TY - JOUR AU - Stadlbauer, Susanne PY - 2019/06/19 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Between Secrecy and Transparency: Conversions to Protestantism Among Iranian Refugees in Germany JF - Entangled Religions JA - ER VL - 8 IS - SE - Articles DO - 10.13154/er.8.2019.8322 UR - https://er.ceres.rub.de/index.php/ER/article/view/8322 SP - AB - <p>Present-day scholarship on religious conversions diverts from classic Protestant&nbsp;paradigms of sudden conversions and instant transformations of the self. Instead, it&nbsp;stresses that converts make active choices that are influenced by specific contexts and&nbsp;historical changes. This becomes evident in an ethnographic study of one controversial&nbsp;aspect of the recent refugee influx in Germany: the so-called mass conversions of Iranian&nbsp;refugees from Shia Islam to Christianity, which have been highly publicized and criticized&nbsp;since the height of immigration in 2015. The analysis draws on interview data with Iranian&nbsp;refugee converts and their pastors in Protestant churches in North Rhine-Westphalia&nbsp;between October 2017 and January 2018. The study reveals the need to theorize the symbiotic&nbsp;connection between religious contacts, forced migration, and conversion to Christianity.&nbsp;It applies Rambo’s (1993) stage model of conversion and the analytical concept&nbsp;of secrecy (Jones 2014, Manderson et al. 2015, Simmel 1906) to demonstrate that the&nbsp;Iranian refugees’ conversions are shaped by contexts, crises, encounters, quests, interactions,&nbsp;commitments, and consequences (Rambo 1993) as they negotiate the forces of secrecy, risk,&nbsp;transparency, and the benefits of being a Christian. The goal of this paper is to find thematic&nbsp;patterns in their narratives that can be systematized and can build a foundation for&nbsp;further study.</p> ER -