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In this first in-depth and wide-ranging history of Christian conversion, David Kling examines the dynamic of turning to the Christian faith by individuals, families, and people groups. Global in reach and engaging recent methods and theories in conversion studies, the narrative progresses from early Christian beginnings in the Roman world to Christianity's expansion into Europe, the Americas, China, India, and Africa. Although conversion is often associated with a particular strand of modern Christianity (evangelical) and a particular type of experience (sudden, overwhelming), when examined over two millennia, it emerges as a phenomenon far more complex than any one-dimensional profile would suggest.
"Contributes as much to advancing contemporary social theory as it does to understanding conversion."--Dale Eickelman, Dartmouth College "These rich and rewarding essays problematize a process central to Western notions of the making of modernity--the reformation of peripheral worlds under the impact of global religions. [The authors] challenge established disciplinary boundaries, providing sensitive accounts of the interplay of world-transforming movements and accounts of specific cultures and histories. In doing so, they cause us to rethink the ethnocentric, developmentalist assumptions often built into the very notion of "conversion" itself as a concept in our own scholarly tradition."--Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago
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This book evaluates the common criticism that Christianity in Asia is westernized. Since the 1980s, Asian evangelical theologians and missiologists argue that the intrusion of Western theology is responsible for the Western and, hence, alien expressions of Christianity in Asia. Yet, in Singapore, the number of Christians has increased over the last few decades. Empirical evidence demonstrates that younger Chinese Singaporeans convert from Buddhism or Taoism to Christianity partly because they perceive it as a "rational" religion over Buddhism or Taoism, which are viewed as "irrational" or "superstitious." Not only do many converts favor Christianity as a rational religion, but they do not re...