ESCENARIOS Y SUPUESTOS PARA LA APLICACIÓN DE CASO

Kahn (2000) tested Rambo’s stage model with 110 adults using the Adult Religious Conversion Experiences Questionnaire adapted from Rambo’s sequential stage model. He evaluated whether Rambo’s theoretical framework fit conversion experiences, allowing for highly individualized sequences, variance in intensity and duration of stages, as well as types of conversion (e.g., joining or changing religious affiliation, increasing intensification in the same religion, or leaving a religious affiliation). Kahn found Crisis stage as

instrumental towards conversion, whether through intrinsic need (such as desires for coping, acceptance, explanations, and solutions) or extrinsic crisis (situational experiences). In his study, religious conversion was motivated through doubt and questioning, producing openness to uncertainty, change, and learning about other worldviews. The typical convert was an active seeker, questing on a journey towards religious conversion, shaped by social and religious influences. However, Rambo’s Quest dimension yielded ambiguous results in differentiating what the seeker was pursuing, whether more/new beliefs, emotional coping strategies, as a framework for meaning and living, emotional gratification, or personal power. Kahn clarified that seekers typically quested for solutions and not due to psychopathology. The Interaction phase of conversion was found to be an important, influential factor,

particularly in those religions engaging with new converts slowly and deliberately rather than rapidly or impulsively. Commitment phase was validated, with higher levels of total

commitment more prevalent in evangelical Protestants than other Christian and non-Christian religions. His research also substantiated Consequence stage of conversion, that religious conversion provides a sense of purpose and improved life functioning as well as strong elements of love, joy, freedom and new relationships with God, community, and self. Religious conversion also met a dysphoric need for those individuals who have experienced

longstanding relational difficulties or low self-esteem with the hope of acceptance and help from a new religion. Kahn's work confirmed the multi-dimensionality of conversion as including both substantive elements (intellectual doubt and questioning, questing for answers or new beliefs) and functional components (experiential, emotional, social, existential).

2.4.2. Gooren’s Conversion Career Model (2007, 2010)

Gooren (2007) reviewed conversion research to determine critical motivational factors contributing to religious conversion and concluded that conventional approaches were fragmented and deterministic rather than holistic and multidimensional.47 _{In his analysis,} researcher bias reduced religion to functional socioeconomic and psychological factors while ignoring the substantive content of belief – ‘what people believe and why it is important to them’ with few exceptions.48 _{Later, Gooren (2010b) confirmed the inadequacy of process} conversion models as fixed, limiting, and invalid because patterns of conversion are more complex and heterogeneous. Further, he advocated a renewed emphasis on religious experience, formerly neglected in social science conceptions of religious conversion. Based upon his review of the literature, Gooren advocated a synthesis of approaches to include: religious experience, radical change in worldview, rational cost-benefit analysis of adapting new beliefs, changes in identity and level of religious activity, the roles of problem-solving and seeking within the context of prior cultural and religious socialization, role learning and mastering in developing religious commitment, gender role, recruiting and shaping activities, methods, and behaviors, as well as indicators of conversion. His resultant Conversion Career approach includes ‘all periods of higher or lower participation in one or more religious groups during a person’s life history’. It differed from Richardson’s earlier sociologically-

47 _{GOOREN, H. 2007. Reassessing Conventional Approaches to Conversion: Toward a New Synthesis. Journal for the}

Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 337-353. Conventional conversion approaches were limited due to: (1) fragmented

conception of convert as either passive or active rather than a more holistic understanding; (2) confusion of religious activity with true conversion; (3) determinism that crisis precipitate conversion when control groups indicate otherwise; (4) universal conversion models have failed due to inability to apply to cross-cultural particulars, having been conceived with Christian, New Religious and/or Western biases; (5) disciplinary, age, gender, and social science biases reduced conversion to their respective ideologies.

48 _{Ibid. Gooren notes exceptions to this bias as found in the Rational Choice theoretical models found in the works of} Gartrell and Shannon, 1985 and Stark and Finke, 2000.

based conversion career model, allowing for multi-dimensionality and variation as the convert moves in and out of religious belief and levels of commitment.

Figure 02. Gooren’s Conversion Careers Model

Specifically, the Conversion Career model incorporates the main factors in conversion (contingency, individual, cultural, institutional, and social), indicators of actual conversion (changes in converts’ speech and reasoning, biographical reconstruction), and indicators of post-conversion commitment. Further, this model analyzes shifts in levels of individual religious activity through life cycles designated as pre-affiliation, affiliation, conversion, confession, and disaffiliation. During Pre-affiliation, the convert seeks to understand the worldview and social context of religious group members before rejoining a former, similar or different religious tradition as attended in childhood. At Affiliation, the convert becomes a formal member of a religious group, but participation is not considered a central aspect of life and identity. For Conversion, change of religious worldview and identity are based upon self-report and attribution by others. Confession reflects a high level of participation in the new religious group, and Disaffiliation designates former involvement in an organized religious group. As observed in his model, a convert may remain at any point along the spectrum from pre-affiliation to disaffiliation, may move from affiliation to deeper levels of conversion towards confession, or may move towards disaffiliation at any time.

Gooren (2010) maintains conversion is motivated primarily by dissatisfaction with a person’s current religious affiliation as manifested through various means: 1) Social: influence of relatives, friends, acquaintances, and/or religious group members; 2)

of different religious groups; recruitment methods and/or appear of religious leaders, doctrines, values, practices; 3) Cultural: appeal of culture politics on religious group; 4) Individual: personal need to become religiously involved, seek meaning and/or spirituality in a group, to change one’s life situation, and/or as drawn through personal character traits towards religion; and, 5) Contingency: acute crisis or turning point, religion-based solution to the crisis, and/or change meeting with representatives of a religious group. This synthesized model provides flexibility and diversity, appreciating multiple, dynamic variables in

conversion as well as change over time.