In lifelong religious socialization...

In lifelong religious socialization, the individual is brought up with a religion and never deviates from it. Conversion Processes Psychological efforts at explaining conversion have evolved from fairly simplistic accounts to more complex models (Paloutzian, Richardson, & Rambo, 1999; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 1998). Religious conversion used to be explained as something that happened to someone more or less against the person’s will.

In this view, conversion is due to either (a) a psychological need of which the person is unaware (such as a need for safety or security or to reduce guilt) - that is, the person is unconsciously driven to accept God and forgiveness, even though at the conscious level the person might be fighting it (Richardson, 1985, 1989); or (b) social pressures operating on the person that are so strong that the person cannot say no to the recruiting efforts of a religious group.

In other words, in the old model, whether due to unconscious or social pressures, the person was viewed as a passive responder to forces in the conversion process. More recently, individuals who become converted are perceived as active and religion-seeking rather than as being buffeted by forces beyond their control (Kilbourne & Richardson, 1984; Richardson, 1985, 1989). Whether traditional or nontraditional religious beliefs are adopted, they are viewed as more consciously chosen.

Individuals might have motives that lead them to seek out different kinds of religious teachings or groups to satisfy their different needs (Glock & Stark, 1965). For example, someone who is suffering from a physical or mental illness might be attracted to a religious healing group. Someone who perceives or personally suffers from ethical deprivation (such as differences between ideal values and actual performance) might gravitate toward social reform movements.

Someone suffering from a psychological deprivation or a lack of meaning in life might adopt a religion that teaches a new value system. More cognitively oriented explanations of conversion have also been offered. One such view links conversion with the mental processes involved in creative thinking, in which the person reorganizes information and sees it in a new way (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993).

Similarly, conversion has been described as a cognitive restructuring in which the individual’s portrayal of self and the world undergoes a major shift (Brown & Caetano, 1992).