Talk:Conversion to Christianity

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Could someone PLEASE update this article with relevant NPOV information?

IMPROVE! IMPROOOOOOVEEE!!!! -69.29.141.54

Think the POV's a bit over the top for a simple update.153.2.246.32 07:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree - I think this phrase in particular is biased: "In most denominations, infants are baptized before they can even know about Christianity. Other denominations, however, do not baptize infants forcing them to accept the faith for themselves."

this page needs improving

As i am not experienced with Christianity, i cant edit to it usefully, but statements like "in the third world" definately need to be cleaned up. Please leave a message on my page if u need help in doing so. Thanks! Bhaveer 20:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

His information isn't so awful, but his writing style is atrocious, and he has all kinds of headings with nothing in them. Clamshop 18:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)Clamshop

I have a PhD in religious studies and religious conversion is one of my fortes. I will try to improve this page which, yes, needs a lot of work. For now I have added some material on conversion from Islam to Christianity. I will try to gradually improve the rest of it too. Xphilosopherking (talk) 15:36, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there a Merge there?

This topic seems to overlap with the content of articles like Believer's baptism and Born again (among others). To try to flesh this article out would merely duplicate the work on those articles (in my opinion). I saw that an AfD failed for this article, but would a merge be possible? Pastordavid 09:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

"Pre-Majority Conversion"

I deleted the "Pre-Majority Conversion" section which read: "Several churches, such as the Catholic Church baptize children a few days after birth. Mennonites and other denominations reject this practice." I found it to be too underdeveloped. Ejectgoose 08:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Working on it

I'm going to try and fix this page up a bit. Should I post the new content here in discussion before replacing the article or just go ahead and make changes? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Neffland (talk • contribs) 21:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

Go ahead, be bold and make the changes. If someone objects, we can deal with that then. There is currently not a lot of editing going on at this article, nor are there currently any editing disagreements. Have at it. Pastordavid 23:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Well improved?

I've substantially expanded the article, differentiating between reception through baptism and otherwise, and again differentiating between Churches with paedobaptism (most of them) and denominations with believer baptism. It would be nice if someone could contribute some details especially about the Orthodox Church and the mainline Protestant Churches.Lumendelumine 12:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I clarified the believer's baptism portion some.Akubhai 20:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The Biblical Explanation section needs to be cleaned up and the Bible references should be linked to biblegateway to make it easier for a reader. Akubhai 12:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I shortened the believer's baptism section. In denominations that practice that, the baptism isn't seen as part of the conversion. A section needs to be added about conversion though, maybe something about the "sinner's prayer", although that isn't really very thorough. Akubhai 04:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review

I've added the "Peer Review" tag to the banner above, and listed this on the WP Christianity Peer Review page. You can see my initial comments on the article there. I'll see what I can do in the next few days. Nswinton 14:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Conversion through "Relationship"

I started a section called Conversion through "Relationship". The name could definitely be changed, I was going to say "Faith" but that seems to imply there is no faith involved in the baptism version (although this implies it doesn't involve relationship which isn't right either). Either way, it is just a stub. Please feel free to change or add. Akubhai 13:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Ha ha, I initially thought your new section would be one on "relational evangelism", and would introduce a new level of unwanted controversy to this article. Good proposal, though. I'm not sure how to really expand that section myself, but I'm sure some of our better wiki communicators will expand it when they see it. Nswinton\^talk 14:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The more I think about this, it doesn't seem right. I think the article needs to be reorganized. The initial portion should talk about how Conversion involves starting a relationship with Christ (with less Christianese terms). Then later there should be a section talking about how some groups view baptism as part of that conversion and others don't. From what I understand, all groups see the relationship or personal decision or whatever as necessary, but not all groups see baptism. It looks like we're trying to work backwards by saying what some groups think and then expanding to what all groups think. Does that make sense? Akubhai 15:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

That totally makes sense. The relationship section (renamed "conversion into relationship"?) should precede the baptism section. Perhaps we should lay out the article like this:

• Lead
• TOC
• Basic layout of Biblical texts regarding conversion
• Confession
• Repentance
• Relationship
• Baptism
  • Different views on Baptism's role in conversion
• Conversion to another denomination

I don't know if that would be ideal, but it seems to me like there should be more clarity in the how and why of conversion to christianity in the mind of the potential/recent/longtime convert. Nswinton\^talk 16:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I moved a paragraph I found hidden down in the Biblical explanation section up to the Lead. It seems pretty broad and should be up there (based on the Conversion to Judaism article). How much should the Confession and Repentance sections cover? Something else I just thought of, isn't a lot of this covered under Salvation? Akubhai 16:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I was bold and made a change. I added salvation instead of relationship and moved it up. I got rid of the sections on infant and believer's baptism since the actual timing doesn't have anything to do with conversion from what i understand. Thoughts? Akubhai 16:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, now that you mention it, this article might be redundant... I'm looking at Salvation and it's proposed merging to Soteriology, and I think those articles probably cover the topic much more appropriately than this one is going to. I'd be worth getting the opinion of a few other editors on this one, IMO. Do you think we should make a comment on those talk pages, or possibly the merge discussion and see what they think about this article? Nswinton\^talk 17:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess I figured the inclusion of the Baptism talked meant "conversion" was more than "salvation" for some groups, but maybe they see baptism as part of salvation, I don't know. The part about coversion among denominations seems separate from salvation though.Akubhai 21:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the changes you both have made. Regarding a possible merger: if Salvation goes to Soteriology, I don't see how a seeker would ever find this material. (I don't even know what Soteriology means.) The redundancy that I see is between this present article and Religious conversion which has a section entitled Conversion to Christianity. What about merging this article into that section?

I just searched the Wiki index. Conversion to Islam redirects to Religious conversion. Conversion to Judaism is a standalone article. Converted to Christianity redirects to Christianization.Afaprof01 22:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

There was some talk of merging the article before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Conversion_to_Christianity) but it was voted against. I think I like the idea of a separate article. Akubhai 23:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

quick question on image caption

Is there any way to have a caption show below an image besides having it formatted as a "thumb"? I think the image of Paul's conversion looks better ~275px, but the caption only shows with a mouseover at that size, and there's no links in the mouseover, obviously. Nswinton\^talk 14:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

That should work although I think it might get overridden by user preferences. Not sure. Akubhai 15:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Speaking in Tongues

This could be a very touchy subject, but I'm wondering if it'd be worth it to add a section on Speaking in Tongues or being "Filled with the Holy Spirit" to the article, as many people groups in Acts and in some demographics since have had both those occurences as they've "received the gospel" for the first time. I know this is a very controversial point of doctrine, and I'm not totally sure if it's worthy of mention in the article. Any thoughts? Nswinton\^talk 14:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I probably don't know enough about the subject to make a judgement call. Are there groups that consider gifts of the Holy Spirit part of conversion? I think some might consider it proof over coversion, if that is the case, it might deserve a mention. Akubhai 15:35, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Some charismatic groups consider it part of conversion, and others consider it proof of conversion. Nswinton\^talk 17:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Speaking in tongues (glossolalia) is a phenomenon said to accompany a post-conversion experience variously called the "Second Blessing" and "Baptism of the Holy Spirit." While some experience conversion (being "born again") and receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in rapid succession, almost simultaneously, they still are two different events for charismatic Christians. Let's leave it out of the conversion article. Afaprof01 17:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Fine with me, just thought I'd ask. Nswinton\^talk 20:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Biblical explanation

I have an issue with the phrase "Baptism's role in the biblical text was pivotal." It seems to violate NPOV or is atleast disputed by many Christians. From what I understand, Catholics and LDS require baptism, but I think more Protestant churches believe you can be a Christian and not have been baptized. Isn't this correct? Akubhai 15:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, many protestant groups consider Baptism as an initial expression after conversion, not as a necessary part of the conversion itself. It's thought to be an "outward sign of an inward decision". They consider it important to the conversion process only in that one's desire to make the public show of baptism is a demonstration of their inner confidence in their decision to trust Christ. That wording it probably POV, but I think it gets the point across... Nswinton\^talk 17:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

In the Catholic Church, adult converts show their "inward decision" by going thrugh the right of election. Such a person is a Christian with most of the rights and responsibilities of a Catholic, with the intention of being baptised in the near future. Once baptised the candiate can receive the Eucharist. (JLawson 6 August 2008). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.117.194 (talk) 23:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I've marked the section as POV as it seems to prove a point rather than explain - especially the part about immersion and baptism of believers etc. seems to be more of an argumentation than a neutral explanation. 84.215.54.126 (talk) 14:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, I would have prefered citations-needed (non-bible citations, though). It gives a vague impression that it maybe proves a point, but restructured and properly cited, the content should be OK as it is. Especially the third initial paragraph:

The Bible does not clearly state whether children were or were not baptized, so there is disagreement among...

should be a "context", i.e. the first paragraph, instead of the third, placed like a "conclusion". And citations/reformulations for exactly that para may be enough to NPOVing the section. Said: Rursus ☻ 11:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Undid edit by X451422

I just undid the last edit by X451422. It added a lot of talk of conversion through baptism to the conversion through salvation section. I don't see what the point of that was. Please explain. Akubhai 15:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Fake statistic cited

> In terms of people converting from Islam, an Al-Jazeerah interview gave evidence that up to 6 million Africans leave Islam for Christianity every year.

This is not from a statistics poll or anything like that but what a person said on an interview to Al Jazeera. It is baseless and has no data supporting it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SakibArifin (talk • contribs) 10:43, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Revision

I have done my best to revise this article. I tried to use more relevant, well sourced, and neutral information that I can. I might still enact more edits to the article. It would be helpful if other editors could expand upon Protestant conversions and well as nontrinitarian conversions. Mooters 1563 (talk) 5:15, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Problem

Social scientists have shown great interest in the Christian conversion as a religious experience that believers describe as strengthening their faith and changing their lives. Christianization, defined as the "reformulation of social relations, cultural meanings, and personal experience in terms of (commonly accepted or supposed) Christian ideals", should be distinguished from conversion. Christianization is the broader cultural term, and typically has involved efforts to systematically convert an entire continent or culture from existing beliefs to Christianity

This is not what the source says. In fact, it's kind of the opposite of what it says. Plus, it's in the lead and social science isn't covered in the article - and it should be. I'm going to be changing that and probably making some other changes to this article accordingly. Just letting everyone know up front, please come here and yell at me here (or just talk) if there are any problems with anything I do. Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:16, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

FA assistance

Hi Josh! I see that you are semi-retired so I am hoping you might be interested in helping me get my first FA article, I have just completely redone Conversion to Christianity and hope it's worthy, but I need expert advice. Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:14, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: Hi Jen; I'm reluctant to make promises about assistance that I might not be able to keep; as well as being in and out of Wikipedia at present, I'm about the vanish for a few weeks as I have three trips in quick succession. That said, I may be able to find a few hours to look over the article.. I usually recommend taking articles through good article candidates before FAC. If you're looking for other people to talk to; WJ94 is a philosopher of religion who has written featured articles about theology; Midnightblueowl has written some very nice articles on new religious movements; and Ealdgyth has written a bunch of FAs about medieval Christianity. I've tagged a disambiguation link and flagged a few non-ideal sources (feel free to revert me). I'd recommend that, for an article like this, you lean as much as possible on serious scholarship, and purge the random webpages/student essays/etc. That stuff will be looked at closely (along with questions about source formatting; I noticed some SHOUTING) at FAC. Josh Milburn (talk) 08:20, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Also (easy fiX) beware false titles. Just to stress that I'm not saying the sources I've tagged are awful and must be expunged immediately; just noting that they're probably not ideal for FA purposes. Josh Milburn (talk) 08:26, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, J Milburn. @Jenhawk777: Conversion is one of my specialisms, so I'm very interested in this; however, I'm pretty busy and probably wouldn't be able to make any serious contributions until at least October (and even then I can't promise anything). To point you in the right direction (and having only briefly scanned the article): David Kling's A History of Christian Conversion I'd say is required reading for a project like this; his 'Conversion to Christianity' chapter in the Oxford handbook is also a good starting point. I'd say Lewis Rambo's Understanding Religious Conversion and Henri Gooren's Religious Conversion and Disaffiliation are important theoretical resources too. Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies (eds. Lamb & Bryant) has some helpful material too. Then there's Bruce Hindmarsh's The Evangelical Conversion Narrative with details on early modern evangelical conversion. As far as I can recall, Allan Heaton Anderson's Introduction to Pentecostalism can be useful too, with some material relevant to conversion - I might be wrong though. Depending on my other priorities, I may cast my eye over this in a few months and see where you've got to - but hopefully these sources will be useful for you. Conversion to Christianity is an enormous topic, so good luck to you. Thankfully, there is a lot of high quality scholarship available - one of the difficulties will be prioritising and condensing this into a manageable article. I'd also echo J Milburn's recommendation to take this to GAN before FAC. WJ94 (talk) 09:25, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Josh. I would also echo the thoughts of others that taking it the article to GAN is definitely the first step here. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:28, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

OMG! Thank you to Josh of course, WJ94, Midnightblueowl, all of you, this is incredibly helpful. I will copy paste this into my sandbox - with your permission - so that I don't forget or miss any of it. WP can be the most wonderful place can't it? Because of people like you. Thank you, for showing up, for caring about helping others, for being constructive and practical. Did anyone look at the former version? I tried to keep what I could but there just wasn't much, and I was unsure about throwing away someone else's work, but now I have help and that is too valuable for words. It almost makes me weep with gratitude. I will do all of this. I promise. I understand about RL. What's already here will take me a minute anyway... Thank you all again. GAN it is, revisions beginning. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:52, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Is it okay with you if I copy this into my sandbox? I want to use every one of these sources and I'm concerned I might lose this otherwise. It will take me a while, and Josh probably has an archive function that may work faster than I do. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, by all means - I'm glad you found this helpful! WJ94 (talk) 20:00, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

WJ94 I did. I do. How could anyone not? Truly, these are great suggestions, and I have no doubt that implementing them will improve the article - the great goal at the end of the quest after all! I have started checking these sources already - which will no doubt lead to more! It's so exciting! (I am such a nerd...) Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:10, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Josh, I have two questions. I have gone and copied everything you tagged and moved it to my sandbox in order to check better sources and rewrite as needed. Should I delete or leave them until then? And two, what's a dab, and why do I need it? Is that three questions? On no that's a fourth! Four questions then! Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:13, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: Yes, feel free to copy my comments into a sandbox if useful! The sources currently used in the article aren't terrible, so I don't think there's harm in leaving them there while you look for others (and feel free to remove my {{unreliable source}} tags if you like -- they were for you). 'Dab' is short for 'disambiguation'; sorry for not writing in plain English, which is something I'm always telling others to do! You need to fix the 'Nazarene' wikilink I've tagged here, as it's currently pointing to a disambiguation ('dab') page, rather than an article about the specific group mentioned. Josh Milburn (talk) 20:45, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I have now dabbed. If I leave the sentences, I will leave the tags until fixed then. Thank you again. You rock. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:43, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: I still haven't read the article properly, but a quick thought occurs: the article now has a lot on the science of conversion (which is great) but it's perhaps light on 1) The history of conversion; and (relatedly) 2) Christian/theological/philosophical understandings of conversion. It strikes me that conversion stories are a big deal in the Bible itself (Saul/Paul being the obvious one) and conversion is very important to Christianity generally, as it's a proselytising religion (unlike plenty of others). So my guess is that we could do with something about conversion in the early church and then the spread of Christianity over the subsequent millennia (missionaries etc. -- the word missionary only appears once in the article, and it's in the title of a cited source) plus more on theological perspectives on conversion. But I'm here just guessing what I'd expect to see in the article, rather than recommending based on any deep knowledge of the relevant literature! It might be interesting to take a read of this enyclopedia article on conversion, which is recent, in-depth, focussed on Christianity, and written by a professor of religious studies. (By the way: Definitely citable as a reliable source. It's CC-licensed, but not sufficiently free for Wikipedia's purposes, sadly, so we can't copy-paste. Some people are of the view that encyclopedia articles should be cited sparingly as they are tertiary sources, but I don't necessarily share that view; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on which the St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology is based, is a fantastic source.) Josh Milburn (talk) 07:50, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Holy Toledo Batman! I can see immediately that you are, of course, absolutely right - and brilliant! Besides being almost exclusively cited to primary sources, the previous version of this article read like a Sunday school lesson, and I being not-so-brilliant as you, cut all of that out. But theology should be in there, of course it should - and history. There are actually four world religions that evangelize, including Buddhism, which surprises most people. (Thank the gods of WP that I am not doing that article!) This one is just going to get longer, and I was trying to do a short article for a change! Oh well! Such is life as the French say - (yeah, like the French would ever voluntarily say anything in English.) Anyway, thanx. I will add this and those good sources. It will be a couple of days before I can get back to this. I am behind on everything right now! Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:43, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Just to add my thoughts here too - I wonder if the article would be better titled Conversion in Christianity. As Kling & Hindmarsh both note, through the middle ages, conversio tended to denote joining a monastery and taking monastic vows. This is routinely discussed by scholars as conversion, but is not strictly conversion to Christianity. Likewise, a lot of our modern conception of conversion comes from the North American revivals of the 18th & 19th centuries - again, many of these were instances of conversion but from people who were already Christians. A decent number of the famous conversion stories within Christianity are of people who did not come to Christianity from outside - eg. Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Newman. Rambo would call this either intensification or institutional transition (or both; see 1993) - and again these types of experiences are routinely discussed as conversion. WJ94 (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

That's interesting, as it speaks to the two different framings of this article -- the 'Sunday School' version and the 'scientific perspectives' version. The former is 'this is what conversion is all about for us Christians'; the latter is 'here's the data about people who convert to Christianity'. I could actually see there being two different articles -- one theological, one more demographic -- but that complicates matters further, and I think (hope?) that there'd be a neat way to cover both elements in one article! (Other possibilities, which I mention just while they're in my head and not necessarily to endorse them, are 'Conversion (Christianity)' or 'Conversion and Christianity'.) Josh Milburn (talk) 08:01, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

WJ94 and Josh, oh my, what a difference one little preposition can make! For the first time amidst all these wonderful ideas, I am going to apply what brakes I may have. Changing that little word from 'to' to 'in' or even 'and' would be problematic imo, and I can't see how making things even more complicated would benefit us. "And" is rather undefined and a little murky. "In" would artificially limit the focus of the article and create conflict with the section on 'denominational switching' which already says Christian to Christian is not true conversion. This is apparently a more disputed definition than I realized. But Rambo's examples do not reflect what those men said about themselves.

The manner in which Luther and Wesley reported their own personal conversions took them from struggling with a kind of internal personal agnosticism to faith. In their view, they had been through an internal struggle with unbelief - in Luther's case, a long one - and that struggle produced a change - an internal experience of something they had not previously had. That's not my interpretation, it's theirs. I think the others mentioned are the same.

The idea they convey, in their own writings, is that one can participate in the external forms of Christianity and still not have experienced 'true conversion'. It's foundational to Reformation theology: going to church doesn't make you a Christian, only internal conversion does. This is where the whole 'saved by grace' thing comes from - the key that separated Protestantism from RC theology back then that they have now come around to as well. I don't believe any historian of any of these men would describe them as thinking of themselves as moving from one form of Christianity to another - even though, in a way, they did exactly that! More accurately, they moved from one form, then created another, based on a revision of what conversion meant. That's kind of important, isn't it? And it isn't in the article right now, so thank you for that!

On that basis, I can see how a combination of your ideas could take the form of a "Theology" section. I think that would be a good addition that could include the biblical examples as already mentioned, and could add some of these others. Perhaps that article, "Relationship of religious orientation (inward-outward) with depression, anxiety and stress" would be more appropriately included in such a section as well. This will not be an easy section - or a quick one - to write. But it should ne interesting!

I can also see that adding the Middle Ages/monastery to denominational switching would be a good thing and add weight to switching as being conversion - noting the disagreement. Perhaps that would mean 'switching' should be moved under the new theology section as a subsection.

At any rate, I totally agree that adding a history and a theology section would make the article better, but I do not vote for a change in title. I do not vote for two articles. You are free to disagree, and I am always open to listening, but I am hopeful we can agree on this. I have complete confidence that between us all, we can figure out how to fully cover this topic w/o it expanding to a mammoth size. Your response here has been truly amazing, and you've both had wonderful ideas. I am grateful for your input - all of it. Knowing what an article isn't is sometimes as important as knowing what it is, I think. So thank you again for everything. I like where we are headed! Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:46, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:50, 9 September 2023 (UTC)