In this chapter, I use the conversional-career paradigm of Henri Gooren to analyze twelve Turkish converts from varying commitment to Islam to the culturally stigmatized religion of Protestant Christianity. The findings suggest that the subjects converted due to an array of interdependent factors, most of which were categorizable under the given headings—social, institutional, individual, contingency, and cultural/political—but some of which were not. Religious conversion involves complexity and mystery that can, at times, frustrate analysis and confuse the converts themselves. Nevertheless, on the whole, the findings confirm the pivotal influence of religious freedom in Turkey, since 1961, and the fruitfulness of the core missional activities of the Protestant missionaries in securing the conversions. Moreover, the analysis suggests, while the existence of the converts substantiates, that Turkish citizens need not conform predominantly to either a Turkish-secular or Turkish-Islamic synthesis, but they are free enough to conform instead to a Turkish-Protestant synthesis—or, depending on the course of their conversion careers, to another freedom-inspired politico-(a)religious synthesis.

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Conversion and the Spreading of the Turkish Protestant Movement

  • James Bultema

摘要

In this chapter, I use the conversional-career paradigm of Henri Gooren to analyze twelve Turkish converts from varying commitment to Islam to the culturally stigmatized religion of Protestant Christianity. The findings suggest that the subjects converted due to an array of interdependent factors, most of which were categorizable under the given headings—social, institutional, individual, contingency, and cultural/political—but some of which were not. Religious conversion involves complexity and mystery that can, at times, frustrate analysis and confuse the converts themselves. Nevertheless, on the whole, the findings confirm the pivotal influence of religious freedom in Turkey, since 1961, and the fruitfulness of the core missional activities of the Protestant missionaries in securing the conversions. Moreover, the analysis suggests, while the existence of the converts substantiates, that Turkish citizens need not conform predominantly to either a Turkish-secular or Turkish-Islamic synthesis, but they are free enough to conform instead to a Turkish-Protestant synthesis—or, depending on the course of their conversion careers, to another freedom-inspired politico-(a)religious synthesis.