About the Book
Finding Faith, Losing Faith
Stories of Conversion and Apostasy
Scot McKnight
Hauna Ondrey
ISBN: 1-60258-162-2 / 978-1-60258-162-3
Price: $19.95
Discount: Trade
Publication Date: 2008
Specs: Paper Back / 255 pages / Notes / Works Cited / Index
This book examines conversion stories as told by people who have actually undergone a conversion experience, including experiences of apostasy. The stories reveal that there is not just one "conversion story." Scot McKnight and Hauna Ondrey show that "conversion theory" helps explain why some people walk away from one religion, often to another, very different religion. The book confirms the usefulness-particularly for pastors, rabbis, and priests, and university and college teachers-of applying conversion theory to specific groups. However, the book's sensitive detailing of the stories themselves makes conversion more than a theoretical occurrence; it makes the immediacy, and often the difficulty, of conversion both real and moving.
Available July 2008
Reviews:
"This book is not an abstract sociology of conversion. It tells stories of conversion with empathy, and with a richness of detail and anecdote that keeps these converts real. But McKnight and Ondrey don't just narrate. They are at their best when they show how each type of conversion (Christian to non-Christian, Jew to Christian, Catholic to evangelical, evangelical to Catholic) has its own characteristic crises and its own distinctive sub-plots."
-Bruce Hindmarsh, James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology, Regent College
"To have apostasy, Messianic Jews, and the journeys of Catholics to Protestantism, and Protestants to Catholicism is striking and provocative, stirring deep reflection on the faith journeys of courageous people who leave the faith of their families to become a part of a tradition that may be held in suspicion or even contempt by their previous communities of faith. It is also a major accomplishment for McKnight and Ondrey to include so many stories and hence resources in this rather brief book."
-Lewis Rambo, Benton and Faye French Tully Professor of Pastoral Psychology, San Francisco Theological Seminary
"McKnight and Ondrey have produced a fascinating read. The stories they tell are both interesting and informative, exploring the conversion "traffic" in several directions. In the midst of these narratives they also attempt to find some common paradigms that make sense of the diverse landscape that characterizes religious life and experience in the North American setting."
-John R. Franke, Professor of Theology, Biblical Seminary
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