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- Title
YEHOVA'NIN ŞAHİTLERİ'NİN SOSYAL PROFİLLERİ VE ÜYE KAZANMA KALIPLARI: İSTANBUL KURTULUŞ CEMAATİ ÖRNEĞİ.
- Authors
BAŞARAN, Barış
- Abstract
Jehovah's Witnesses are one of the few western religious communities of Western origin that has been able to exhibit steady growth in Turkey and around the world with its unique understanding of worships and interpretations of Christianity. The witnesses first arose around Protestant religious movements in the United States under the name "Bible Students". Although they were initially seen as a sect of Christian origin, but over time, due to peculiar doctrines they display they began to be considered as a new world religion. In the first part of this study, the demographic profile and patterns of religious recruitment of Istanbul Kurtulus congregation will be analysed together with data from previous studies on congregations in other countries, and ways and forms of recruitment in Türkiye for ordinary Jehovah's Witnesses to the new religion will be discussed extensively. The data pool which our study is based was obtained from field notes of the services we have attended for three years, data from informants of the congregation and semi structured interviews with 21 members. The first and key finding of our research is that religious conversion patterns in our sample are much more closely in aligned with social network theory than in the cases of other countries. Additionally, gender is identified as an important factor of mediation for conversion, with networks of kinship playing an active role. In the second part of this study, based on these insights, we will offer two basic types of recruitment orientation which we call as "Accomodation" and "Pioneering". These two orientations seem to correspond to two different social motives and needs in our sample. In the last part of this study, conversion experiences of two interviewees will be elaborated as representing these two motives.
- Subjects
SOCIAL network theory; JEHOVAH'S Witnesses; CONVERSION (Religion); GENDER
- Publication
Pamukkale University Journal of Social Sciences Institute / Pamukkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2023, Vol 59, p45
- ISSN
1308-2922
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.30794/pausbed.1275155