ABSTRACT
Indicating a symbolic transformation of subjectivity, conversion stories function as cultural techniques reproducing the belief in a ‘secular/religious divide’. In as much as the conversional experience is depicted as an immersive event of transcendence, affects serve as signifiers for the factuality of this experience authenticating the belief in a substantial difference of identity. But, which emotions characterize one’s being secular and how do people construe the emotionality of the religious subject? Focusing on the way religious converts affectively seal a division between secular and religious life, the article aims to study the cultural taxonomy of ‘the religious’ and the ‘the secular’ as an arrangement of feelings. In order to do so, I draw on field research in a Christian evangelical movement. The case study serves as a paradigm for contemporary modes of reviving religious beliefs in face of a secularized age reflecting a reformation of traditional notions of religiosity and secularity. Analyzing the language of embodied affects used in the conversion reports, I show that in the name of religion consciousness, agency, and being in control of one’s feelings reappear as politicized objects in the symbolic fight over the ‘religious/secular divide’.
