ABSTRACT
The study of religious conversion has undergone a research renaissance in recent years. In the wake of the worldwide wave of "new religions" and the resurgence of traditional ones, social-scientific and journalistic inquiry into this phenomenon has blossomed. The notion of a motif experience in conversion is an effort to attend to accounts of conversion which describe the subjective perceptions of the convert. The intellectual or self-conversion motif is largely a new mode of entry into a religious community or movement. Historically speaking, the best known conversion motif is probably the one here lable "mystical"— a term not entirely accurate but better than its alternatives such as "Damascus Road," "Pauline," "evangelical," and "born again." The conversion motifs differ significantly from one historical epoch to another, across societal boundaries, and even across subcultures within a single society. A wide variety of the conjunctions of social circumstances and conversion motifs are likely discernible.
