Religious Conversions Unit
The Religious Conversions Unit welcomes individual paper or full paper/panel session proposals on any topic related to religious conversion (with a preference for fully formed panel proposals). We are particularly interested in papers and panels that challenge established understandings of the category of “conversion” and push the study of conversion in new directions. We are especially, but not exclusively, interested in featuring panels on the following topics at the 2025 annual meeting.
Conversion and abolition
In keeping with the Presidential Theme for the 2025 AAR, we invite papers that explore the way converts and evangelists pursue, define, and deny “freedom.” How does conversion provide a context for the assertion of autonomy, or its denial, particularly among enslaved persons, prisoners, and people subject to forced labor? Global in scope, this panel seeks to advance our understanding of conversion in prisons, plantations, and similar sites in order to explore the dynamics of conversion under duress or as resistance to confinement. Contact: Kalvin Cumming - krcummin@syr.edu
Reconstructing Religion
As people adjust to a rapidly changing culture, their attachment to and understanding of their inherited religion inevitably changes. What catalyzes this process of "deconstruction," reevaluation, and reconstruction? Where and to whom are these silent deconversions, or inner conversions, happening? What is gained when we examine this comparatively, considering this process in traditions beyond Christianity, and in historical moments beyond our own? Contact: Kathleen Self - kself@stlawu.edu
Online Conversions/Deconversions
We live our lives online today, including our religious lives. What do scholars of religious conversion have to contribute to the analysis and theorization of how conversion and deconversion takes place online today? What is the role of influencers in this process? Methodologically, what is the best way to make sense of ongoing conversion in the "comments"? How do researchers responsibly and ethically navigate implicit or explicit expectations of privacy and anonymity? We welcome papers that investigate any dimension of this phenomenon. Contact: Marc Pugliese - marc.pugliese@saintleo.edu
The World Christianity, Religious Conversions, and Ecclesiological Investigations units invite papers for a joint session exploring the nature of deconversion interpreted as both turning away and turning towards (i.e. deeper conversion) as an exercise of agency. One important feature of ‘deconversion’ may be a decision to leave or pull back from active association with a religious institution or a traditional faith community. How does disaffiliation function to critique or challenge religious organizations? What role does the abuse and exercise of power, especially institutional power, play in the process of deconversion? How might one consider the distinction between rejecting an institution and relinquishing a religious identity altogether?
Likewise, alternative sources of community, solidarity, and spiritual meaning may be significant pull factors that facilitate religious change. Where are people going and why are they drawn there? Following deconversion, in what ways, if any, do religious traditions still shape an individual's idea of "authentic community”? This panel seeks papers that advance our understanding of what changes and what remains the same, or even intensifies, when people find the freedom to redefine their religious belonging and turn to spiritual practices they experience as more lifegiving?
This Unit studies the full spectrum of issues related to religious conversions, in any historical or geographic context, encompassing different forms of religious belief and practice. The scope of the issues we cover is broad and wide-ranging. We consider investigations into the reasons for various types of religious conversions including, but not limited to intellectual, theological, philosophical, historical, experiential, psychological, social, cultural, political, and economic causes. We also study the consequences of religious conversions, both individually and socially, and their implications. We encourage the methodologies of multiple disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary approaches. More narrowly focused areas of inquiry suggested by interested scholars include, but are not limited to the following:
• Multiple conversions
• Group and individual conversions
• Forced conversions
• The narrative and/or literary aspects of conversions
• Deconversions
• Ecclesiological consequences of conversion
• The place and role of conversion in a specific religious tradition
• Theories of conversions
• Formulas of religious conversion (as step-by-step processes)
Anonymity: Proposals are anonymous to chairs and steering committee members during review, but visible to chairs prior to final acceptance or rejection
Method of submission: PAPERS
Leadership:
Unit Co-Chair – Kent, Eliza F., Skidmore College, ekent@skidmore.edu
Unit Co-Chair – Self, Kathleen, St. Lawrence University, kself@stlawu.edu