Journal article
"Closer to God": Meanings of Reading in Recent Conversion Narratives within Christianity and Islam
Journal of religious & theological information, Vol.14(3-4), pp.63-78
10/02/2015
DOI: 10.1080/10477845.2015.1085784
Abstract
In this article, we explore three understandings of religious reading to illustrate the diversity of information use in religious contexts. "Informative" refers to information acquisition; "formative" concerns the learning of practical behaviors; while "transformative" points to spiritual growth, rich identity formation, and deep self-understanding. We provide instantiations of these notions among recent converts to various branches of Christianity and Islam and explore similarities between these traditions through analysis of published conversion narratives in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christianity and of select data gathered through interviews with Muslim converts in the Toronto area. Our discussion builds upon Buckland's notion of theological information and engages with Kari's understanding of informational uses of spiritual information. We assume a hermeneutic concept of reading, according to which religious texts propose models of humanity, which readers are invited to assess and possibly assimilate. Our research contributes to existing Information and Communication Studies scholarship on the normative or prescriptive aspects of religious reading practices, congregational belief formation, and knowledge production and control in the wake of new media.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- "Closer to God": Meanings of Reading in Recent Conversion Narratives within Christianity and Islam
- Creators
- Iulian Vamanu - University of Iowa, Iowa CityElysia Guzik - University of Toronto
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of religious & theological information, Vol.14(3-4), pp.63-78
- Publisher
- Routledge
- DOI
- 10.1080/10477845.2015.1085784
- ISSN
- 1047-7845
- eISSN
- 1528-6924
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/02/2015
- Academic Unit
- School of Library and Information Science; Center for Social Science Innovation
- Record Identifier
- 9984003197402771
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