In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss why many conversion stories from Muslims lead to Protestant churches instead of Catholic ones. Jimmy explores the anecdotal nature of these reports and raises questions about their accuracy, emphasizing the need for direct evidence of these experiences.
Transcript:
Caller: We hear so many wonderful conversion stories from the Muslim world of Jesus appearing in dreams and pointing people to Jesus. But almost every conversion story brings them to a Protestant church. And I am just so confused about why it’s not brought straight to a Catholic church. And I wonder if you have a theory.
Jimmy Akin: Well, this is a subject I’ve been aware of for a while, and I’ve been doing research on it, and I can tell you the present state of my research. So there are anecdotal reports, primarily coming out of the Protestant world, of people who were Muslim who had a dream of Jesus and then ended up becoming convinced of the Christian faith. And they have a wide range of different levels of practice. In some cases, they are in situations where they basically keep their faith to themselves, or they only talk with other people online about it, and they’re not able to actually get baptized and become part of a local Christian community. There are others who are fortunate enough to be able to do that. At the present time, I don’t have anything more than just anecdotal accounts. And so that raises several questions in my mind. One of them is, is this a real phenomenon? Because it could be that this is not a real phenomenon, that these stories are made up or exaggerations. Some of them could even be hoaxes, because we’re dealing with essentially a rumor network about these. And whenever you’re dealing with a rumor network, you don’t want to put too much faith in the rumors that are circulating. I’m familiar with multiple rumor networks on other topics, not this, but on other subjects. And frequently the rumor networks are not very reliable. So what I’ve been trying to do is contact people who have direct personal knowledge of these so that I’m not simply dependent. I mean, I’d love this to be true. I hope it is true. But I’ve been looking for people who have direct personal knowledge of the situation, and thus far, I’ve had trouble finding people with direct personal knowledge of the situation. So I suspect there may be a significant element of exaggeration or rumor inaccuracy here. So I’m not even sure if this is a sizable phenomenon. Now, Jesus can appear to anybody in history, and I’m sure that he sometimes appears to people with a Muslim background. But whether there is a present wave of Muslim conversions because of dreams of Jesus as opposed to other societal factors, that’s something I’m. I’m currently leaving open because I just have not been able to get the kind of data that I would need to to validate This I do have, I have located like books about this and I have, you know, I have read books on this subject, but the data just is not concrete enough for me to be able to move this off of the. It’s just a rumor possibility and conclude that there is definitely a real and notable phenomenon here. Assuming though that there is a real and notable phenomenon here. Well, I would say a couple of things about the reported difference between them becoming Protestant and then becoming Catholic. There are several factors I could see that are, or that could be responsible for that. The first one is a variation on the initial question of could this be a reporting artifact? Maybe there are lots of conversions to the Catholic faith and you’re just not hearing about them. In part because Catholics have a longstanding presence in the Middle east, including in Muslim countries, and they’ve learned to keep their mouths shut about situations like this. In fact, I’ve worked with, with Muslim converts in the Middle east and we’ve taken very significant steps and elsewhere, not just in the Middle east, but elsewhere, and we’ve taken very significant steps to keep their identities private so that they’re not put in danger in their society or from their own family or things like that. So it may simply be that Catholics are more careful about talking about these matters compared to some of our more freewheeling Protestant friends. So it could be a data reporting artifact that is responsible for any disparity that’s perceived here. Another possible factor that could be present is Protestants tend to be more free wheeling about their Christian community. Having a purely online relationship with people who share the Christian faith is something that many in the Protestant world might be more open to. Whereas Catholics being a sacramental faith, which some Protestants are also sacramental, but not all of them. There are other Protestants who are notably desacramentalized Catholics might, you know, be more insistent on, you need to become part of a local Christian community. And if there’s not a local Christian community that can be, that’s publicly identified and can be found in their area, then they might, they might go with the more loosey goosey, you don’t need to be baptized, you don’t need to attend a local church, it’s sufficient to hang out in an Internet chat room. And so that could be part of what’s going on here. And given that reality, it could be that, you know, well, that’s better than no contact with other Christians. And so some of them might be directed to find that kind of community. So I would say there are multiple unknowns here and that prevents me from having any firm opinion in this area because of all the unknowns. But. But there are also factors that could be playing a role. This could be a data reporting artifact. It could be that there are cultural factors in certain forms of evangelicalism that are different than in the Catholic Church that are responsible. And so I think there are multiple possibilities here. And if I was on one side or the other, I wouldn’t be trying to hold this out as, oh, this is proof that we’re right because I don’t even know if this is a notable phenomenon, if it’s happening in any notable way right now. And there are multiple possible explanations for the appearances that you’ve described.
Caller: Interesting. Thank you. Those are very thoughtful theories and I appreciate you taking the time to share them.
Jimmy Akin: No problem. Happy to be of assistance.
Cy Kellett: Thank you, Sarah. That has brought us right to the break. Three lines open right now. If you’re not a Catholic and you’re you’d like to share why with us, Jimmy Akin is our guest.