It seems that the religion one is born into is the same religion one dies with

[blaskoman]

I readily admit that I havent researched conversion statistics (ie, someone converting from Judaism to Islam, protestant to catholic, etc) but its my strong gut feeling that the vast majority of people do not throw away their religious beliefs and convert to another belief structure. Maybe its a function of ingrained cultural or family structures which strongly thwart any possible conversion. Just take believers in Islam for example. One rarely hears of many conversion stories from Muslim to christian! Am I wrong with this line of thinking?

 

[jmr_1985]

I readily admit that I havent researched conversion statistics (ie, someone converting from Judaism to Islam, protestant to catholic, etc) but its my strong gut feeling that the vast majority of people do not throw away their religious beliefs and convert to another belief structure. Maybe its a function of ingrained cultural or family structures which strongly thwart any possible conversion. Just take believers in Islam for example. One rarely hears of many conversion stories from Muslim to christian! Am I wrong with this line of thinking?

I think this was more true in the past than the present. For example, my relatives were early Methodists in America. Looking at my family tree, it’s pretty much ALL Methodists up until my father, who became Baptist later in life. Hopefully, I will soon become Catholic.

I think there is a major opportunity for Catholic evangelization in the United States, especially in the South. So many are confused and don’t really know anything about Christianity at all. People are hungry for the truth, and they aren’t stuck on staying in the particular Christian tradition in which they were born. A mega church popped up in my hometown in the South a few years ago. Today, 3% of the population of my midsize city attends there.

With Islam, it is more complicated. Islam teaches that Christ predicted the coming of Muhammad and that the early Christians purposely hid this fact. They see Christianity as an inferior religion. Thus, to convert is culturally difficult and in some areas of the world can mean a death sentence for the convert and his family.

 

[tonyrey]

Although most people don’t change their religion they don’t necessarily retain the same beliefs and values until they die. Many rarely think about them, others modify them in the light of experience and yet others become more eclectic.

 

[captainrick]

In my experience, most who convert (or baptized Christians who become Catholic) do so for a marriage’s sake. Hopefully they come to believe the teachings of the Church.

Others (like me) come to believe the teachings of the Church and then become Catholic because of that.

I’d be interested to know the percentages of the above two categories.

 

[HeadingBackHome]

Maybe it’s correct in general, but we do have cases like myself However that are former Lutheran that are set to convert at Easter Vigil. I think as someone has already mentioned that it was more rare before than it is now a days.
If you’re thinking of muslims becoming Catholics I agree with you that it’s rather abnormal, but changing demonisations inside a religion is quite more usual I think.

• Yours in Christ
  HeadingBackHome

 

[judynurse]

You must also factor in that, especially in the case of Muslims, even in Europe or the US, to convert to Christianity causes them to be cast out of their families entirely. In the Middle East, it is not just being cast out by family, it is a LAW of many of those countries that the convert (and his wife and children, usually) will be executed. For a woman to convert from Islam, in the Middle East, would mean losing her family, and likely her marriage (if married), having her children taken away and then being executed. Even a woman in the US who converts from Islam to Christianity would be cast out from her family, most likely, and the same for a man. Muslim countries, for the most part, have laws which prohibit anyone from evangelizing or converting anyone from Islam. Even the Christians in those countries, whose ancestors were also Christian, are keeping their heads down a LOT. They are often the target of Muslim groups, have their churches bombed or burned. Islam is not tolerant of other faiths at all. For others, in the US or Europe, raised in different denominations of Christian faith, it is still sometimes difficult and places a strain on family relationships. For an Orthodox Jew to convert to Christianity, results in the family declaring them “dead” and saying the “Kaddish” or “Prayer for the Dead” for that person, and considering them deceased from then on. Modern education is easing the way for many to convert from the “birth” religions of their families, but it doesn’t completely stop the pain and dislocation caused by those relationships being torn apart by conversion to another Faith tradition.

 

[rossum]

I readily admit that I havent researched conversion statistics (ie, someone converting from Judaism to Islam, protestant to catholic, etc) but its my strong gut feeling that the vast majority of people do not throw away their religious beliefs and convert to another belief structure. Maybe its a function of ingrained cultural or family structures which strongly thwart any possible conversion. Just take believers in Islam for example. One rarely hears of many conversion stories from Muslim to christian! Am I wrong with this line of thinking?

IIRC something like 75-80% of people stay in the religion of their parents.

rossum

 

[tonyrey]

Maybe it’s correct in general, but we do have cases like myself However that are former Lutheran that are set to convert at Easter Vigil. I think as someone has already mentioned that it was more rare before than it is now a days.
If you’re thinking of muslims becoming Catholics I agree with you that it’s rather abnormal, but changing demonisations inside a religion is quite more usual I think.

• Yours in Christ
  HeadingBackHome

I don’t think those who change denominations would enjoy being demonised.

 

[wcknight]

My parents were atheist or barely Buddhist, I became Catholic. I know several folks whose parents were similar to mine but they became baptists as kids and young adults but later became Catholic.

 

[livingwordunity]

I readily admit that I havent researched conversion statistics (ie, someone converting from Judaism to Islam, protestant to catholic, etc) but its my strong gut feeling that the vast majority of people do not throw away their religious beliefs and convert to another belief structure. Maybe its a function of ingrained cultural or family structures which strongly thwart any possible conversion. Just take believers in Islam for example. One rarely hears of many conversion stories from Muslim to christian! Am I wrong with this line of thinking?

Islam rarely has converts out of it because** they could be killed for converting**. There are news stories about this every so often. But it only makes the news when they bother to try them in a Muslim court. There’s little to no chance we would hear about it over here in the West when someone simply gets murdered for leaving Islam. In other religions, such as Christianity, there is a lot of movement either in or out of it. I was raised by an agnostic mother who was raised in Protestantism, but I will die a Catholic. Your choice of Islam as an example is puzzling.