Perspective transformation among mainland Chinese intellectuals reporting Christian conversion while in the United States

The purpose of this study was to better understand perspective transformation among Mainland Chinese intellectuals who have reported Christian conversion since coming to the United States. A purposive sample of ten participants was selected by the pastors in their respective churches. A total of seventeen in-depth interviews were taped and analyzed using the constant comparative method.; The major findings of this study were three-fold and centered around the strong suggestion that cultural differences play a determinative role in defining the nature and process of perspective transformation. First, Christian conversion and cross-cultural adjustment both resulted in significant perspective transformations evidenced in a metaphysical worldview shift attendant to Christian conversion and a change from a collectivist to more of an individualist psychological orientation attendant to adjusting to the West.; Second, these changes were strongly informed by both the distant contexts of the mother culture (the Chinese dominant values of family, filial piety, and social connectedness) as well as the immediate American context. In this regard, the meaning of conversion appeared as adoption into a new Chinese family, the Chinese Christian church, and God was seen as a loving omnipotent Father and provider.; Third, the process of perspective transformation for most was driven primarily by a process of non-reflective assimilative learning within the contexts of Western culture and the Chinese Christian community and secondarily by critical self reflection.; The main conclusion from this study was that cultural differences led to a model of perspective transformation among Mainland Chinese which differs from Mezirow's model primarily on the role of critical reflection and the determinative role of context. A retooled version of Mezirow's notion of "assimilative learning" was the model to emerge. Congruent with a Chinese epistemological and psychosocial orientation was the discovery that the change process primarily involved non-reflective responses to the experiences of disequilibrium. The accumulation of these responses and the influences of a new social grouping and context (i.e., the Chinese Christian church and the American culture of individualism) gradually created new "habits of expectation" which defined the nature of the perspective transformations.