"At some point, we need to decide if Jesus Christ is who He said He is," writes Gallagher, editor of the Christian cultural magazine Radix, in the introduction to this book. "But conversion involves more than intellectual assent to the deity of Jesus... What God wants is obedience, and that begins with an initial act of repentance." With that definition, Gallagher sets the foundation for the 48 conversion stories that follow, stories of people who turned away from the life they once knew and entered into a relationship with God based on obedience to the Bible and God's will. Some are familiar: Bob Dylan's role in the conversion of Noel Paul Stookey; Anne Lamott's intellectually humiliating "moment of resignation"; C.S. Lewis's reluctant conversion from theism to Christianity. Gallagher also wisely includes many stories of "ordinary" people that would otherwise go unnoticed by a wider public. There's drug addict Mary Phillips, who "went on a mission to find out if Jesus could liberate me." And Virginia Dost, led to faith in Christ through the unlikely route of Indian religious leader Jiddu Krishnamurti. While the stories effectively underscore the variety of ways people experience encounters with Jesus, the storytelling itself is often flat and undistinguished. Still, Gallagher does make her point: whether people come to faith in Christ through a dramatic, otherworldly incident or through a gradual, thoughtful process, those who have had an authentic conversion undergo a transformation that redirects the course of their lives. (Dec.)
