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List of converts to Christianity

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The following is a list of notable people who converted to Christianity from a different religion or no religion. This article addresses only past voluntary professions of faith by the individuals listed, and is not intended to address ethnic, cultural, or other considerations.

List of notable converts to Christianity

From Agnosticism or Atheism

From Buddhism

From Cao Dai

From Confucianism

Note: It is debated whether Confucianism is a religion and some Confucians who became Christians considered themselves to remain Confucian in philosophy.

From Hinduism

From Islam

The World Christian Encyclopedia estimates that, within the United States, there may be as many as twenty thousand converts from Islam to Christianity every year. Additionally, Ahmad Al-Katani suggests in an interview on Aljazeera that in Africa, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity every year. Furthermore, although there are Christian converts in the Middle East, there are currently no definitive figures available as Christian converts are usually persecuted in this region (and may keep their conversion hidden from society), and therefore can not be reliably numbered.

From Judaism

The Jewish Encyclopedia gives some statistics on conversion of Jews to Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity (which it calls "Greek Catholicism"). Some 2,000 European Jews converted to Christianity every year during the 19th century, but in the 1890s the number was running closer to 3,000 per year, — 1,000 in Austria Hungary (Galizian Poland), 1,000 in Russia (Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania), 500 in Germany (Posen), and the remainder in the English world.

File:1st Earl of Beaconsfield.jpg
Benjamin Disraeli, convert from Judaism to Christianity.
Georg Jellinek, convert from Judaism to Christianity.
Paul of Tarsus, convert from Judaism to Christianity.

From Manichaeanism

From Paganism

Paganism is a term which, from a Western perspective, has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or cultic practices or beliefs of any folk religion, and of historical and contemporary polytheistic religions in particular.

While the term has historically been used to denote adherents of any non-Abrahamic faith, for the purposes of this list, only adherents of non-major polytheistic, shamanistic, pantheistic, or animistic religions will be listed in this section.

Constantine I, convert from Paganism to Christianity.
File:Bateme de Clovis par St Remy.jpg
Statue of baptism of Clovis I, a convert from Paganism to Christianity.
File:JomoKenyatta.gif
Jomo Kenyatta, convert from Paganism to Christianity.
Rollo of Normandy, convert from Paganism to Christianity.

From Sikhism

From Zoroastrianism

Prior religion undetermined

  • Tony Fontane - popular recording artist in the 1940s and 1950s

Former converts

The people listed in this section made a notable conversion to Christianity that had a significant impact on their careers, public, or private lives. However, they may not have continued in the Christian faith for life. As noted under individual entries, some converted to another religion, returned to a prior religion, or renounced their faith. Some entries are also listed here because the faith of their later lives is sufficiently disputed, and it appears unlikely that they continued to practice a Christian religion.

See also

Notes and references

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  1. Sin: An Honest Mistake?, by Kirk Cameron, Boundless Webzine. From the introduction: "But much more noteworthy than his acting career was his conversion to Christianity. Kirk was not raised in a church-going home and described himself as a devout atheist from a very young age." (Accessed 13 June 2007)
  2. "I was brought up as an agnostic... and when I first became a Christian in the Seventies I didn't really know what it was I'd adopted." Faith in Practice: Holding on to the Mystery of Love, by Bruce Cockburn as told to Cole Morton, Third Way, September 1994, page 15. (Accessed 13 June 2007)
  3. "He converted from atheism to Christianity in his twenties after seeing how radically his patients' faith transformed their experience of suffering, and after reading several works by C.S. Lewis." The Question of God: Interview with Francis Collins, WGBH Educational Foundation, 2004 (Accessed 14 June 2007)
  4. René Girard:A Biographical Sketch, by James G. Williams
  5. ;
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  69. http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2007/200701/20070116.html
  70. Malika Oufkir: the American Making of a Moroccan Star
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  87. Online bio - http://www.ariel.org/bioagf.htm
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  92. A Brief Biography of Paul S.L. Johnson from the Present Truth Library, which catalogues the works of Paul S.L. Johnson.
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  94. Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Lehrs, Karl.
  95. Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-679-41351-0. p. 200.
  96. Duquin, Lorene Hanley, A Century of Catholic Converts, Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington, Indiana, 2003, pp. 114-116.
  97. http://bpsports.net/bpsports.asp?ID=5477
  98. The Observer
  99. Online Bio at http://www.jewsforjesus.org/about/headquarters/moishe
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  102. Garcia, Laura. “Edith Stein — Convert, Nun, Martyr.” Crisis 15, no. 6 (June 1997): 32-35
  104. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/yulee.html
  106. ;
  111. God's Invisible Hand: The Life and Work of Francis Cardinal Arinze, an Interview with Gerard O'Connell, pp. 12–21 (Ignatius Press, 2006) ISBN 978-1-58617-135-3
  124. http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc8p.htm
  127. D.H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford 1978). ISBN 0-19-282038-9.
  130. ,
  133. ,
  136. http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_4_04.htm
  139. [http://www.carleton.ca/gallery/Creature/Bios.html}
  143. Green, John Richard. "A short history of the English people".
  148. Allen, Grant. "Anglo-Saxon Britain".,
  150. ,
  159. ,
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  170. Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology By Richard J. Mouw, Mark A. Noll (Accessed 14 June 2007)
  171. Biography.com: Larry Flynt
  172. Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail: Maharajah Duleep Singh.
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