One of the more troubling claims in the book I'm reading, Acts of Faith by Stark and Finke is the proposition that conversions and reaffiliations to a religion do not happen due to doctrinal motivations. Rather, conversion almost always happens due to a person alligning himself with his social capital (which consists of one's interpersonal attachments). Under normal circumstances, people do not convert or reaffiliate. But, to the extent that people have or develop stronger attachments to those committed to a religion in a different tradition, they will convert.
People also accumulate what the authors' term, "religious capital," and likewise are, in all their religious choices, attempting to conserve as much of it as they can. Religious capital consists of the "degree of mastery of and attachment to a particular religious culture." (p. 120). The greater that religious capital, the less likely people are either to reaffiliate or to convert. But when they do convert, they will tend to select an option that maximizes their conservation of religious capital. So, for instance, people raised in one Jewish Hasidic body are more apt to shift to another Hasidic group than to join a Conservative Synagogue, and more likely to join a Conservative than a Reform Synagogue, and are far more apt to become Reform Jews than Unitarians. This is why, they claim, that when people marry, most marry within their religious group. And, when mixed marriages do occur, they are more likely to the degree that one or both spouses lack any religious capital.
Secondly, as a result of this rational choice theory of religious participation, the authors rule out mass conversion as an empirical reality. Mass conversion does not occur. Even when mass conversion appears to occur, it is always conversion along social networks, and not the conversion of isolated individuals. Conversion is always moving along social networks - it always involves people realigning themselves with their social capital. For instance,
"Even today, when there are more than ten million Mormons worldwide, networks are the basis of conversion, as revealed in records kept by a Mormon mission president in 1981-1982. When Mormon missionaries make cold calls, when they knock on the doors of strangers, this leads to a conversion once out of a thousand calls - and never immediately, only after a long series of contacts as a friendship is established. However, when missionaries make their first contact with a person in the home of a Mormon friend or relative of that person, this results in conversion 50 percent of the time (Stark and Bainbridge, The Future of Religion, 1985). What is really going on in such instances is that the missionaries offer religious instruction to persons whose network ties already have inclined them to join. This pattern is not peculiar to Mormons; it is how all successful movements spread."
But, this is not to say, as they later stress, that doctrine is an irrelevant feature in religious participation. They write, "Keep in mind, too, that we do not suggest that doctrine is not important. ... doctrine matters a great deal when it comes to generating and sustaining commitment, and thus, among other things, in retaining converts and reaffiliates. Here we have argued only that doctrine usually plays a secondary role when people initially make their choices. Subsequently, doctrine often becomes a central aspect of commitment." (p. 137)
It's a fascinting book - one that I recommend especially to pastors, missionaries and church-planters. One of the things that I think is valuable - regardless of whether you buy this entire theory - is to note the immense important of relationships in bringing people into a new religion. If you are like me, you may have sometimes become somewhat hyper-calvinistic and overly-rationalistic in your attempts at telling people about Christ. I have tended to treat non-believers as though they were exactly like I was at that very moment - very open to the persuasiveness of various aspects of the Christian story, very interested in thinking about the implications, etc. Likewise, I have also found myself in numerous situations keeping myself at an emotional, relational distance from the person over the entire period of our aquantaince, yet talking to them abstractly about Christianity. But, when I think about my own conversion to Christianity, I think it was one of the least logical things I ever did. That is not to say that it was irrational, but I think that the process was very messy, extended, and convoluted, involving a myriad of conversations with my brother-in-law (a preacher) and sister, as well as reading, as well as developing meaningful relationships with other Christians. When I finally did convert - that is, when I finally did consciously take ownership of Christ and Christianity - it came at the end of a long, approximately eight month process. Even when in the end, the conversion was somewhat mystical in nature, involving an experience of God in a way that was altogether new and healing, it was still something which happened in the context of a complex interweaving of relationships with Christians.
This is an important insight, I think, because it is far too easy to either (a) downplay the importance of relationships in evangelism and missions, or (b) to stress out over needing to find the precise, perfect words to say when an opportunity does present itself. It may very well be that if conversions do tend to happen along social networks that the words one says in a moment are inconsequential compared to continuing to put yourself in the midst of the person, such that the relationship begins to form. That is not to say that one needs to become less evangelistic, but rather to note that it is an incomplete form of evangelism (possibly) if it is always attempting to tell other the gospel without actually having a meaningful relationship with them. It might very well be futile to a certain degree.
So, I opened this up by saying that this was one of the more troubling parts of the book. A lot of the book is like this - it is simultaneously fascinating, precisely because the theory is so intuitively apparent, but at the same time, does contradict some of my personal perceptions of how God tends to work. Being a roughly defined Calvinist with a slightly Puritan bend, I tend to believe that the Great Awakening revivals were real revivals. I have a high view of the centrality of the Word, and of the power of the gospel to change people's lives. I tend to divorce this, in practice, from the necessity of relationships with the people, but I tend to rationalize this by saying that it is all of God, and none of man, who works to bring people to saving faith in him. So, theoretically, it's not really necessary for me to have any kind of relationship with the person. If God saves, and this person ultimately plays no role in his own salvation, let alone myself in their salvation, then why is it necessary for me to do anything other than speak? After all, the Scriptures say that faith comes through the hearing of the Word.
So, I feel like that's a legitimate response. Theologically, why is it impossible for mass conversions to occur, or for individualistic conversions to occur for that matter? Paul's conversion happened without the benefit of any social networks to Christians - at least if we are to accept his story as truthful. He was persecuting Christians. So if conversion - or in his case, it might be reaffiliation - does happen as a way of conserving social capital, then how in the world do we explain his own conversion? It seemed to happen literally "out of the blue" - at the moment he saw the resurrected Christ. I have no real response to either of these. On the one hand, I do think God can do anything. Yet, maybe it's not too much of a stretch to say that God tends to work this way. It happens so much, in fact, that we can almost say that there is a definite pattern. Secondly, perhaps Paul's conversion was exceptional. His is not to be the paradigm, just as many things in those early days of Christianity do not exist to serve as a paradigm - Pentecost being another thing. Pentecost, like Paul's conversion, were perhaps special cases of conversion, and nowadays, the more general pattern is for people to convert along their social networks, maximizing their social and religious capital. After all, it seems to be the case that most of the early Christians were poor - and that Christianity has always had great success among the disenfranchised and the poor. They have very little social capital - they have only to gain. The conversion is far less costly to them than it would be to a rich young ruler who stands to lose everything - including his reputation - by converting. They have more baggage. Perhaps this is why Jesus tells us to store up our treasure in heaven, and not here on earth, because if we allow things in this world to be the variables that maximize our utility, then we are far more willing to sacrifice Christ for them. That is, we are far more willing to trade our consumption from sacred goods to secular ones.
Anyway, it's food for thought.
Posted by Admin at April 1, 2003 10:35 AM