A CRITICAL REVIEW OF DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

In this text you'll see a review of different approaches to interdisciplinary research of religious conversion. In its first part you'll see the typologies, models and concepts in theoretical postulates of different disciplines which are researching this phenomenon; in its second part, the author analyzes a narrative approach as a key theoretical and methodological concept. The author believes that the search for a universal paradigm represents a reductionistic approach to conversion and to religion, since it is not in vacuum, but in a specific historical, social and religious context. This is the reason for the authors’ point of view that the narrative-social-constructionist approach is the most effective one, because it gives us a contextual understanding of the phenomena. In this narrative, conversion represents dynamic biographical reconstruction and/or re-narrative, new turn on his own life, where a convert in active narration reinterpretes previous events, as well as his own understanding of his experience. The author also looks at the relation between conversion and crisis (trauma); as well as ways that conversion can help to reach positive psychological state in times of crisis and in traumatic situations.