2It is crucial that we understand t

2
It is crucial that we understand the database from which a theory is constructed. For instance, in much of
American academic psychology most research projects are undertaken with college and university students.
While this database has provided much important information, it is important to note that the age group is
relatively restricted and that there is limited racial, ethnic, and class diversity and that, in many universities
and colleges, the student population is restricted to people from a particular region or state.
Pastoral Psychol (2012) 61:879–894 883
Joel Allison conducted a comparative study of 20 male Protestant seminary students. He
compared seven who had had intense religious conversions, seven who had had mild
conversion, and six who had had no conversion experience at all. He found that almost
without exception those who converted had had absent, weak, or alcoholic fathers. Those
who did not convert came from intact families. He theorized that conversion for the first
group was adaptive and growth-producing; they were able to move away from dependence
upon and enmeshment with the mother by identifying with strong father figures, namely
God and Jesus. Allison’s is one of the few psychoanalytically oriented studies to view the
adaptive element of conversion as constructive (Allison1966, 1968, 1969).
The most recent and substantial empirical research in the psychology of conversion has
been generated by Lee Kirkpatrick and various colleagues (Kirkpatrick1992, 1995, 1997,
2005; Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1990) Guided by a nuanced appropriation of attachment
theory, Kirkpatrick has provided the field with one of the most sophisticated and sustained
approaches to conversion in the last 20 years.
Ullman, Allison, and Kirkpatrick provide us with excellent models for how to do
comprehensive, comparative research among adult populations in order to provide a more
accurate empirical picture of religious and spiritual change.