Christian Conversion from Islam: Social, Cultural, Communication, and Supernatural Factors in the Process of Conversion and Faithful Church Participation

The research project describes the conversion process from Islam to Christianity of urban, single, adult Arabs and Arabized Berbers in Morroco in which the national Christian community is officially considered non-existent and conversion is popularly inconceivable. Communication, social, cultural, and supernatural factors contributing to and inhibiting conversion are determined through analysis of interviews of an urban convert population. Of particular missiological significance, a theory of congruence of cultural values in conversion and church growth is suggested. Converts tend to be attracted to Christianity by factors congruent with their own cultural values. Their expression of their concept of burden-bearing, a practical demonstration of love, is weak. Among other important findings is the low frequency of oldest brothers among Christian converts. The level of participation in evangelism is directly related to one’s sense of national identity and inversely to an attraction to foreign values in the conversion process. Faithful evangelists tended to be those who had come through significant persecution. Few cases of power encounters were reported. Dreams, although not of Jesus, were reported by some respondents as influencing their conversion, those who had dreams tended not to be faithful church participants.