What Religion Should we Convert to? Leaving Christianity in the name of Christianity

Conversion is a central idea in Christianity, so what does it actually mean? This is a question that I’d love to write a book on some day, but in the mean time I’ll make occasional reflections here and in my other work.

Because the paradigmatic conversion story in the bible is that of Saul on the road to Damascus, we need to spend a little time dissecting it.

At the time of Saul, a small sect of Jews known as “Christians” were operating on the fringes of the religious structure. This sect was being persecuted by the religious authorities of the day who treated them as a problem that had to be eradicated.

In short, they were the scapegoat of the religious elite.

One important feature of scapegoating is the way in which the persecuted group is actually used to protect the persecutors from looking at their own issues. The internal problems of the dominant society are projected onto a group who are then blamed.

However, the scapegoat is not only the one who suffers at the hands of the powerful. They are also the holders of a secret knowledge. For they know what the wider society refuses to acknowledge. They know the unpleasant, repressed, violent truth of the system. Why? Because they experience that violent truth in their bodies.

For instance, young black women and men in America experience the racism that is denied by so many within the culture. They are judged, condemned and mistreated as if they are the problem, when the violence done to the black community really testifies to a violence within the system that attacks them.

As the site of truth, the scapegoat has the potential of being the place of genuine societal transformation. If we are able to listen to the outsider, who is downtrodden by our political, religious and cultural realities, we will be called to account, we will discover the disavowed violence within us and we will be lead to repentance.

In theological terms, the scapegoat is then the site of salvation, the very location of God.

When we read of Saul’s conversation we witness this realization. Something laid bare in the divine voice that says, “why do you persecute me?”

This leads Saul to repent and identify with the scapegoated community. An act that not only helps him, but also starts his quest for a community of equality (a collective of neither Jew nor gentile).

From here we can postulate the following idea concerning conversion. It is concerned with listening to the outsider who is downtrodden. Hearing their critique, drawing alongside them and allowing them to bring us to repentance.

Paul renounced his position of power and identified with the powerless.

In order to grasp the subversive meaning of conversion we should turn to the 2002 movie Amen directed by Costa-Gavras.

This movie explores the failure of the Catholic and Protestant church when confronted with the terror of the death camps during the Second World War. We are presented with two religious figures, a protestant youth pastor (Ulrich Tukur) and a catholic priest (Mathieu Kassovitz), who each attempt to inform their respective religious leaders of the genocide. In response, the churches struggle to retain their ignorance of the situation, wishing to retain their innocence by closing their eyes to the horror.

The response of the Priest is of particular interest: at one point he wonders aloud to the Cardinal (Michel Duchaussoy) whether it would be possible for every Christian in Germany to convert to Judaism in order to stop the horror, for the Nazis couldn’t possibly condemn such a huge number of powerful and socially integrated people at that stage in the war – the idea is of course utterly rejected. Then, in complete frustration, and with a crushing sense of obligation toward the persecuted, the Priest takes his own advice. In tears, he turns from that which he loves more than life itself – his own faith tradition – and radically identifies with his Jewish neighbors. By taking on the Jewish identity he suffers with the persecuted, voluntarily taking his place on the trains that run to Auschwitz.

In the same way that Saul radically identified with the persecuted group of his day, the Christians, so this Priest radically identified with the persecuted people of his day, the Jews.

The most powerful way for this Priest to affirm his Christianity was to lay it down – symbolised by the incongruous image in which he remains in his Cassock while wearing the Star of David. Here, in his very act of giving up Christianity, he reenacted the subversive act of conversion that lies at the heart of the Christian tradition.

The idea of arbitrarily converting to a different religion might seem absurd. But, if we reflect on the act of love for a moment, it might not seem so strange. A whole constellation of arbitrary conditions lie behind meeting the people we love, but, when we fall in love, it feels like a necessity has overcome us. We do not really think that we were destined to be together, but we feel that we are.

If we really love something, we embrace it fully and identify with it, all the while able to acknowledge that no deeper necessity underlies the commitment. The Priest’s own Christianity was an embrace of something utterly contingent (related to his upbringing, eduction, history etc.). Yet he embraced it as an ultimate concern, giving himself to it as if it was the truth. Just as a parent might embrace the contingent elements of their child’s face in such a way that they can claim it to be the most beautiful face in the world, so an individual might freely commit to the contingent religion they grew up with as the truth. This Priest was willing to reenact this logic of ultimate commitment without foundation because his heart wept over the injustice being done to his Jewish neighbor.

So the unnerving question we are left with is this – if we want to echo the spirit of Saul on the road to Damascus, what religion should we convert to?