Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetics

by Rob Wilson

"Be always converting, and be always converted; turn us again, O Lord," Thomas Shepard urged his Cambridge congregation in the 1640s. This mandate coming down from American Puritan times to New Age seekers, to be "always converting, and always converted," places a radical burden on the self as site of renewal and world-change, even as conversion becomes surrounded by deconversion (rejection of prior beliefs) and counterconversion (turns to alternative...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674033434
• ISBN13: 9780674033436
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"