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1. Stories of Deconversion
- NYU Press
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28 | 1 Stories of Deconversion I spent two hours on June 25, 2003 interviewing a man named Paul. He was in his late forties and a deacon at a rural Nazarene congregation. Paul was a conservative Evangelical, and there was nothing Emerging about him. I was doing fieldwork with three congregations, focusing on the circulation of moral discourses in local churches. Paul was an especially active member in several weekly prayer and study groups, so we arranged an interview about his experience with the church and cultural models of morality. I conducted fifteen interviews that summer, and always began by asking for a spiritual-religious life history. Paul’s response was more elaborate than most, but it was typical. In nineteen minutes he methodically explained—detailby -detail, memory-by-memory—the story of how he became a Christian. His chronology followed a six-part structure that organizes this narrative genre, no matter the length of any given performance. Paul explained his lifestyle prior to becoming a Christian, emphasizing his personal and existential struggles. Women and whiskey headlined his weaknesses. This was followed by the conditions surrounding his first encounter with the theological message that Jesus Christ is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” After this came a period of reflection on that encounter, during which he scrutinized this theology in any way he could muster. Then he recounted a second encounter with this Christocentric message, which triggered his conversion. He continued by describing the vast differences between his old and new self. As a coda, he summarized his understanding of Evangelical theology and all its self-transformative effects. Paul peppered his story with a common bornagain vocabulary: lost, sinner, flesh, convicted, death, life, saved, righteousness , blood, spirit, cross, gospel, light, Word, Good News, and Jesus, to name a few. In those nineteen minutes Paul told me his conversion narrative—the story of how he became Christian. Paul’s presentation of self is exceedingly common among American Evangelicals . One could easily argue that such stories are the typifying discursive act for this religious culture. I begin with Paul and the cultural fixity of this Stories of Deconversion | 29 narrative genre to establish a contrast. Emerging Evangelicals, unlike their conservative brethren, rely on a different kind of storytelling when presenting their sense of Christian self: a narrative of deconversion. Narrative and Christian Subjectivity The intersection among Evangelical language, performance, and identity is busy (Meigs 1995). Social scientists from various disciplines have insisted that narratives are not just ways of telling, but ways of being. They do not simply inform about one’s conception of self and experience, they are ways of enacting religious subjectivity. The ethnographic work of Susan Harding (1987) and Peter Stromberg (1993) are two widely cited examples of how the Evangelical conversion narrative can be culled for cultural insight. Harding examined how the born-again conversion is a process of acquiring a specific religious language, and how Evangelical speakers use the genre of witnessing to implicate their listeners in the narrated transformation. Stromberg examined how conversion narratives evoke preconversion emotional conflicts, and then reframe those conflicts in born-again language. Harding and Stromberg present religious subjects who seem to maintain unwavering faith. While their Evangelicals speak about experiencing doubt and questioning what responsibilities their faith demands, the narratives are marked by teleology, a straight line of change from rebellion to obedience. This is not the case when listening to Emerging Evangelicals. It is not that Emerging Evangelicals lack this traditionalized conversion narrative, it is that they choose to replace it with a different kind of narrative. Invariably, when asked to tell their Christian story Emerging Evangelicals posit a distance between their sense of self and the conservative Evangelical subculture. They explain various elements of Evangelicalism that they no longer accept, how their distastes became realized, and how the details of their current life respond to those perceived shortcomings. The narrative of self they prefer enacts the cultural critique that animates the movement at large. Their frustrations, and their attempts to resolve them, provide a logic and direction to their storytelling. In taking this narrative stance Emerging Evangelicals re-create a historically consistent crossroads: how does one respond when dissatisfied with religious faith? To help understand the Emerging Evangelical response, consider two historical studies. David Hempton’s Evangelical Disenchantment: Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt (2008) examines the religious lives of nine historically revered European and American artists and public intellectuals who lived (primar- [54.82.44.149] Project...