The structure of religious conversion of current theology students

There are many theoretical approaches in theology of conversion and psychology of religious conversion. The author highlights the need for a multidisciplinary approach toward conversion both theological and psychological. One of theological interpretations of conversion has been presented by Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984). This article presents the Religious Conversion Scale developed by Soinski based on Lonergan’s theory. The scale uses the same categories to conversion as were identified by Lonergan and is measure both the global intensity of conversion and the intensity experience of three dimensions of conversion: intellectual, moral and religious (spiritual). Preliminary indicators of validity and reliability were calculated on the basis of the results obtained from 144 subjects. The results confirmed high discriminative power of the items as well as high homogeneity and stability of the subscales. Theoretical validity of the scale was established by means of factor analysis. This paper shows that the average age of a student of theology when he had experienced religious conversion was 19. They (56 women and 56 men) had the most intensive the spiritual conversion experience („be attaching oneself to God”), but the men equally experienced the moral conversion. The results suggested that the women frequently converted in the way of illumination but the men equally converted in the way of purgation