It was back in 2000 that Craig Harline found the journal of a young man named Jacob Rolandus, who would become the main subject of his new book, Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America (Yale, Sept.; starred review in PW October 10). In other words, he’s been thinking about Jacob Rolandus for a long, long time.“The way I’ve always worked is to go into archives to look for interesting documents to do with religious history and rather obscure people,” explains Harline, a professor of history at Brigham Young University since 1992. “When I found Jacob’s journal and it was so long and detailed I got interested. Part of it was in code and that always makes it interesting, too.”
A more contemporary interest also compelled Harline. In Conversions, he tells the parallel story of Michael Sunbloom, who converted to Mormonism in 1973, creating conflict in his family just as Rolandus had in his centuries before. “We don’t know very much about how families were affected emotionally by conversion after the Reformation,” says Harline. “I wanted to show that the 17th-century story is still with us, and how the modern story will help us better it. It’s a symbiotic process: the old story isn’t dead, and the modern story has more depth than you thought it did.”
Harline believes this book is especially relevant to general readers. “I’m not sure the Reformation has been immediately accessible to an American audience, and with Conversions I tried to show what a Reformation story might have to do with life right now,” he says. “Academics and particularly Reformation scholars are part of my audience, but I am really writing for people who are interested in family relationships and anybody affected by conversion.”
Conversion is a common experience, Harline believes, and to struggle with conversion within the family is to have to open oneself up to someone who has become very different. This is where Harline’s subject expands beyond the topic of family to modern-day struggles with religious difference in general. “We are most willing to open our minds to someone who is different within the family,” Harline says. “If I have that experience, then I might be willing to build bridges and seek reconciliation with a stranger, too, with whom I have conflicts about ideology and religion. For anybody who has had to deal with religious difference—that is who I am writing to.”
John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, is excited about adding Harline’s newest book to their list. “Conversions is significant as a work of historical scholarship and also as a fine example of our recently launched New Directions in Narrative History series,” says Donatich. “The book is narrative-driven though rigorously researched; it runs parallel stories of personal crises and cultural conversions that are centuries apart but share a common humanity. It’s moving and powerful.”
