The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

This was sparked by recent chatter in the Beginner's forum.

I've gotten the impression that beginner's are very keen on finding the correct pagan religion to convert to. And it does feel like convert to me. Like they're looking for a fully incorporated institution to sign a member log with and get inducted into the mysteries. Trying to find the one perfect group to join.

I thought this was the age of individualism, where everyone went his or her own way. But every other beginner is like "what path should I follow? what path am I already on?" It seems to me that creating a religion that perfectly fits their needs doesn't come up as an idea.

Is this a phase that beginner's go through? Why is there a need to convert to an already existing religion?

Is this a phase that beginner's go through? Why is there a need to convert to an already existing religion?

 
As Randall said, living in a Christian-centric culture (if not being actually Christian themselves) it's a pretty common attitude. Nor do I think it's a particularly faulty approach; not only is a beginner ill-equipped to design a functional system that meets their needs (which they often are not able to clearly state, because beginner) that goes beyond the surface, why re-invent the wheel if there's something out there that'll work for them?

Making one's own religion is neither more virtuous, more pious, nor more imperative than joining a pre-existing group, whatever the current Pagan Trend might have to say about it.

I thought this was the age of individualism, where everyone went his or her own way. But every other beginner is like "what path should I follow? what path am I already on?" It seems to me that creating a religion that perfectly fits their needs doesn't come up as an idea.

Is this a phase that beginner's go through? Why is there a need to convert to an already existing religion?

 
As others have said, part of this is that it's the model many people are most familiar with, as far as how religion works (and while the conversion process works differently in different religions or branches of religion, there are also conversion processes for Judaism, for Islam, and many others.)

But the other part of it - besides the part that Naomi just excellently addresses - is that it also depends on what people want. If you have a call by a specific God, you may or may not strongly feel that you want to find other people like you.

But if part of what draws you to religion is the sense of community, the sense of support, or collaboration, or rituals that take more than one person to make, or quite a few other things - well, you need other people. Which means people in that situation are going to want to go look for other people.

That's not the only way to do religion  (hermits and mystics and people with deeply internal religious experiences exist in some form in most religions) - but again, it's one a lot of people are familiar with. And that has a lot going for it.

The one I wish would trip fewer people up is looking for people of like-belief rather than like-practice, or being stuck on things that may be hard to come by for a group of others in a given place (depending on your population density) but both of those are also totally understandable, given the context for religion a lot of people start with.

Also "I have no experience but I am going to make up my own religion from scratch" sounds terrifying.

 
Not to mention that it invites all those lovely individuals who are waiting in the wings to recruit for their cult of personality. People want to not only belong, to have some commonality with one another, but also on a deeper level they like having the security there of having others of similar beliefs to be around and call bullshit when someone starts being just a wee bit too esoteric and high on themselves. That's what my experience has shown anyways.

I really agree with this right here. I'm just trying to understand where I'm feeling most comfortable, and the idea of creating it all on my own IS terrifying. I agree with conversion, but I guess my idea of it is not exactly the standard idea.

You might find that idea is more standard than you think, at least in academic terms. There are conversion models that involve it being a process. It's not usually considered a 'moment', at least not in sociology, which understands that it's a complex thing, and has lots of different theories about it. Christian theology may present it as a moment when God changes you, but even when people present that story, there has usually been a background that's much more complex that that.

The interesting thing about conversion, to me, is the stories we tell about it. Some people want it to be a 'moment' - usually when the religion they're converting to demands instant change, as evangelical Christianity (recently) does - so they tell stories of a moment, even if they actually went through a long process of being evangelised, going to church for a while, etc. Other people talk about a long process, which is usually closer to the reality, but they emphasise certain things that probably weren't so important at the time. This is called 'biographical reconstruction' by some sociologists - a social construction of the conversion/religious narrative. People tend to shape their stories into one of conversion. They might take events in which they encountered, say, Sikhs, before they were Sikh, and turn small meetings into major events in their story. Even ex-converts do it - many former members of 'cults' say they've been brainwashed when that doesn't fit the facts, for example. This is an important aspect of a process model of conversion. These stories aren't fully formed at the conversion point, though - they keep shifting as people change and develop spiritually/religiously in their new religious/spiritual context. Many Pagans seem to take this social construction of narrative to an extreme of 'I was always Pagan'. I do it myself to some degree, and I really should stop, given that I know exactly I'm doing. I want to study this phenomenon one of these days, because it's a little unusual in religious terms. Not unknown, though. Snow and Machelek say that some new adherents to religions or spiritualities "come to hold old but not particularly salient ideas with a new intensity and clarity of vision", where peripheral ideas start to move into the centre of one's consciosuness and narrative. In some religions, people are *told* to construct their religious narratives in this way (see Snow & Machelek article, ref below). In others, that idea is communicated subtly, through exposure to the life narratives of others. That's what seems to be happening when people create a narrative involving having been Pagan since the age of 3. In my (obviously often very flawed) opinion.

Some resources on conversion:
- Snow and Machalek's essay is a little dated, but interesting. More from them on the process of retconning one's religious/spiritual narrative: "Feelings, behaviors, and events formerly interpreted with reference to a number of causal schemes are now interpreted from the standpoint of one pervasive schema. Moreover, matters that were previously inexplicable or ambiguous are now clearly under*stood." (p.173).
- The book 'Understanding Religious Conversion' by Lewis Rambo (1993) is good, but again things have changed a bit since the models of the 1990s. It's a good starting-point though.
- Strauss is interesting on the way that conversion relates to communities, and he summarises a lot of the current research.
- Nock's classic 'Conversion' (1933) is a historical work focused on early Christianity and other religions of this period, but it develops some interesting models - he was at the beginning of the shift away from seeing conversion as a single change, instead beginning to consider it a process.
- Lewis Rambo's review of current research in various fields is interesting.

Sophia

You might find that idea is more standard than you think, at least in academic terms. There are conversion models that involve it being a process. It's not usually considered a 'moment', at least not in sociology, which understands that it's a complex thing, and has lots of different theories about it. Christian theology may present it as a moment when God changes you, but even when people present that story, there has usually been a background that's much more complex that that.

The interesting thing about conversion, to me, is the stories we tell about it. Some people want it to be a 'moment' - usually when the religion they're converting to demands instant change, as evangelical Christianity (recently) does - so they tell stories of a moment, even if they actually went through a long process of being evangelised, going to church for a while, etc. Other people talk about a long process, which is usually closer to the reality, but they emphasise certain things that probably weren't so important at the time. This is called 'biographical reconstruction' by some sociologists - a social construction of the conversion/religious narrative. People tend to shape their stories into one of conversion. They might take events in which they encountered, say, Sikhs, before they were Sikh, and turn small meetings into major events in their story. Even ex-converts do it - many former members of 'cults' say they've been brainwashed when that doesn't fit the facts, for example. This is an important aspect of a process model of conversion. These stories aren't fully formed at the conversion point, though - they keep shifting as people change and develop spiritually/religiously in their new religious/spiritual context. Many Pagans seem to take this social construction of narrative to an extreme of 'I was always Pagan'. I do it myself to some degree, and I really should stop, given that I know exactly I'm doing. I want to study this phenomenon one of these days, because it's a little unusual in religious terms. Not unknown, though. Snow and Machelek say that some new adherents to religions or spiritualities "come to hold old but not particularly salient ideas with a new intensity and clarity of vision", where peripheral ideas start to move into the centre of one's consciosuness and narrative. In some religions, people are *told* to construct their religious narratives in this way (see Snow & Machelek article, ref below). In others, that idea is communicated subtly, through exposure to the life narratives of others. That's what seems to be happening when people create a narrative involving having been Pagan since the age of 3. In my (obviously often very flawed) opinion.

Some resources on conversion:
- Snow and Machalek's essay is a little dated, but interesting. More from them on the process of retconning one's religious/spiritual narrative: "Feelings, behaviors, and events formerly interpreted with reference to a number of causal schemes are now interpreted from the standpoint of one pervasive schema. Moreover, matters that were previously inexplicable or ambiguous are now clearly under*stood." (p.173).
- The book 'Understanding Religious Conversion' by Lewis Rambo (1993) is good, but again things have changed a bit since the models of the 1990s. It's a good starting-point though.
- Strauss is interesting on the way that conversion relates to communities, and he summarises a lot of the current research.
- Nock's classic 'Conversion' (1933) is a historical work focused on early Christianity and other religions of this period, but it develops some interesting models - he was at the beginning of the shift away from seeing conversion as a single change, instead beginning to consider it a process.
- Lewis Rambo's review of current research in various fields is interesting.

Sophia

 
Wow. That's pretty eye-opening, and extremely interesting! I definitely have more to read into now ^^. Thanks for all of this!

The interesting thing about conversion, to me, is the stories we tell about it. Some people want it to be a 'moment' - usually when the religion they're converting to demands instant change, as evangelical Christianity (recently) does - so they tell stories of a moment, even if they actually went through a long process of being evangelised, going to church for a while, etc. Other people talk about a long process, which is usually closer to the reality, but they emphasise certain things that probably weren't so important at the time.

 
When I was in a state to be telling conversion stories, I talked a lot in terms that compared my experiences to falling in love, complete with the obsessive "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY THING" parts that are the thing that drive everyone else in the universe totally batshit about people who are falling in love.