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conversion

Select a Category biography Conversion Stories Deconversion Stories Historical Religious Figures Psychology Uncategorized

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September 2024

September 13, 2024

Consequences of Ideas: Philosophy and Deconversion

Introduction The purpose of this article is to examine the 2000 book The Consequences of...

December 2023

December 06, 2023

Has Belief in God Undergone a Renaissance? Reviewing the Thesis of Justin Brierley

The book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God by Justin Brierley is hot off...

September 2023

September 18, 2023

Crossing Over: A Case Study in Converting Between Religions

Cross-Conversion Conversion studies began in the 19th century in a very religious culture. As a...

September 11, 2023

Vander Elst: The British Atheist Who Converted Because of the Problem of Evil

Philip Vander Elst is a freelance writer and lecturer who works primarily in the fields...

September 04, 2023

Interview With a Reconvert

The Importance of Reconversion As under-studied as deconversion is, the matter of re-conversion is practically...

August 2023

August 14, 2023

When Atheists Convert: The Renaissance Scholar Becomes a Christian Scholar

John Warwick Montgomery is a renaissance scholar and a true renaissance man; having made a...

July 2023

July 24, 2023

The Science Behind Religious Conversion

The Nature of Research When William James formed his model of religious conversion in 1902,...

July 17, 2023

Conversion, Deconversion, and Radical Personality Change

"William James (1901) in his famous study, Varieties of Religious Experiences, understood conversion to be a...

June 2023

June 19, 2023

How the Rise of the Internet has Altered the Religious Landscape

"Tinkering" In his 2018 study on internet and religion, researcher Paul McClure coined the word...

May 2023

May 29, 2023

Deconversion and the Emergent Church

The Dawn of Deconversion Research and the Emergent Church Despite the comparative lack of research...

April 2023

April 03, 2023

Philosophy and Deconversion Research

Readers of this column will be aware that I am a researcher specializing on the...

March 2023

March 27, 2023

The Religious and Atheist Experience in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“’Imagine what it's like. A person smiles at you—you're confused because you don't understand a...

March 20, 2023

Psychology and Religious Deconversion: What we Know so far

The Beginning of High Profile Deconversion In modern times, the first high-profile Christians to make...

March 13, 2023

Lone Christians: People who Exit the Church but not the Faith

Today, nearly half of America is unchurched. But even though more and more Americans are abandoning...

February 2023

February 16, 2023

The Asbury Revival and Religious Intensification Phenomenon

On February 8th, of 2023, a group of students at Asbury University, a private Christian...

February 13, 2023

“Stages of Faith,” What can 50-Year-Old Research Tell Us About Conversion and Deconversion?

Stages of Faith is a 1981 book by psychologist James Fowler wherein he lays out...

January 2023

January 23, 2023

The Boy Preacher who Became an Adult Atheist Advocate: Anthony Pinn

As a column that discusses the process of religious conversion and deconversion, this space will...

January 16, 2023

What the Book “How Minds Change” Tells us About Deconversion

How Minds Change is a book by David McRaney in which the author, a science...

January 09, 2023

Deconversion and “Cuss-Words”

Thirty or forty years ago, investigating the phenomenon of religious deconversion would have been a...

December 2022

December 19, 2022

Magnets, the Human Brain, and God

The Brain Damage You have no doubt heard it said that we still have much...

December 12, 2022

Deconversion and “Selective Perception”

In 2019, researchers Perez and Vallieres conducted an in-depth study on the subject of deconversion....

December 02, 2022

Study: Could Religious People Be More Complex Thinkers Than Irreligious People

Testing Thought Complexity It's a fairly common trope: religious people are knuckle-dragging uneducated troglodytes more...

November 2022

November 29, 2022

Cameron Bertuzzi and Interfaith Conversion

Cameron Bertuzzi is an influential speaker and media producer in the popular field of Christian...

October 2022

October 24, 2022

Testify! The Religious Testimony Versus the Deconversion Story

CONVERSION NARRATIVES Starbuck (1866-1947) and James (1902) were pioneers in the field of Conversion studies....

October 17, 2022

Comparison Between Religious Conversion and Deconversion

It has long been argued in religious conversion studies whether there is a significant difference...

October 10, 2022

The Deconversion Crisis

In his book The Variety of Religious Experiences, William James writes about multiple accounts of...

September 2022

September 26, 2022

Five Things that Motivate Deconversion

Imagine eating a bag of salty chips. Before you begin to munch on the chips,...

September 12, 2022

The Little Cult that Could, Part 2: The Rise and Fall of a Cult

The Divine Precept was a cult which had begun in Korea, attracting thousands of members....

September 08, 2022

The Little Cult that Could Part 1: how one religious movement taught us all about conversion

The Conversion of Yoon-Sook Lee Miss Yoon-Sook Lee had a problem. It started as chronic...

September 05, 2022

The Science of Religious Conversion – A Brief History

Pre-Scientific Views on Conversion People have been practicing religion since the dawn of human history,...