Finding Faith, Losing Faith

Finding Faith, Losing Faith
Scot McKnight & Hauna Ondrey
Baylor University Press
ISBN: 978-1602581623
Non-Fiction Religion
Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali

The substantive chapters of Finding Faith, Losing Faith each studies people who have converted. Chapter one is on those who converted away from the church to agnosticism or atheism; chapter two focuses on those who left the synagogue for the church; chapter three profiles those who moved away from the Catholic Church towards evangelicalism; chapter four describes those who departed from evangelism for the Catholic Church.

Most of us are aware that there are conversions of convenience and conversions of convection thankfully this book focuses on the latter. Considering the scope of the conversions studied, it is apparent that this study is too narrow to generalize on the process of conversions. Specifically, conversions within non-Western religions are not profiled, conversions to and from Islam are not considered. Furthermore, events that strengthen a believer’s faith and could be considered as conversions are not discussed. These events fit the generalized conversion model presented but are ignored. One such example of such a conversion is that some Muslims become “transformed” after performing the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), friends and family see them as becoming different people.

The book’s underlying assumptions are that all conversions follow the same process, and that they are all unique. At face value, these assumptions are difficult to accept, and perhaps more discussion on their validity would have been useful. A model of the conversion process is presented in chapter one, but this model focuses on converting either to or from Christianity. If one were to overlook the book’s narrow scope, the conversion stories are conveyed with empathy and rich detail. The anecdotes keep the converts real and the narration attempts to correlate with the framework presented in the first chapter.