Journal of Religious & Theological Information

ISSN: 1047-7845 (Print) 1528-6924 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wrti20

Closer to God: Meanings of Reading in Recent

Conversion Narratives within Christianity and
Islam

Iulian Vamanu & Elysia Guzik

To cite this article: Iulian Vamanu & Elysia Guzik (2015) Closer to God: Meanings of
Reading in Recent Conversion Narratives within Christianity and Islam, Journal of Religious &
Theological Information, 14:3-4, 63-78, DOI: 10.1080/10477845.2015.1085784

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10477845.2015.1085784

Published online: 30 Nov 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 53

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=wrti20

Download by: [190.84.88.149] Date: 11 May 2016, At: 11:49

 Journal of Religious & Theological Information, 14:6378, 2015
Published with license by Taylor & Francis
ISSN: 1047-7845 print / 1528-6924 online
DOI: 10.1080/10477845.2015.1085784

Closer to God: Meanings of Reading in Recent

Conversion Narratives within Christianity and
Islam

IULIAN VAMANU
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

ELYSIA GUZIK
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

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 con-
cerns 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 Bucklands notion of theological information and en-
gages with Karis understanding of informational uses of spiritual
information. We assume a hermeneutic concept of reading, ac-
cording 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.

KEYWORDS reading, spiritual information use, Christianity,

Islam, religious conversion

Iulian Vamanu and Elysia Guzik

Address correspondence to Iulian Vamanu, School of Library and Information Science,
University of Iowa, 3087 Main Library, 125 W. Washington Street, Iowa City, IA 52242-1420,
USA. E-mail: iulian-vamanu@uiowa.edu

63
 64 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

INTRODUCTION

This study explores some of the understandings of reading as a type of infor-

mation use in religious contexts. Specifically, it investigates cultural meanings
that recent converts to Christianity and Islam are using to interpret their expe-
rience of reading religious documents, and it organizes them into a typology
of reading practices. In this context, the study emphasizes transformative
reading as one particular form of information use that has not been ar-
ticulated in the scholarly literature in Library and Information Science so
far.
In one of the rare yet groundbreaking studies of information processes
in spiritual contexts, Finnish information scholar Jarkko Kari discussed sev-
eral ways in which individuals use spiritual information, that is, information
perceived as originating in a supernatural source (Informational Uses).1 He
focused on applying spiritual information to achieve cognitive or communi-
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

cational goals (e.g., writing a book, modifying ones view of the world, in-
forming somebody). Kari explored the ramifications of its three basic forms,
namely, internalizing information (i.e., taking in some cognitive content,
for instance by reading or listening), processing knowledge (i.e., modify-
ing a knowledge structure by adding new information or knowledge), and
externalizing knowledge (i.e., addressing knowledge to an audience, for
instance by delivering a lecture, writing a book, but also requesting, pray-
ing, etc.) (Informational Uses 611, emphasis added). In this study, Kari
pointed to the activity of reading as a form of internalizing spiritual infor-
mation. In a previous study, Kari drew a distinction between spirituality and
religiosity: In contrast to spirituality, a religion involves a shared corpus of
doctrines, a tradition-based practice of worship and interpretation, as well as
a particular sacred writing (A Review of the Spiritual 936). This last com-
ponent is crucial for the purpose of the present study: Given the centrality of
scriptures to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it should not be surprising that
these three major religions (also known as the religions of the Book) have
always emphasized (at least from a prescriptive point of view) the impor-
tance of communal and individual reading to the lives of the believers. The
Liturgy, arguably the most important ritual in Christianity, involves reading
to a large extent; moreover, reading the Scriptures is considered, besides
prayer, the most important way of entering a personal dialogue with God.
In Islam, reading and reciting the Quran (which believers understand to be
the revealed word of God) are central expressions of faith in Allah and in
Muhammad as his prophet.
In our study, we assume a hermeneutic notion of reading. According to
Law and Literature scholar James Boyd White, reading is a process through
which a text proposes to the reader a horizon of things that it is possible
for him [or her] to be or become (White 17). In turn, the reader is expected
to assess what this text is asking him to assent to and to become and
 Closer to God 65

whether or not he wishes to acquiesce (16). The reader is thus involved in

a process of assimilation and rejection, response and judgment in regard
to the type of humanity a book invites him to act out (17). This notion of
reading provides an appropriate framework for understanding ways in which
readers in religious contexts respond to the models of humanity proposed
by the sacred texts.
Despite the prescriptive importance of reading in religious life, it should
be noted that increasingly fewer people actually read religious books. The
20023 study of religious practices of United States teenagers titled, National
Study of Youth and Religion, found that [m]any religious teens in the United
States appear to engage in few religious practices (Smith and Denton 269).
For instance, only one-third of the participants actually read religious books
other than the Bible (47), and only 7% of non-religious teenagers actually
read the Bible a few times a week or more often (86). Given this tension
between the normative importance and the empirical weakening of reading
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

in religious contexts, we deemed it important to clarify the status and senses

of this practice from the point of view of individuals who engage in it.
We focused on a specific context in which reading still counts as an im-
portant activity, not only prescriptively, but also descriptively (i.e., religious
conversion, the seeking process through which people actually become be-
lievers, or at least more active religiously). Religious conversion has been
widely understood as a sense-making process that may be prompted by a
crisis or search for meaning (see, e.g., James; Lofland and Stark; Rambo;
Snow and Machalek). Whether conversion is catalyzed by difficult situa-
tions in ones life, an existential quest, or an introduction to a spiritually
compelling text or person, it can be conceptualized as a phenomenon that
involves knowledge and belief. In their discussion of a content analysis of
400 questions posed to the social media site Yahoo! Answers about religious
belief in Islam and Christianity, Sally Jo Cunningham and Annika Hinze re-
flected on how affective elements of information seeking have been largely
ignored by existing research on information systems. Similarly, we currently
know very little about how reading practices are related to experiences of
spiritual awareness and fulfillment. Nevertheless, many scholars in the sociol-
ogy, psychology, and anthropology of religion have found that engagement
with scholarship through reading, lectures, and publications is often central
to converts experiences of religious change, particularly in the context of Is-
lam (e.g., Kose, Post-conversion Experiences; Kose, The Journey from the
Secular; Poston; Van Nieuwkerk). By considering the various transformative
reading practices in the contexts of conversion to Christianity and Islam, we
can begin to explore these issues in a more focused and deeper way.
Finally, existing literature on reading practices in spiritual and religious
environments focuses on clergy (as does information behavior research more
broadly). This article, while presenting a framework-in-progress for analyzing
types of religious reading, extends the study of spiritual reading practices to
 66 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

laity in their everyday lives. More specifically, it analyzes accounts of recent

converts in two major religious traditions, Christianity and Islam, and answers
the question about what it is that converts to Christianity and Islam expect
reading to do to their lives.

METHODOLOGY

Our objective is to capture some of the cultural meanings that religious

converts use to make sense of their experiences of reading religious texts,
in order to understand the role of reading in the lives of seekers.
To address this research objective, we collected narratives of recent
converts to Christianity (ten) in its various denominations and Islam (eleven)
about their reading experiences. We looked first at published narratives
from Christian converts. These persons belong to three major denomina-
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

tions, namely the Eastern Orthodox Church (Anthony, Frederica, Kathleen,

and Scott), the Catholic Church (Ondrej and Rosanna), and the Evan-
gelical Covenant Church (Annika, Dallas, Kjerstin, and Marco). At the
time when they composed their stories, six of these converts (Annika, Dal-
las, Kjerstin, Marco, Rosanna, and Ondrej) were college students at
the North Park University, a Christian liberal arts college in Chicago, Illi-
nois. Scot McKnight, the professor of Biblical and Theological Studies who
gathered and discussed their stories in a book titled, Turning to Jesus: The
Sociology of Conversion in the Gospels, asked them to frame their accounts,
to the extent possible, within the framework of modern accounts of conver-
sion (e.g., Lewis R. Rambos seminal sociological study of conversion from
1993, titled, Understanding Religious Conversion). Nevertheless, he men-
tioned that they had complete freedom to tell their stories in their own
way, if they so desired (McKnight 25). In any case, we can understand McK-
nights study as involving an open-ended interview. The four other converts
(Eastern Orthodox) are writers who put together their conversion narratives
as parts of book projects. Two of them (Kathleen and Scott) were already
poets when they converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, while the other two (An-
thony and Frederica) became prolific religious writers after converting to this
denomination.
Direct, semi-structured, narrative interviews with Muslim converts oc-
curred over a 14-month period in which one of the authors (Guzik) con-
ducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Toronto, Ontario area as part of her
dissertation research.
The converts whose stories we analyzed for this study share a sim-
ilar conversion history. For instance, many new Christians were agnostic
or atheists before encountering faith, or had been raised within the tradi-
tion of one of the Christian denominations before actually rediscovering a
renewed personal relationship with it. Yet, there is a sense in which all of
 Closer to God 67

them were familiar with Christian tropes and narratives embedded in their
respective cultures (European, for Anthony, and American, for the other nine
persons). Similarly, participants in Guziks research project (which explores
how Muslim converts develop their religious identities through information
seeking, evaluation, and sharing) have come to Islam from various tradi-
tions: some agnostic or atheist, some from Christianity, and others who were
raised in a Muslim country or family but reverted to accept Islam in their
adult lives. Their socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, professional oc-
cupations and aspirations, and doctrinal commitments also reflect substantial
diversity.
Nevertheless, we agree with recent sociological studies that religious
conversion paths unfold according to a certain pattern, which can be de-
scribed in terms of specific steps (Rambo) or dimensions (McKnight). We
locate our study within this sociological framework and profess an interest
in the role that the reading of the Bible or of the Quran plays in this process.
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

To capture how converts make sense of religious reading, we used a

coding strategy derived from Grounded Theory, which Emerson, Fretz, and
Shaw proposed for the qualitative analysis of ethnographic documents. They
recommended open coding for discovering key themes in the participants
accounts, as well as focused coding for elaborating analytically [those]
themes, both by connecting data that initially may not have appeared to
go together or by delineating subthemes and subtopics that distinguish dif-
ferences and variations within the broader topic (160). In any case, their
imperative is to reconstruct interpretively the meanings experienced by the
participants themselves (i.e., to specify the meanings and points of view
of those under study, [that is, to] get at how [the participants] see and ex-
perience events, at what they view as important and significant, at how
they describe, classify, analyze, and evaluate their own and others situations
and activities, 147). Similarly, since our main research topic was religious
reading (a theme we found in both Christian and Muslim accounts of con-
version), we highlighted those passages in which converts mentioned this
activity. Moreover, given our hermeneutic assumption that in the process of
reading religious texts, the participant is invited to respond to what that text
proposes him or her to be, become, or believe (White 1617), we identi-
fied instances of key dimensions of reading, such as motivations for reading
(why do converts read?) and anticipated effects of this activity (what is it that
converts expect reading to do to their lives?). Finally, we detected patterns
of meaning that converts associate with their experiences of reading sacred
texts. The coding activity generated three main categories with subthemes
and subtopics, which we discuss in the next section. When deemed appro-
priate, we mapped our findings onto Karis typology of information uses
in spiritual contexts to determine whether they confirm it or tell a different
story.
 68 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

TABLE 1 Table of correspondences between informational uses of spiritual information

(Kari) and types of religious reading.

Karis Typology of Informational Uses of

Information Types of Religious Reading

1. Internalizing information Informative reading

1.1. Acquiring information Becoming more informed
1.2. Identifying aspects of information Identifying alethic or epistemic value of
information
2. Processing knowledge Formative reading
2.1. Learning a lesson Becoming more experienced
2.2. Improving ones ability of information Developing discernment
acquisition

RESULTS
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

A Typology of Reading
Converts make sense of their activities of reading religious texts in multi-
ple related ways.2 First, they read simply to acquire more information and
develop knowledge about such matters as faith, ritual, or values. Second,
being intent on leading a life embodying Christian or Muslim values, they
read to inform themselves as what their respective religious cultures identify
as good Christians or good Muslims, respectively. Third, they read in
the hope that their lives and identities be transformed through encountering
divine reality. We elaborate on each of these three claims in the following
subsections. Table 1 summarizes the mapping of our findings about religious
reading to Karis typology of informational uses of information.

INFORMATIVE READING
Christian and Muslim converts often point to a gap in their knowledge of
faith and ritual, and express a need to address it. For instance, while reading
the Gospel of Matthew, one Christian convert stated that she was puzzled
by what she was learning: I was dealing with things I didnt understand.
I needed to be taught by someone who did (Mathewes-Green 107). Simi-
larly, a Muslim convert, whose curiosity about Islam had been stirred by the
events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath, confessed, I just wanted
to educate myself, that is, to be informed about this religion. In the process
of addressing the knowledge gap that such converts experience in regard to
their faith, reading plays a key role. Let us call this type of response informa-
tive reading. We should note that American theologian Robert Mulholland
Jr., too, discussed a similar notion, informational reading, but he defined it
as an attitude of mind that consists of seeking more information to improve
its functional control of its environment (4849). In contrast, we make a
 Closer to God 69

neutral use of the notion of informative reading to refer simply to reading

that is aimed at increasing ones knowledge of a phenomenon.
As far as the types of information converts claim to need, we observed
that several participants commented on how different types of reading ma-
terials develop various types of religious knowledge. For these individuals,
reading instructional guides is a common way to discover the basic tenets
and ritual components of Islam without necessarily learning about deeper
theological issues or cultivating ones own faith and spirituality. For instance,
one participant, Ruqayyah, remarked that in addition to learning how to
read and write in Arabic, she needed general guidance on supplication,
invocation, prayer, and fasting:

The Fortress of the Muslima lot of Muslims carry that around. It has
a lot of supplications, you have to say, you know, when you start the
day or before you go to sleep, before you eat, just a lot of different
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

supplications you can say. And then general books just about Islam, how
to pray, whats Ramadan, those kind of general books.

In Karis typology, the activity of reading in order to know more about

faith, values, and ritual falls under the category of internalizing information.
More specifically, converts are engaged in an ongoing process of acquiring
information, which amounts to taking in cognitive input (Informational
Uses 6).
Besides being motivated by a desire to acquire more information or
to understand, converts also express the need to identify the alethic value
(i.e., truth value) or epistemic value (i.e., cognitive reliability) of the religious
information they have encountered or may encounter in the future. Karis
typology captures this dimension by referring to the activity of identifying
aspects of information or knowledge (Informational Uses 7). Informative
reading aiming at establishing the alethic or epistemic credentials of religious
information they have acquired or may acquire unfolds under an intention
that is either sympathetic or antipathetic. It is sympathetic when the person
intends to gather more religious information in order to better understand
and accept faith and practice. Thus wrote Frederica Mathewes-Green, who
after experiencing a moment of elation in front of a statue of Jesus Christ in
Dublin, confessed that she

Felt a pressing need to read a Bible . . . I plunged into the Gospel of

Matthew. I wasnt pleased. I found a lot to argue with. But a conviction
was slowly seeping into me: I didnt make the world, I didnt know
everything, and it was time to sit down and listen. The experience in the
Dublin church had blown away my neat ideas of the orderly world; I
had been forced to admit I was dealing with things I didnt understand.
I needed to be taught by someone who did. I kept plowing away at the
Gospels, though not without grumbling. (107)
 70 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

Frederica adopts a dialogical stance in her relationship with the Scrip-

ture, that is, she assumes her epistemic position is limited but can be ex-
panded through patient learning.
Similarly, in the context of conversion to Islam, one participant, Jan-
uary, discusses how her father was reading an article that had an excerpt
of Reza Aslans No God but God. And I read that book, and suddenly, I
became interested in Islam again. I fell in love with it again. Liam, another
Muslim convert, says, A lot of curiosity because of world events . . . got me
interested in . . . what is this about . . . Im sure not everyone whos Islamic is
an extremist. And, kind of a ridiculous thought, but I just wanted to educate
myself.
Alternatively, informative reading can be antipathetic when, given pre-
judgments, previous education, and socialization, the reader starts with an
explicit agenda of learning more and developing knowledge in order to be
able to refute religious faith or practice in part or as a whole. Thus, young
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

surgeon and future Orthodox Archbishop Anthony Bloom, after hearing a

priest talking about Christianity, confessed:

I asked my mother whether she had a book of the Gospel, because

I wanted to know whether the Gospel would support the monstrous
impression I had derived from his talk. I expected nothing good from my
reading, so I counted the chapters of the four Gospels to be sure I read
the shortest, not to waste time unnecessarily. I started to read St. Marks
Gospel. (910)

Anthony assumed correctly that reading the Scriptures was the path he
must walk in order to reach an informed perspective on faith. Eventually, in
an ironic twist of fate, his strategy led him to embrace Christianity.
Whether it unfolds under a sympathetic or an antipathetic intention,
informative reading is not a self-sufficient activity. It always constitutes a
ground for making possibly life-changing commitments, and the need for
more information is thus a prerequisite for a decision about how one should
lead ones life. Readers want to know the truth because they feel the shape of
their lives depends on whether the story told by the Bible or the Quran is true
and reliable epistemically. This aspect leads to formative and transformative
aspects of reading. In what follows, we discuss both of these aspects.

FORMATIVE READING
We found that converts use religious information not only to become more
informed about matters of faith, values, and ritual (i.e., what Kari calls inte-
grat[ing] target information into [oneself], Informational Uses 6), but also
to enable a modification of their views of and patterns of interaction with
the world on the basis of the acquired information (i.e., to consider or
 Closer to God 71

transform what [they] know, 7). We call formative reading that sort of
reading through which converts aim to achieve this type of modification.
Christian scholars have long discussed normative aspects of this type of
reading. For instance, Cistercian scholar Michael Casey claimed that

Within the Christian tradition, reading the Scriptures is often perceived

as one of the way[s] in which Gods word shapes our beliefs and values
so as eventually evangelize our behavior. . . . The Scriptures are given to
form our behavior, to make us Christlike. Whatever they impart by way
of informationincluding theological informationis secondary to their
role in the practical reformation of daily life according to the teaching
and example of Jesus. (Casey 55)

This is what Douglas Burton-Christie, a scholar of Christian monasticism,

called practicing the texts, namely applying to ones own situation what
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

the sacred text invites one to do, while also reading the texts in light of the
newly acquired experience (23). We identified this aspect in the narratives of
converts who claim to have become acquainted with aspects of the religious
teachings or practices to such an extent, that they have started interpreting
events and situations in their lives within a religious framework. For instance,
Christian convert Ondrej describes his period of crisis as one in which he
was not able to make sense of his life. He confesses that the experience
of reading the Bible launched him on a new quest: I would compare the
things that I read in the Bible with the surrounding world. The Bible was right
about things it described, that is, in matters I was capable of understanding.
I began adjusting my life to the teachings of this Book (qtd. in McKnight
7980).
Formative reading with this kind of effect overlaps with Karis notion of
learning a lesson, which is a type of activity he places under the heading of
processing knowledge (Informational Uses 7). This is not simply a form of
acquiring more information, but rather of becoming more knowledgeable,
more experienced, specifically in a way that changes how one views the
world and acts within its boundaries.
Within Islam, traditions of reading are historically linked to scriptural
and juridical education. As Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman
explained in their volume on the impact of postcolonial politics on Islamic
educational institutions and the ways in which religious knowledge is trans-
mitted, Islam is a religion of the Book and of religious commentary, and
most Muslims regard religious study as a form of worship in its own right (4).
In his discussion of prescriptive reading practices, madrasa education, and
Sufi rituals in the context of fifteenth-century Sufi scholar Ahmad Zarruqs
life history, Scott Kugle pointed out that Islamic ritual practices can be un-
derstood only through their roots in scripture (48), which can in turn only
be understood through reasoned discernment of the life of the Prophet
 72 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

(ibid.). Although human spiritual guides are considered preferable to books

for spiritual education (especially in the Sufi tradition), even Zarruq claimed
that books may replace a living guide, particularly when individuals have
companions who can exchange observations about readings and help align
interpretations and actions with prescribed religious customs (152).
Prescriptive reading extends to everyday life, including prayer and
Quranic recitation. Notably, many participants addressed the linguistic as-
pect of their formative reading practices, as the Quran is considered the
main textual authority in Islam, which is believed to have been revealed
from God in Arabic (Saeed 115). In the absence of Quranic expertise or
Arabic fluency, secondary texts such as hadith are critical sources for Mus-
lims to contextualize the revelatory text (120). In some cases, converts read
in order to develop discerning knowledge, that is, knowledge that helps
them assess the quality of (usually more difficult) religious information. This
aspect overlaps with Karis notion of improving ones ability of (spiritual)
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

information acquisition, yet another type of processing knowledge (In-

formational Uses 7). For instance, one Muslim convert, Seif, makes it clear
that

Normative Islam tells you . . . what the best way of getting to know the
religion is. Thats what the scholarship is for. . . It tells you, this is the best
way, this is how youre supposed to look at hadith. This is the way youre
supposed to look at this text. Dont read this text yet. Without reading
this text. . . . [An imam] who teaches classes [told me:] I dont read this . . .
I dont have the tools to read this yet. Theres stuff in this I cant read yet
. . . I read it like three times, and it wasnt until I read this other book, gave
me like some tools to understand what these, some of his concepts were . . .
And what some of the vocabulary meant.

In her comments about reading the Quran, another Muslim convert

who participated in Guziks project, Aisha, remarked on the impor-
tance of reading it with Tafsir: I liked reading the Quran, it was really
nice or whatever, but I never read it cover-to-cover, I would read it with
Tafsir, which is the commentary, like a 2,000 page document, its gigantic,
and it was very, very slow. She later added in a follow-up interview that the
Tafsir will add a lot more context, and it will bring multiple scholars into
that Tafsir, and its written by a highly revered scholar, and so theres lots of
people there that really know, a lot more than what I would ever know.
Finally, it is worth noting that at least three out of the eleven participants
who have taken part in Guziks research spoke about how they aspired
to read more than their current routine allows. This aspirational sentiment
indicates that formative reading practices may continue throughout a persons
life, over the course of their conversion experiences, even as they engage in
transformative reading practices.
 Closer to God 73

TRANSFORMATIVE READING
Not all forms of information use have been codified so far. Typologies such
as the one that Kari developed cover significant ground, yet are inevitably
partial, based as they are on specific research situations (e.g., informational
uses of spiritual information). The narratives that we investigated for our
study reveal a third and less common form of information use, namely one
that is less informational (in Karis sense of the term) and more transfor-
mational. We discuss a few examples to illustrate what we propose to call
transformational reading.
Reading can be directed at acquiring more information about a phe-
nomenon (i.e., informative reading) or at providing a person with models
that he/she can emulate and thus change his/her view of the world, attitude,
and behavior (i.e., formative reading). Yet, reading can also be used as a
means of spiritual growing, deeper self-understanding, and developing an
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

enriched identity.
Transformation is often understood in terms of spiritual growth. For
instance, Christian convert Dallas confesses, I really dont know where
Im at spiritually, but I do know Im not happy with where Im at right now.
Im trying to change that, though. I am reading my Bible more (qtd. in
McKnight 91). There is a sense in which this convert is not as advanced
spiritually as he could and would like to be, and expects that reading the
Scriptures more will set him on the road toward spiritual maturity, even
though it is not clear what this kind of maturity looks like.
Transformation is often viewed as a mutation in ones self-
understanding. Yet, converts are often less clear about what this new under-
standing of themselves may imply. For instance, Kjerstin, another Christian
convert, confesses, I started reading my Bible more . . . and really figuring
out who I was (qtd. in McKnight 110). She implies that reading the Bible,
among other activities, is a way for her to reach a presumably more adequate
(really figuring out) understanding of herself, even though she does not
know what the content of that understanding may be.
Transformation also means an enrichment of ones identity as a result of
encountering the divine reality (often followed by an increased and steady
awareness of its manifestations).3 In this case, converts articulate a more
explicit notion of transformational reading. For instance, they claim this ac-
tivity may lead them to experience the concrete presence of divine reality.
This notion emerges from the words of Christian convert Rosanna, who
declares, I came to the conclusion that God had to be present in my life at
all times, not only when I had crisis problems, but also when I continued
with my regular life, a goal she hopes to achieve by reading the Bible and
attending Church more often (qtd. in McKnight 71). Being in the presence
of God means (in this case) living with a renewed awareness that ones life,
with both its felicities and misfortunes, unfolds under the aegis of a divine
reality.
 74 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

Often, converts encountering God through reading claim to experience

a reshaping of their identity. As Christian convert Annika points out, her
desire is finding Christ and discovering . . . self-identity in Him (qtd. in
McKnight 96). Also, for Christian convert Marco, the encounter of and
relationship with God are felt to be the only experiences that would give
meaning to his life: My long search for meaning was finally over with me
coming to realize that God and a relationship with Jesus Christ was the only
thing that would ever be right for me. . . . My life is different since I now live
for God and not for myself (qtd. in McKnight 103). Transformative reading
is a practice that results in such intimate things as changing ones sense of
self and way of life.
Even more explicitly, some converts emphasize the mysterious ways
in which the act of reading religious texts reveals the power of language
as a medium for experiencing the concrete presence of divine reality. For
instance, Kathleen Norris, an American poet for whom conversion is a
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

daily and lifelong process (Norris 44), pointed out after interacting with
and learning from Benedictines in South Dakota that the goal of reading the
Scriptures is to see Christ in every verse, and not mirror image of [oneself]
and thus to experience the complex integrative, and transformative qualities
of revelation (256). In this case, reading is a means of encountering the
divine reality as a narrative voice addressing the reader as a person. For
Christian convert and poet Scott Cairns, reading is a way for the convert to
experience the power that words have to bring readers closer to God:

[W]ords are stuffare thingsand . . . its not like you have an idea and
then you use words to express the idea. Its that you actually love words
and you pore over words, and you put strings of words together and they
lead you to ideas. Its like the act of making leads you into what to make
of it in terms of idea, and so a kind of primary attention to stuffthe stuff
of language. I suppose if I were a painter, it would be stuff of pigment;
if I were a sculptor, it would be stuff of wood or metal or clay. Artists fall
in love with the stuff, and that becomes a way of knowing, rather than
ways of saying what you know. (Words Lead You to Ideas)

Similarly, in the context of Islam, language (Arabic) is closely tied to

faith, as it is considered the revelatory language through which the Quran
was transmitted. In addition to being a formative practice, learning the lan-
guage and eventually reading the Quran (and other religious texts) in Arabic
was considered by some participants in Guziks study to be a spiritual experi-
ence, bringing them closer to God and their spiritual selves. One participant,
Kelly, shared the following anecdote about attending religious education
classes:
 Closer to God 75

Quranic Arabic is so complex. If you do a linguistics class, its so intense,

some of the wording. So youre not getting the full meaning, so youre
trying to deal with what you have. And, no idea why certain things are
coming up at certain times. Just in English, right . . . I have no idea what
it would sound like in Arabic, because I cant read that. When I go to
these classes and I hear about the context of when this particular verse
was revealed, it makes perfect sense to me. Right? And then thats where
I find a lot of logic in it. So, Ive been really happy with the process so
far. Really, really comforted, really . . . at peace with it, learning at it one
day at a time.

Another participant, Dahlia, also described how the Arabic lessons that
she took soon after she converted, about eleven years ago, further connected
her with her faith:
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

Like the deeper I got into it, like maybe through my Arabic teacher
or other people who had a deeper understanding of Islam, I became
more, connected to Islam in an intellectual way too. And that was re-
ally mind-blowing. Certain things likethis is the one thing I always
referencelike, the importance of learning Arabic to understand the faith
. . . Every word has an etymology thats connected to something really
deep. So learning those things made me feel closer to God, made me
feel closer to the religion, while learning Arabic.

By learning Arabic and subsequently reading texts in this language,

Dahlia and Kelly illustrate how ones existing spirituality and worldview
can be further developed, inspired, or changed through ongoing reading
practices, including re-reading.
Our findings about the transformative significance of reading religious
texts confirm the common knowledge among the faithful that participation in,
authentic knowledge of, and communion with the divine describe Christian
and Muslim ideals of a meaningful life in which reading plays a mediating
role. In Christian contexts, the Scriptures have been considered a privileged
medium by which God reveals himself to us and enables us to participate
in his own life (Breck 81). This is a form of relationship enabling the human
being to possibly attain authentic knowledge of God and communion with
God and in God (81). In many interpretations of Islam, reading the Quran
and hadith is not merely a means of educating oneself about the religion,
but also a practice that facilitates learning about ones own personal faith
in Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, and one that may transform a per-
sons religious identity from a non-believer or adherent of another religious
tradition to a committed member of the global ummah (i.e., community of
believers).
To conclude this section, we can say that in contrast to informational
uses of religious information (e.g., informative and formative reading), trans-
 76 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

formational uses of information (e.g., what we called transformative read-

ing) describe uses of information, which are intended to result in changes
of the readers existential (rather than cognitive or moral) dimension. We
identified spiritual growth, deeper self-understanding, and enriched identity
as three possible effects of transformative reading.

CONCLUSION

Our exploration of recent religious conversion narratives revealed that con-

verts make sense of reading (understood as a form of information use) in
three major ways, namely, informative, formative, and transformative read-
ing. These individuals engage in informative reading when they feel the need
to know more about the elements of faith, value, and ritual in order to either
participate more in, or simply distance themselves from, religious practices.
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

Converts are involved in formative reading when their main intention is to

derive practical models for interacting with the others. Finally, converts par-
ticipate in transformative reading to the extent that they expect the sacred
book to enable them to grow spiritually, to form a richer identity, and to
develop a better understanding of themselves through the encountering of,
and participation in, the life of divine reality. We emphasized this last type
of reading, namely one that the scholarly literature on information uses has
not conceptualized so far; it is precisely in this point that the novelty of
our study resides. We expect further research to consider a larger number
of participants, possibly from as many religious traditions as possible, and
to focus inquiry on other aspects of transformational reading. Comparisons
among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions of reading would hopefully
reveal not only differences between respective meanings of reading, but also
similarities.

NOTES

1. Karis work built upon Michael Bucklands earlier assertion in his characterization of information
as thing that to exclude claims about divinely inspired knowledge would make information science
incomplete (Buckland 353).
2. Converts read a wide range of religious texts, yet they refer with noticeable frequency to the
Bible (the Christian converts) and the Quran (the Muslim converts).
3. We do not claim to know whether our participants really encountered the divine reality. We
only claim that they confessed to have had this kind of experience.

WORKS CITED

Bloom, Anthony. Beginning to Pray. Paulist Press, 1970. Print.

Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition. The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox
Church. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2001. Print.
 Closer to God 77

Buckland, Michael. Information as Thing. Journal of the American Society for In-
formation Science, 42.5 (1991): 35160. Print.
Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.
Cairns, Scott. Words Lead You to Ideas. Faith and Leadership. 21 Oct. 2013.
Web. 22 June 2015. <https://www.faithandleadership.com/scott-cairns-words-
lead-you-ideas>.
Casey, Michael. Sacred Reading. The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina. Liguori, MO:
Liguori Press, 1995. Print.
Cunningham, Sally Jo, and Annika Hinze. Questions about Belief: An Analysis of
Yahoo! Answers Queries Regarding Belief in Islam and Christianity. Presented
at the Annual Conference on Information and Religion, Kent State University,
2014. <http://digitalcommons.kent.edu/acir/2014/Three/8/>.
Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Field-
notes. Chicago, IL: Chicago UP, 1995. Print.
Hefner, Robert W., and Muhammad Qasim Zaman. Eds. Schooling Islam: The Culture
and Politics of Modern Muslim Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007.
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016

Print.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.
New York: New American Library, 1902. Print.
Kari, Jarkko. A Review of the Spiritual in Information Studies. Journal of Docu-
mentation 63.6 (2007): 93562. Print.
. Informational Uses of Spiritual Information: An Analysis of Messages Re-
portedly Transmitted by Extraphysical Means. Journal of Information Science
35.4 (2009): 45368. Print.
Kose, Ali. Post-conversion Experiences of Native British Converts to Islam. Islam
and Christian-Muslim Relations 5.2 (1994): 195206. Print.
. The Journey from the Secular to the Sacred: Experiences of Native British
Converts to Islam. Social Compass 46.3 (1999): 30112. Print.
Kugle, Scott. Rebel between Spirit and Law: Ahmad Zarruq, Sainthood, and Authority
in Islam. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print.
Lofland, John, and Rodney Stark. Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion
to a Deviant Perspective. American Sociological Review 30.6 (1965): 86275.
Print.
Mathewes-Green, Frederica. Facing East: A Pilgrims Journey into the Mysteries of
Orthodoxy. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2007. Print.
McKnight, Scot. Turning to Jesus. The Sociology of Conversion in the Gospels.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Print.
Mulholland Jr., M. Robert. Shaped by the Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual
Formation. Nashville: Upper Room, 1985. Print.
Norris, Kathleen. Amazing Grace. A Vocabulary of Faith. New York: Riverhead
Books, 1998. Print.
Poston, Larry. Islamic Dawah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dy-
namics of Conversion to Islam (Published doctoral dissertation). New York:
Oxford UP, 1992. Print.
Rambo, Lewis R. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993.
Print.
Saeed, Abdullah. Authority in Quranic Interpretation and Interpretive Communi-
ties. Communicating the Word: Revelation, Translation, and Interpretation
 78 I. Vamanu and E. Guzik

in Christianity and Islam: A Record of the Seventh Building Bridges Seminar

Convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rome, May 2008. Ed. D. Marshall.
Washington: Georgetown UP, 2011. 11523. Print.
Smith, Christian, and Melina Lundquist Denton. Soul Searching: The Religious and
Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
Snow, David A., and Richard Machalek. The Sociology of Conversion. Annual
Review of Sociology 10 (1984): 16790. Print.
Van Nieuwkerk, Karin. Biography and Choice: Female Converts to Islam in the
Netherlands. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 19.4 (2008): 43147. Print.
White, James Boyd. When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitu-
tions of Language, Character, and Community. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984. Print.
Downloaded by [190.84.88.149] at 11:49 11 May 2016