A review by bunrab
Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion by Susan Jacoby

4.0

Part history, part memoir, in that Jacoby was inspired to write this book because of an incident of secret conversion in her family's background. The book covers not only conversions such as Saul's to Paul, but mass conversions, forced conversions (the Conversos in Spain), and religious revivals intended to draw in converts. She also discusses at length the peculiarly American trait of converting more than once - attributing to our freedom of religion the instances of interfaith marriage where one partner converts to the other - or where they both agree to convert to a third religion that neither of them belonged to before. (Harry Reid!) She also touches briefly on conversion where politics becomes a religion - the Stalinist atheists; Whittaker Chambers' "conversion" to Communism. It's a broad-ranging book, although focused more on the US once there is a US.

Suggestion: read it back to back with Stephen Prothero's "Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars," which is mostly about the US's history of religious intolerance and how each wave of intolerance has resolved.