On Conversion

This essay develops a moral and political theology of social change rooted in a theological account of conversion. Challenging both reactionary and progressive frameworks, it proposes an account of social change that is paradoxical, nonlinear, and eschatologically oriented. Conversion is presented as a dynamic, integrative process of personal, structural, and spiritual transformation. It reclaims conversion as involving both continuity and rupture, tradition and revolution, chronological processes and kairotic events. Against deterministic and evolutionary paradigms, it develops a conception of human agency that is constrained but not wholly conditioned by history and open to divine intervention. In doing so, it offers a more humane alternative to immanent theories of social change by insisting that true transformation involves becoming more human rather than transcending the human condition. Through the example of converting capitalism, the essay advances a fourfold framework of healing, deliverance, tenacious perseverance, and prefigurative embodiments of new creation, culminating in a vision of Christian witness as participation in the Spirit’s transformative work within history.