Daniel Oh

VRE: Lecture IX—Conversion

“To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an

assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self
hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously
right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities” (189).

Already we can infer many of the things that James will touch on later. First, we see that an
inability to “convert” is a weakness. Using the above definition, if one is unable to be
converted, to gain an assurance, that same person will continue to be divided, consciously
wrong inferior and unhappy. Thus one who is converted is already in a state of being that has
resulted from some sort self-reconciliation.

Example of Stephen Bradley in order to show that conversion is much more complex than many
would suppose. The inner alterations of humans are so layered and complex that we can have no
premonitory knowledge of it (189). When we examine the case of Bradley we see that he gains
an assurance (of the presence and power of the HS) that presupposes a doubt or marginalizing of
the belief. Conversion in this case is the re-centering of Bradley’s center of personal energy upon
the belief that the promise of the HS has been fulfilled and is present in his heart (192).

The thing to be converted, therefore, is the internal aim that is most present, central and
engrossing that all other inferior aims must work around—the Christian understanding of
“heart.” Therefore, “Our ordinary alterations of character, as we pass from one of our aims to
another, are not commonly called transformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded
by another in the reverse direction; but whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitely
its precious rivals from the individual’s life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon as a
transformation” (194).

This transformation is what James means by conversion. The permanent change in the “habitual
center of personal energy” is precisely what conversion is. And because this center of personal
energy is tied to our emotional excitement, it will have such an effect that people can call it “life-
changing.”

“To say that a man is converted means that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his
consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aim forms the habitual center of his
energy” (196).

This language is extremely helpful for all influenced under Christendom. I see a good
parallel with what James calls conversion and the Christian notion of metanoia, repentance,
which literally means a turning of one’s direction towards a new aim. The language

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VRE: Lecture IX—Conversion

continues to be helpful when we think of the Greek word for sin, hamartia, meaning “to miss
the mark,” or for our purposes, “to have the wrong aim.”

I wonder what James would make of conversion experiences where the subject is converted
to a “religion” that was seemingly unrelated to him/her prior to the experience (say in the
case of Muslims seeing Jesus and redirecting their devotion to him)?

James is sure to point out that there is nothing necessarily mystical about conversion. Though we
cannot know how this shift happens or why it happens at a certain time, we do know that “In the
end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium” (197).

Drawing on Starbuck, James points out that this religious conversion is “in its essence a normal
adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child’s small universe to the wider
intellectual and spiritual life of maturity” (198-199).

Once again we can infer that if one is not ever “converted” in some form or way, that this
person is still adolescent, immature. This of course does not mean everyone needs to be
converted to a religion in our modern use of the term, for I know plenty of immature,
religious adults that need to be converted to believe that they are not the center of the world.

Because conversion is a centering of a peripheral thought, we see that the previous center affects
the nature of the conversion. In James’ comparison of Evangelical and Catholic churches he
shows that the emphasis on sin greatly affects the type of conversion that takes place. Not only
will the actual conversion be different, however, but the teaching will also affect the subject’s
understanding of the transformation. “Thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so
as to bring it to an exact conformity to the scheme already established in their minds” (199).

Whilst reading this lecture I found myself considering how I could use this information to my
advantage. But is to do so manipulative? Or are religious institutions being ignorant and
irresponsible with certain truths that God may have “revealed” through Psychology. I can see
no reason why educational institutions should not make use of this information, should it be
any different for religious transformation?

Drawing from Leuba, James then examines sporadic adult cases, in which conversion can be
seen as the relief of a crave. The example given is one of S.H. Hadley, a former drunkard in New
York. “He has done his part, and I have been trying to do mine” (202-203).

When considering the Bradley story and Hadley’s story, we get a sense of how James would
conceive of the divine. In Hadley’s story, we see that the religious experience begins and

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VRE: Lecture IX—Conversion

ends in the individual. We can tell from this attention to human subjectivity, then, that for
James, if there is a divine stimulus, that clearly the divine works from within the human and
within the human faculties. We can perhaps see James confessing to the “God in me” rather
than the “God above me.”

James then points out that some people can not be converted. These people would be considered
as lacking something, whether being incapable of imaging the invisible, life-long subjects of
barrenness, or some intellectual inaptitude for faith (204). “Their religious faculties may be
checked in their natural tendency to expand, by beliefs about the world that are inhibitive, the
pessimistic and materialistic beliefs…as it were, frozen or the agnostic vetoes upon faith as
something weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraid to use our
instincts. In many persons such inhibitions are never overcome. To the end of their days they
refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious center, and the latter remains
inactive in perpetuity” (203).

Religious people, as James understands, are open-minded people that can be converted to
new, more full truths when they appear. It is not hard to see then that people who are unable
to be converted to these new truths are inferior in James’ eyes. I would think that James
would not consider Fundamentalist Christians who only believe what they believe to be un-
convertible and ultimately not religious. Religious must mean an openness to the divine, that
which is greater than the persons current understanding. And what conversion brings with it
is a new orientation to life so that the individual may flourish.

Lastly, James draws the distinction between the two types of conversion: the volitional type and
the self-surrender type. The former is voluntary and conscious, whereas the latter is involuntary
and unconscious (though the former requires the latter at a certain point); James is more
concerned with the latter.

The key to conversion for James is this act of self surrender where we effectively give up all
control of trying to possess the belief, but allow then the belief to possess us. This is true because
both the “subconscious ripening of the one affection and exhaustion of the other, must have
simultaneously conspired, in order to produce the result” (212). The explanation lies in that so
long as we strive towards a new belief with entirely with our current habitual center of personal
energy, there can be no opportunity for the new belief to emerge as the new center.

James concludes by saying that “Psychology and religion are in perfect harmony up to this point,
since both admit that there are forces seemingly outside of the conscious individual that bring
redemption to his life” (212).

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