women fulfilled scriptural precepts such as 1 Cor. 7:14, ‘the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife’. This theological dimension reveals the unique role played by Christian queens in the conversion of their husbands and the significance of royal marriages in the acceptance of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England.

ピューリタンの教育思想における回心体験の問題 : 17世紀ニュー・イングランド会衆派の「回心体験録」、「説教集」分析を中心に

ピューリタンの教育思想における回心体験の問題 : 17世紀ニュー・イングランド会衆派の「回心体験録」、「説教集」分析を中心に

Embedded Narratives: Metabolic Disorders and Pentecostal Conversion in Samoa.

Drawing from interviews and participant observation, this article explores the intersection of diagnosis of metabolic disorders and religious conversion among Pentecostal Christians in Samoa by analyzing what I call embedded narratives--conversion narratives embedded in illness narratives. Drawing from ethnographic data, I examine how using conversion narrative conventions enabled those living with metabolic disorders to narrate behavior change in a culturally and socially valorized way. By embedding their narratives, I suggest those living with metabolic disorders shifted the object of care from a disease process toward the creation of a religious life and in turn transformed the risks associated with metabolic disorders, including diet, exercise, and pharmaceutical use into moral risks associated with everyday religious life. In these cases, Pentecostal conversion created possible scripts for changing health practices, managing stress, and shifting resource use in the name of religious commitment, providing insights into how self-care can be an expression of religious practice.

Narrating Community: the Qiṣṣat Shakarwatī Farmāḍ and Accounts of Origin in Kerala and around the Indian Ocean

The story of an Indian king’s conversion to Islam by the prophet Muhammad and of the subsequent foundation by Arab Muslims of communities and mosques across the sovereign’s former dominion in Kerala appears in various Arabic and Malayalam literary iterations. The most remarkable among them is theQiṣṣat Shakarwatī Farmāḍ. This legend of community origins is here translated from the Arabic in full for the first time. Historians have dealt with such origin stories by transmitting them at face value, rejecting their historicity, or sifting them for kernels of historical truth. The comparative approach adopted here instead juxtaposes theQiṣṣawith a Malayalam folksong and other Indian Ocean narratives of conversion as related in medieval Arabic travel literature to reveal underlying archetypes of just or enlightened kings as sponsors of community. The legend emerges as a crucial primary source for the constitution and self-definition of Islam in Kerala and for the discursive claims of this community vis-à-vis others.

Some Aspects of Conversion Narratives in Late Safavid Iran and their Circulation: The Case of ʿAlī Akbar Armanī

Abstract This study focuses on a conversion narrative from the late Safavid period, the Iʿtirāf-nāma, written by an Armenian merchant known after his conversion as ʿAlī Akbar Armanī. The study addresses questions on the transmission of texts, the conventions of the genre of convert literature, and the socialization of converts into Muslim scholarly families. This study seeks to contextualize this text not only vis-à-vis the cultural and social milieu of religious minorities in the late Safavid period, but also within the wider history of the genre of convert literature.

God changes people: modes of authentication in Evangelical conversion narratives

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Evangelicalism is the conversion story. In this article we focus on the conversion stories of interviewees within the setting of several related Evangelical television programs broadcast in the Netherlands since the 1980s. We argue that the conversion story is construed through a particular view on and practice of authenticity. Thus we see that, in the televised conversion story, modes of authentication are at work in what we analytically distinguish as frames, narratives, and strategies of authentication. We argue that the idea of an authentic transformation has changed from a more fundamentalist mode of authentication, emphasizing the subjection of the self to a particular religious narrative, to a more expressive mode of authentication that emphasizes the exploration of the inner, unique self of the interviewee.

Consciously unmodern: situating the self in Sufi becoming of contemporary Egypt

Sufi becoming is conditioned on finding a master who could take one through the spiritual journey for attaining Ultimate Truth. In contrast, Islamic reformism since the late eighteenth century calls for the significance of establishing a direct and autonomous relationship to God and denies the roles of charismatic authority who could mediate between Him and a Muslim. This paper examines how Egyptian Sufi theorists tackled the issue of individualised faith and personal connection to their masters by looking at the conversion narrative of ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud (1910–1978), the French-educated Egyptian scholar of Sufism. He vividly depicted in his work the encounters with the Shadhili masters, whether in person or in ru’ya (dream-like vision), and demonstrated his firm connection to them. In spite of publicly disclosing his Sufi becoming, he managed to gain the status of a Sufi celebrity by performing the selfless Self who aspires to gain access to transcendental reality.

한국어 수업 대화에 나타나는 이야기의 기능 연구

한국어 수업 대화에 나타나는 이야기의 기능 연구

The Role of the Profound Apology in Abuse Redress Schemes

An apology can be given on many levels from a general acknowledgement at one end of the spectrum to a profound apology at the other end. The profound apology requires a number of essential ingredients. Firstly, a profound apology is built on the giver of the apology and the receiver connecting deeply at a personal level. It is through the receivers story being heard in a way only the receiver of the apology can give -that is, through an ‘in the moment’ narrative conversation. This is best done with sensitive preparation for both parties with the assistance of a skilled professional mediator. The second and equally essential part of the profound apology is the formal expression of that sorrow. This English word ‘sorry’ has a profound psychological effect on the person receiving the apology if given from the heart. It is the combination of these two elements that create the potential for a profound apology.

Narrative Organization Deficit in Lewy Body Disorders Is Related to Alzheimer Pathology.

Background: Day-to-day interactions depend on conversational narrative, and we examine here the neurobiological basis for difficulty organizing narrative discourse in patients with Lewy body disorders (LBD).Method: Narrative organization was examined in 56 non-aphasic LBD patients, including a non-demented cohort (n = 30) with Parkinson's disease (PD) or PD-Mild Cognitive Impairment PD-MCI,) and a cohort with mild dementia (n = 26) including PD-dementia (PDD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), with similar age and education but differing in MMSE (p < 0.001). We used a previously reported procedure that probes patients' judgments of the organization of brief, familiar narratives (e.g., going fishing, wrapping a present). A subgroup of 24 patients had MRI assessment of regional gray matter (GM) atrophy and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology, including beta amyloid (Aβ), total-tau (t-tau), and phosphorylated-tau (p-tau).Results: Mildly demented LBD patients had a significant deficit judging narratives compared to non-demented patients, but this deficit was not correlated with MMSE. Regression analyses instead related narrative organization to regions of frontal GM atrophy, and CSF levels of Aβ and t-tau associated with presumed AD pathology in these frontal regions.Conclusion: These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that CSF markers of AD pathology associated with frontal regions play a role in difficulty organizing narratives in LBD.

‘The conglomeration of flesh and cloth in a beautiful place’: the politics of aesthetics in Michiel Heyns’s Invisible Furies

This article investigates the ideas related to aesthetics that are discussed explicitly in Michiel Heyns’s Invisible Furies (2012). These ideas are communicated in the novel by means of a variety of narrative situations, conversations and artistic reflections on various facets of the aesthetic – specifically on beauty and ugliness as examples of aesthetic properties. This article explores and contextualises Paris as a specific urban space as it provides a narrative frame that enforces knowledge and transformation in some characters. Furthermore, the focus is on beautiful characters that find themselves in the city (mostly exiles from different parts of the world), outer beauty and appearance, as well as beauty and social power. The relationships between beauty and morality, beauty and power, as well as Heyns’s new ways of projecting masculinity are also explored. Essentially, the article seeks to understand the role of beauty in contemporary culture as part of the more general theory of the politics of aesthetics.