Here’s an interesting column by David Gibson from a couple of days ago about Catholics who have been raised as such from birth (often within a family structure), and those who convert to Catholicism later in life. Gibson mentions it himself, but William James’s discussion of conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience seems to reflect a preference for the latter. Peter Berger is quoted at the end of the piece as saying that “religion today is a choice, and we are all converts to one degree or another[.]” Maybe that’s right, though I wonder whether it might also be right to say that “choice” is a concept with many attendant and very different conceptions. — MOD [x-posted MOJ]