ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 examines the early contribution of American psychologists of religion and looks specifically at how they analysed the interrelated notions of conversion and feeling. In the early years of the sub-discipline, conversion was considered the main phenomenon in religion, though by 1912, this was clearly on the decline. I argue that the reason for this decline was twofold: on one hand, since conversion was taken to be nothing more than a process of physiological and psychological transformation that took place in adolescence, religious psychologists had to admit that the ultimate questions about religion were questions pertaining to psychology and physiology; on the other, the category was compromised by the realisation that what was being described under the name of ‘conversion’ was not a pure experience, but an experience that was the result of training and education in specifically Protestant churches.
