Conversion or Commitment? A Reassessment of the Snow and Machalek Approach to the Study of Conversion

Abstract

Snow and Machalek (1983; 1984) have pointed to the importance of language in understanding the conversion process. In particular, they have identified four characteristic of the accounts converts give about their conversion experience. After a brief review of these indicators, and of the Snow and Machalek approach more generally, we offer a critique and an alternative interpretation of the part played by language in the conversion process, and by the four indicators in particular. We substantiate our position both theoretically and empirically, with data gathered from a small sample of Christian evangelicals. We find, happily, that the four indicators characteristic of the Nichiren Shoshu believers studied by Snow and Machalek were to be found also among our Christians. However, only one of those four indicators, biographical reconstruction, was unique to the Christians who claimed a conversion experience, as such. The rest of the indicators were as common among lifelong Christians as among self-professed converts, indicating that they are probably indicators of religious commitment more generally, rather than of conversion per se. Of even greater theoretical significance, we believe, is our argument for understanding language and rhetorical devices as actively chosen tools and methods in converts' own efforts at self-transformation, rather than as indicators of what has already happened to them.