Toward a Symposium on Conversion

Abstract The editor of Common Knowledge calls for papers on conversion — religious conversion, its ironies, inconsistencies, and even its logical possibility, as well as more or less sudden radical changes in worldview or philosophical orientation. Case studies on the distinction between conversion and what A. D. Nock calls adhesion are invited; likewise essays on the process that David Brown in a recent book calls “learning from other religions” — learning from, rather than converting to. The editor says he assumes that the likeliest criticism of this call for papers will be regarding its encouraging syncretism or too much “imaginative openness,” which, according to a reviewer of Brown's book, can become “an exercise in cherry-picking” that extracts “doctrines and practices from their traditional frameworks.” The journal therefore invites proposals for essays supporting, as well as papers rejecting, syncretism, “imaginative openness,” and cherry-picking.