Band 1 2003

The historical discourse regarding "conversion" refers to a variety of aspects of the experience of transformation. Yet the immediate analytical response that suggests itself when dealing with "conversion" is the distinction between two diverse human actions involved in it. On the one hand, there is the change in religion in terms of joining a new society, which could be termed a "nominal conversion," i.e. the change of a title, a label, and a name. On the other hand, there is a religious experience, the revelation of God and a recommitment to his words and instructions, i.e. "transformational conversion." Nominal conversion refers to the social sphere, and emphasizes the outer world, while transformational conversion indicates an internal process of metamorphosis, and refers to the more private and individual sphere and its relations to God. Conversion embraces these two elements, and could be evaluated on a scale between the nominal and the transformational. Yet our understanding of those two elements in conversion should not be reduced to a quantitative measurement. The relationships between these two components are far more complicated, and range from a separation into two quite different experiences, to a unification of the two, with one aspect subjected to the other.