You’ll recall, I’m sure, all those stories you were told at church, youth group or summer camp about people, almost always the worst of sinners, who had wonderful, supernatural conversions. They turned from debauched lifestyles to Jesus, who set them on the right path and turned their lives around. I’m sure there were people who experienced something like this, but any overpowering emotional experience can produce similar results. Remember those high-profile conversions though? When Jewish Bob Dylan gave his life to Jesus and made gospel albums. My, how we rejoiced! Nicky Cruz of Run Baby Run fame, saved by Jesus from a life of knife crime. Doreen Irvine, one time prostitute, stripper, heroin addict and witch who turned to Jesus to find redemption, not to mention a best-selling book, From Witchcraft to Christ. Joni Eareckson who broke her neck diving into shallow water and, paralysed, called upon the Lord to help and restore her.

Boy, did we love these stories back in the early 1970s. I can’t remember how many times the church youth group was shown The Cross and the Switchblade, with Eric Estrada as Nicky Cruz and Pat Boone as David Wilkerson, the pastor who converted him. I know a dog-eared copy of From Witchcraft to Christ was passed round too and that we took a bus trip to see Doreen Irvine speak somewhere. Likewise Joni Eareckson’s and her best-seller. (I still have some admiration for Joni, who seems the most genuine of them all, despite making a living from her life-changing accident and subsequent conversion.)

Bob Dylan’s gospel albums? Not so much. Who wants to hear him torturing some less than sparkling songs about Jesus? Certainly not me, not now, not even then. Despite claiming he saw Jesus in a vision, Dylan’s love affair with JC was mercifully brief.

What I didn’t do at the time was ask questions of these stories, particularly whether they were really credible. It’s strange how all of their protagonists got best-sellers out of their miraculous conversions. How most hitched a ride on the Christian speaking circuit, not to mention the movies some of them had made of their stories. It seems a good living could be made from meeting Jesus. But credible? Not so much. Certainly Doreen Irvine’s story has been disputed and debunked. I should have asked too why Nicky Cruz and his gang were the only ones saved out of all of the knife gangs in New York in the 1960s. Was Jesus not interested in the others, nor their potential victims? What about their non-conversion stories? And Joni: why did she have to be paralysed for Jesus to get in touch? Was she really restored by him? Certainly not physically; she remains paraplegic to this day, still clinging to stories of how Jesus saved her. Does she not wonder why he didn’t act a few seconds earlier to prevent her terrible accident? (Apparently not: she ‘rationalises’ her accident as God discipline of her in order to bring her to himself. Nice God you got there, Joni).

I wish I had asked these questions back when I was a gullible teenager subject to the church’s propaganda, instead of lapping up the conversion porn they made sure came my way.