Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This paper focuses on how first-generation Bahá’ís view dreams and visions as confirming their choice to become Bahá’í. It presents life story interviews, highlighting the significance of their dream narratives in religious conversion. The study emphasizes that these dreams integrate their prior religious identity, mainly through the appearance of messengers of God serving as supernatural agents, which conforms to Bahá’í beliefs in progressive revelation. It advocates for anthropological attention to Bahá’í dream accounts, presenting dreams as premonitions or encouragements for conversion and acknowledging leaving a previous faith. The paper calls for investigating dreams’ bridging function, viewed by converts as a nonhuman and non-institutional force aiding conversion. It aims to explore agency in dreams concerning religious conversion by analyzing dream accounts from first-generation Bahá’ís’ life stories, illustrating how dreams influence and transform individual beliefs.
Source: Entangled Religions
Author: Tova Makhani-Belkin
Institution: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4402488956