ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that underlying any professed religious identity or label, whether this label be singular, dual, or multiple, is a singular core of commitments that tends to remain relatively stable throughout the life of the typical practitioner, even if this label shifts through time. Drawing upon John Henry Newman’s reflections on religious conversion, the model developed here suggests that a conversion need not entail a radical shift in one’s worldview. It can also emerge from a process of discovery in which one realises that the tradition in which one was raised does not necessarily reflect one’s deepest commitments. This can lead one to supplement one’s original identity with another (as in the case of a dual identity, such as a Christian becoming a Hindu-Christian) or to shift entirely to a new identity (such as a Christian becoming a Hindu). What changes is thus not so much one’s “inward” orientation towards ultimate reality as the “outward” expression of this orientation in the form of a religious identity. It is also argued here that each person’s religious orientation and worldview is unique.
