Ulf Ekman's conversion to the Catholic church in the Swedish daily press : Discussion based on a discourse analytical perspective

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons a religious minority leader has to convert to a larger religious group and how the leader chooses to communicate this event in certain daily press. In March 2014 the leader and founder of the Christian and charismatic movement “Livets Ord” (Words of Life), Ulf Ekman, announced his decision converting to the Roman Catholic Church after a 10 year long process of thinking. The communications of Ekman’s linguistic language in the articles are discussed through two discourse analyzing perspective, Laclau & Mouffe’s and Fairclough’s. Lewis Rambo’s theory about the process of conversion is compared with Ekman’s statement in the daily press. According to Ekman, his reasons for leaving “Word of Life” in favor for the Roman Catholic church is how he, in RCC, sees the concrete, visible aspect of ”the Church”. In plenty of his sayings he mentions RCC’s sacramental dimension, its authentic authority and moral superiority. These opinions were depicted in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. In the Christian newspaper Dagen Ekman says that he sees the Roman Catholic Church as ”the oldest church” which, according to him, was another reason for his conversion. Ekman also says that he feels as if the Lord urged him to this conversion because of how God’s order now is broken and that the biblical knowledge and those dogmas that the Roman Catholic Church is holding as true, is a step in the right direction for finding unity in ”the body of Christ”. In another Swedish Christian newspaper, Världen idag, Ekman expresses the need for a ”ministry” in Sweden, which also can be explained as a reason for his conversion. Their social pathos, the presence of charismatic Catholics around the world, the strongly established theology, the rich masses, the missionaries, and the Roman Catholic Church as an ethical church is said to be another reasons for his conversion in Världen idag. The communication of Ekmans conversion in the daily press keeps pretty well in line with Rambo’s seven descriptive phases towards conversion. The discourse analysis shows that ”the Church”, according to Ekman, can get a significance that will be viewed as some sort of ethos when it’s represents a constructed identity which remains unclear. The discourse analysis also shows that Ekman’s sayings tend to ”silence” previous criticism he issued towards the Roman Catholic Church. Ekman sometimes cites absolute truths. His statements are also intertextually anchored