Katharina Krause

Protestant Piety of Conversion: Towards a Cultural Sociology of a Religious Practice

What kind of practices, emotions and self-understandings are linked to conversion?

Katharina Krause develops a theoretical framework that helps to understand processes of constructing, performing and maintaining conversionist identity. The model builds both on findings from exemplary constellations of Puritanism and Early Evangelicalism in 17th and 18th century New England and conversion research in the area of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. Krause offers a cultural sociological perspective on conversionist piety that takes different carriers of meaning into account, such as texts, pictoral sources and material culture. Holistic in its approach, the model pictures conversionist piety as a social practice that builds up into pious cultures of body, emotion and meaning-making. It is meant as a starting point for further empirical research on conversionist milieus in Practical Theology and Religious Studies and thereby hopes to contribute to the recovering of the Practical Theologian’s interest in the varieties of protestant piety.