The New Birth: A Naturalistic View of Religious Conversion

By Mary Ann Barnhart, Joe Edward Barnhart, Mary A. Barnhart

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865540098
• ISBN13: 9780865540095
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Mercer Univ Pr
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A thought-provoking examination of conversion...

We all know persons whose lives have undergone drastic metamorphoses - sometimes more than once. (Perhaps we ourselves have gone through the process!) Religious conversion, otherwise known as being "born again", is a fascinating phenomenon. This book is a sincere, sympathetic, but objective study of the process. Joe and Mary Ann Barnhart's clearly written volume scrutinizes John Henry Newman, converts to Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Charles Colson, Buddha, St. Paul the Apostle, Ernest Renan, and others. The Barnharts suggest "it is a mistake to conclude that the new birth is nothing but a delusion." Neither is it "a supernatural event or process, but a complex personal process with at least three layers or dimensions - the psychological, the social, and the cultural [including] theological and metaphysical doctrines." The authors draw from a refreshingly diverse range of thinkers to deliver insight after insight: John Dewey, Henri Bergson, E. O. Wilson, Victor Frankl, Thomas Szasz, Emile Durkheim, and many others. This short (171 page) book is worth reading and rereading. There is a lot here!