structural:scholar_edition, stylistic:tone, stylistic:style_transfer
Fostering conversion

Different factors and circumstances may operate and interact to persuade individuals of groups to convert and adopt a new set of religious doctrines and habits.

Religious enthusiasm for proselytism can play a role. For example, the New Testament chronicles the personal activities of the Apostles and their followers in inspired preaching, miracle -working and the subsequent gathering of followers. Freshly-converted Irish and Anglo-Saxon priests spread their new-found faith among pagan British and Germanic peoples. Missions of the 19th century spread against a background of North Atlantic revivalism with its emotionalism and mass-meeting crowd psychological behaviours.

Messianism may prepare groups for the coming of a Messiah or of a saviour. Thus the 1st-century Levant, steeped in expectations of overturning the political situation, provided fertile ground for nascent Christianity and other Jewish messianic sects, such as the Zealots.

Some religious traditions, rather than stressing emotion in the conversion process, emphasise the importance of philosophical thought as a pathway to adopting a new religion. Saint Paul in Athens fits here, as do some of the Indic religions (such as Buddhism – insofar as it ranks as a religion – and Jainism). The historical God-fearers may represent a philosophical bridge between Hellenism and Abrahamic faith.

A religious creed which can capture the ear and support of secular power can become a prestige movement, encouraging the mass of a people to follow its tenets. Christianity grew after becoming the state religion in Armenia, in the Roman Empire, and in Ethiopia. Eastern Orthodoxy expanded when it gained official sanction in Kievan Rus'.

Some people convert under the influence of other social conditions. Early Christianity attracted followers by offering community material support and enhanced status for disadvantaged groups such as women and slaves. Islam allegedly spread in North Africa through just administration, and in the Balkans by integrating new believers with improved tax conditions and social prestige. Colonial missions since the 19th century have attracted people to an implied nexus of material well-being, civilisation, and European-style religion.

Force can – at least apparently – coerce people into adopting different ideas. Religious police in (for example) Iran and Saudi Arabia answer for the correct religious expression of those in their purview. The Inquisition in France and in Iberia worked to convert heretics – with varying success. Frankish armies spread Roman Catholicism eastwards in the Middle Ages. Religious wars and suppression shaped the histories of the Baltic tribes, the Hussites and the Huguenots.

On the other hand, persecution can drive religious faith and practice underground and strengthen the resolve of oppressed adherents – as in the cases of the Waldenses or the Baháʼí Faith.