Prospects for Future Research

7.4 Prospects for Future Research

There are several avenues of research that can be undertaken by future studies. One of them is to examine the process of religious conversion that has not been studied before. In view of the small number of existing works of religious conversion that employed the Rambo Model as theoretical framework, as reviewed in Chapter 3, there is certainly a lot more that can be explored in this area of research. By looking at the conversion process not only from the perspective of the religious context within which the process unfolds but also taking into account from where the shift in religious There are several avenues of research that can be undertaken by future studies. One of them is to examine the process of religious conversion that has not been studied before. In view of the small number of existing works of religious conversion that employed the Rambo Model as theoretical framework, as reviewed in Chapter 3, there is certainly a lot more that can be explored in this area of research. By looking at the conversion process not only from the perspective of the religious context within which the process unfolds but also taking into account from where the shift in religious

Table III below gives us some sense of the patterns of existing and recent religious conversion studies, and the countries that have been explored and studied so far. Thus, it would be of interest to address the gaps on the table which indicate the combinations of religion, or religious contexts, that have not been researched before. For now, the

main focus of the existing conversion studies is mainly on the „new religion‟ column, primarily because conversion experience is defined by the religion that the potential convert is considering (Kahn and Greene 2004:255).

It is worthwhile to note that we have a somewhat considerable amount of reliable information on religious conversion from a majority religion to a minority religion or a proselytising religion, as can be seen from the table below. Yet, the information on a religious conversion to a majority religion is clearly lacking. This situation further establishes a case for the distinctiveness and the significance of this study in the realm of religious conversion studies as it illustrates the relatively untapped area of research, and thus points out the fundamental importance, particularly from a comparative point of view, for future studies to explore a religious conversion to a majority religion from any type of religion.

Poland is perhaps an interesting case study of religious conversion in a majority- religion context as the country has 92.2% of its population who observe Catholicism (Fox 2008: 141). The suggestion that the majority religion is taught within the

education system and that the country‟s television and radio broadcasting can only education system and that the country‟s television and radio broadcasting can only

to that of Brunei in the recent decades. Thus, future studies that consider a conversion process to Catholicism in Poland as a case study could help to confirm and support the findings made by this study in defining the conversion stages as well as in determining the sequence of those stages in a majority-religion context.

Table III Summary of recent works employing the Rambo Model as theoretical framework

As mentioned earlier, the illustration provided by the above Table III is still crude and preliminary in nature due to the paucity of relevant data. The categories of religion are clearly not exclusive where a religion can be, for example, minority proselytising or majority proselytising. Thus, with more conversion studies involving different types of religions in the future, the categories of religion can be refined and further distinctions between different types of religions and religious contexts can therefore be made.

Moreover, what about countries which are politically and religiously divided where there are no minority or majority groups but instead, two or more religiously divided groups? In this particular case, Bosnia and Herzegovina should be a potentially interesting case study to be explored as the country does not have one particular majority religion, although the percentage of Muslims living in the country is at a slightly higher 44% of the population (Fox 2008: 141). Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Islam are the three dominant religions in Bosnia and despite the seemingly increasing level of acceptance towards one another in recent times, the synonymity between ethnicity and religion in the country inevitably leads to perpetual religious divisions and conflicts among the population (Fox 2008: 151). Thus, it will

be of great interest to examine a religious conversion process, for instance, of a Catholic to Orthodox or to Islam and to see either the first stage in the conversion process would be religious crisis (in consideration of the possibly limited level of interaction between the different religious groups, as in the case of the minority- religion context) or the encounter stage, (in consideration of the availability of religious information within the education system, as in the case of the majority- religion context), or some other new findings that indicate a totally different type of conversion process in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It would be also perhaps worthwhile to go back to the roots of the Rambo Model itself, and carry out a similar type of research study in the United States where the model was first formulated, specifically by taking into account the stage sequence postulated by this study. As mentioned in Chapter 3, a larger part of the theoretical framework of the Rambo Model is based on Christian tradition, and yet, as can be seen from Table III on page 262, none of the conversion studies that employ the model that were conducted in the United States focuses on a conversion to Christianity. This particular observation provides another avenue that could be pursued by future studies in order to see either the conversion stages in a conversion process to Christianity in the United States occur in the sequence suggested by Rambo, or in the sequence for a majority-religion context, as argued by this study. In many ways, this kind of studies will boomerang

the model where future studies will „go back‟ to the United States and to see whether or not the improved understanding of the model can reveal the original conversion

story to Christianity and to test Rambo‟s postulated stage sequence in its own backyard.

Studies on a conversion process to Christianity could also offer more prospects for future research. This is because a conversion to Christianity not only involves the tradition transition type of religious conversion, i.e. a conversion between different religious traditions, but Christianity also permits the institutional transition type of

conversion where the convert‟s new religious option is within the same religious tradition as the previous religious option (Rambo 1993: 39). Thus, a case study on a conversion process, for example, from Mainline Protestantism to Roman Catholicism,

without doubt will lay out a different stage sequence from what have been postulated without doubt will lay out a different stage sequence from what have been postulated

On a local scale, it will also be interesting to analyse the conversion process of other ethnic groups in Brunei. Such conversion studies however should not only be carried out in the context of a religious conversion to Islam but also in the context of a conversion process to other religions, such Christianity or Chinese religion. It will be of interest to see how the patterns of stage sequence set out, for example, in the conversion process of the Murut ethnic group to Christianity, particularly in view of the fact that Christianity in Brunei, by law, is not allowed to proselytise within public domain. Thus, with these questions framing the potential scope of future research, it can provide the existing literature with different perspectives on conversion process from what has been presented by this study.