The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England

by D. Bruce Hindmarsh

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of ordinary women and men experienced evangelical conversion and turned to a certain form of spiritual autobiography to make sense of their lives. This book traces the rise and progress of conversion narrative as a unique form of spiritual autobiography in early modern England. After outlining the emergence of the genre in the seventeenth century and the revival of the form in the journals of the leaders of the Evangelical Revival, the central chapters of the book examine extensive archival sources to show the subtly different forms of narrative identity that appeared among Wesleyan Methodists, Moravians, Anglicans, Baptists, and others. Attentive to the unique voices of pastors and laypeople, women and men, Western and non-Western peoples, the book establishes the cultural conditions under which the genre proliferated.

Genres: History, Theology, Christianity, Christian

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Stephen Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in the orgin of "conversion" thinking in Christianity having been raised in that tradition. This book was a fascinating treatment of it, but probably only interesting to scholars and people like me trying to figure themselves out.

[Don Bryant]

One of the marks of Evangelicalism in conversionism. It was Jonathan Edwards to have steam to this impulse as he taught through his anthropology that people are able to enter into the kingdom of God apart from the more developmental use of the means of grace. He emphasized a radicalized conversion that brought people into a state of grace in a moment of time. Of course, this scandalized church people, many of whom could not give witness to an experience of conversion. They had grown up in the church, were baptized as covenant children, catechized, gave assent to the teachings of the church and were received into membership. This process was of conversion slow, emphasized morality and doctrinal assent and taught that one could not really know in this life with assurance that one was a child of God. And then comes Edwards. Things in the Western church changed forever. The question is whether or not this version of conversion is a template for the church. Christians need to self-consciously reflect on what conversion means and entails. This is what Bruce Hindmarsh means to do. It is a dense book. I am about a third of my way through. It promises to be a thorough study complete with rich footnotes.
I think the church needs to reconsider if its demand of a certain kind of salvation experience is fair, even for the allowances it does make in the model. Must we demand of the church goer who has grown up in the church a certain kind of conversion experience? Must we all have a Damascus Road experience? This is a fair question and needs an intelligent answer.