The Crisis of Conversion: Reimagining Religious Experience for a Postmodern Evangelical Spirituality

by Joanna Higgins

Publisher:

Pickwick Publications

, 2024

This book attempts to identify a central problem within the North American evangelical imagination around the issue of religious experience and its relationship to the basic hermeneutical stance of biblical and theological interpretation. The relatively recent emergence of the academic discipline of Christian spirituality offers a new set of methodological insights that may help to mediate the theological impasse between more conservative and progressive perspectives concerning the appropriate role of human experience for evangelical thought and practice. Specifically, we will explore the experience of religious conversion that lies at the center of evangelical spirituality in critical dialogue with the challenges and opportunities brought about by recent philosophical discourse and the postmodern turn, variously understood.

Praise for The Crisis of Conversion

“Higgins here names the crisis not only of evangelical conversion but also of evangelical spirituality in our postmodern context. One way forward, he urges, is a more ecumenical approach that nourishes evangelical commitments with Roman Catholic, pentecostal-charismatic, and North American philosophical and theological resources. What emerges is a model for theological construction that can invigorate the needed evangelical transformation in a pluralistic world.”

—Amos Yong, professor of theology and mission, Fuller Theological Seminary



“In this book, Higgins not only presents a masterful overview of the contemporary crisis of Baptist spirituality and the meaning of conversion but also carefully traces out the roots and complex traditions that give rise to this current reality. Equally important is Higgins’s broader scholarly investigation into the dynamics of Christian spirituality. I believe that in both instances Higgins offers new, insightful, and significant analysis of interpretation of these topics. I highly recommend this book.”

—John Markey, OP, associate professor of theology, Oblate School of Theology

Product Details

• Title: The Crisis of Conversion: Reimagining Religious Experience for a Postmodern Evangelical Spirituality
• Author: Joanna Higgins
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9798385204632, 9798385204625, 9798385204618
• Resource ID: LLS:9798385204632
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-06-27T02:52:31Z

About Joanna Higgins

Joanna Higgins has taught at colleges in the United States and in England and is the author of the novels Dead Center, and A Soldier’s Book, which was a finalist for the 2007 Michael Shaara Award for Civil War fiction. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Award for fiction, and her short stories appear in several anthologies, including the Best American Short Stories series.