Bekehrungsfrömmigkeit

What kind of practices, emotions and self-understandings are linked to conversion? Katharina Krause develops a theoretical framework that helps to understand processes of constructing, performing and maintaining conversionist identity. The model builds both on findings from exemplary constellations of Puritanism and Early Evangelicalism in seventeenth and eighteenth century New England and conversion research in the area of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. Krause offers a cultural-sociological perspective on conversionist piety that takes different carriers of meaning into account, such as texts, pictorial sources and material culture. Holistic in its approach, the model pictures conversionist piety as a social practice that builds up into pious cultures of body, emotion and meaning-making. It is intended as a starting point for further research on conversionist milieus in practical theology and religious studies and thereby hopes to contribute to the recovering of the practical theologian's interest in the varieties of protestant piety.
This work was awarded the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise 2019.