ABSTRACT
In many ways conversion is at the heart of millennial movements. As William James put it in The Varieties of Religious Experience, conversion involves the turning away from a state that is judged to be “wrong, inferior, and unhappy” and toward an opposite state that is considered “right, superior, and happy” (1958:157). Since they envisage a total transformation of the world, millennial movements seek conversion on the grandest scale. In their quest for a new, perfect order they aim at the removal of impurity, immorality, ambiguity, and flux, and they anticipate the permanent fixing of individuals into one of two radically opposed categories, the saved and the damned. Millennial movements’ quest for certainty leads directly to the quest for converts.
