Evangelical transformation: Learning the three-dimensional perception of reality

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the particular perception of the world Baptists start to learn during their conversion which I call the three-dimensional perception of reality. This concept refers to the ability to incorporate narratives from the Bible into everyday life events and interpret both personal stories and world events accordingly, thereby making the Bible ever relevant. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I show how events from the believers' daily lives are perceived and explained in the light of biblical stories. Regardless of the fact that the two are separated in time and in space, the biblical story is still seen as a proto-event to the current one. No matter how diverse the believers' experiences, they are capable of finding an equivalent episode in the Bible. The scripture, therefore, is ever present in the believers' lives, as a source of meaning and interpretation.