Conversion Narrative Analysis

Conversion narrative analysis is a qualitative method for studying how people tell the story of becoming religious, changing faith, or intensifying commitment. Its leading framework is Lewis Rambo's Understanding Religious Conversion (1993), which treats conversion not as a single sudden event but as a process unfolding through interacting stages - context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences - shaped by personal, cultural, social, and religious forces. The method collects first-person accounts (interviews, testimonies, autobiographies), segments them into narrative units, codes them for stages, turning points, and rhetorical patterns, and interprets how converts retrospectively reconstruct their biography to make sense of the change. It is used across the psychology, sociology, and history of religion to analyze both the social process of conversion and the storytelling through which converts present a transformed self.