Is Propaganda the Only Way?

Can a community experience a conversion? Last night I was discussing James’ lectures on Conversion from Varieties of Religious Experience with a good friend of mine and we wondered such a question out loud. It seems that James is focusing on the experience of the individual in his discussion of conversion, but what about a community?

On the one hand people tend to join a community because they have already grasped a certain truth that is shared by all those in the community. A community may be the product of individual conversions and then is the place were people live into the new life found by conversion. On the other hand, it is not unheard of for a community to shift in its values and ethos. For example, the Republican party of the 1860s if very different from the Republican party of today. One could even argue that America as a culture has undergone a number of conversions as it slowly changes. It used to be a culture that embraced slavery and now no longer does.

Yet this gradual conversion is not the one that interests me. Such a conversion seems to happen because of outside influences and cultural trends. What I am wondering about is a sudden conversion of a group. One could say the Sneetches from the Dr. Seuss classic experienced a sudden conversion of sorts when they realized that the stars did not mean anything. Or in a more real observation, the events at Cane Ridge in 1801 was a conversion that shook individuals and a group as the majority of the people there experienced powerful spiritual experiences. Or the Azusa Street phenomenon in 1906 which led to the birth of the Pentecostal Movement is another example of a sudden group conversion.

So I am wondering how something of this nature happens. For those of us in church context, such a question can be very important. The church is a lumbering cruise ship that undergoes snail-like gradual conversions. How does a group, a church experience that sudden, powerful, moving conversion? Is it appropriate for a church to have such an experience? Currently I am skeptical that such a change can happen, but I am willing to be converted in my beliefs.