Factors influencing the choice of church in young converts

The subject of this dissertation is the course of religious conversion and the process of decision-making when converts decide which church they want to join. The theoretical part of the dissertation describes three models of conversion process which are based on psychological research works. Further it deals with a church as a large group and a small group because relationships with other believers (which fulfil the person's need to belong to a group of people) are one of important factors which could persuade a convert to join a church. At the end of the theoretical part there are stated the results concerning the number of believers and members of Christian churches from the census held in the Czech Republic, and there is also described a specific relation of the Czech society to Christian churches. The other part of the dissertation describes the results of qualitative research among 20 converts. The aim of the research was to compare the conversion process of young people with the models described in the theoretical part and to find out reasons which led to their decision to join a particular church. The respondents were chosen from the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and three pentecostal churches because the research also tried to find out if the reasons for..