True stories of changed lives
Famous Christian conversions
Some of history's most striking conversions to Christianity — slave traders and slaves, skeptics and scholars, soldiers and sadhus — told not by biographers but by the converts themselves. Each links to the full account, free to read and available as a clean edition.
Foundational & classic spiritual autobiographies
Augustine — Confessions
Augustine was an ambitious teacher of rhetoric who chased worldly success and followed the Manichaean sect for some nine years. Under the influence of Bishop Ambrose at Milan he converted in 386, was baptized in 387, and became a priest and then Bishop of Hippo.
Teresa of Ávila — The Life of St. Teresa of Ávila, Written by Herself
Born into a wealthy Ávila family, Teresa entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in 1535 and at first lived a comfortable, lax religious life. She underwent a deepening conversion to intense interior prayer and went on to found the reformed Discalced Carmelites.
John Bunyan — Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
Bunyan was a tinker who, by his own account, lived a profane and irreligious young life. After his marriage he was convicted of his sin, converted, joined the Nonconformist Bedford meeting, and became a preacher, ultimately spending twelve years imprisoned for refusing to stop preaching.
John Woolman — The Journal of John Woolman
Woolman was a successful Mount Holly shopkeeper and tailor whose work as a conveyancer, asked to write bills of sale for enslaved people, awakened his conscience. He deliberately scaled back his business to free time for itinerant preaching, becoming a leading antislavery voice within the Society of Friends.
Dramatic conversions & evangelists
John Newton — An Authentic Narrative
John Newton went from a profane seaman and slave-trade participant to an evangelical Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer; in later years he became an outspoken abolitionist.
George Müller — A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller, Written by Himself
George Müller turned from a thieving, dissolute university student into a devout philanthropist who cared for thousands of orphans, trusting God for every provision rather than soliciting funds.
J. Hudson Taylor — A Retrospect
J. Hudson Taylor was converted as a teenager in England and answered a call to inland China, founding the China Inland Mission and devoting his life to evangelism there.
Charles G. Finney — Memoirs of the Rev. Charles G. Finney, Written by Himself
A skeptical young lawyer, Charles Finney was converted in 1821 at Adams, New York, abandoned the law for preaching, and became one of America's most influential revivalists.
Peter Cartwright — Autobiography of Peter Cartwright
By his own account a wild, card-playing youth, Peter Cartwright was converted at a camp meeting around 1801 and gave his life to Methodist preaching as a frontier circuit rider.
Charles Chiniquy — Fifty Years in the Church of Rome
After about twenty-five years as a Roman Catholic priest, Chiniquy left the Church and, with much of his French-Canadian congregation, joined the Presbyterian Church, becoming a prominent Protestant minister.
Conversion narratives of the enslaved & formerly enslaved
Olaudah Equiano — The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself
Converted to evangelical Protestant Christianity, Equiano bound his new faith to the abolitionist cause, devoting his freedom to preaching against the slave trade.
Mary Prince — The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself
Taught to read by Moravian missionaries in Antigua, Prince embraced the Moravian faith and was baptized, and her Christian conviction sustained her through bondage and her fight for freedom.
Jarena Lee — Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Written by Herself
After conversion and an experience of sanctification, Lee was at last sanctioned to preach by AME founder Richard Allen, becoming the denomination's first authorized female preacher and proclaiming Methodist holiness wherever she traveled.
Amanda Smith — An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith
Smith details her conversion and experience of sanctification within Holiness Methodism, recounting revivals, camp meetings, and a life of faith framed throughout as "the Lord's dealings" with her.
Captives & prisoners who ministered to their captors
Patrick of Ireland — Confessio (The Confession of St. Patrick)
A nominal Christian boy, enslaved among strangers, turned to God in his loneliness on the Irish hills — then chose to go back to his captors' country as their apostle.
Vibia Perpetua — The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity
In the squalor of a Roman prison, a new mother chose Christ over family, freedom, and her own child — and her jailer Pudens was won over and converted during their captivity.
Mary Rowlandson — A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
Stripped of home, child, and safety, Rowlandson read her suffering as the hand of a faithful God — and her steadfast scripture-soaked faith became a testimony to all who read it.
Converts from other faiths & former opponents
Sadhu Sundar Singh — At the Master's Feet
Born into a Sikh family in the Punjab — and so hostile that he once burned a Gospel — he was converted after a vision and baptized in 1905, becoming a wandering Christian sadhu who preached for some twenty-five years until he vanished heading into Tibet.
Kanzo Uchimura — How I Became a Christian
Raised in a samurai family in the practices of Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucian duty, he was baptized in 1877 and became a leading Japanese Christian author, pacifist, and founder of the indigenous Non-church (Mukyokai) movement.
Native American conversion autobiographies
Questions about conversion stories
- Who are some famous people who converted to Christianity?
- Across the centuries: Augustine of Hippo; St. Patrick, kidnapped to Ireland as a slave; John Newton, the slave-ship captain who wrote 'Amazing Grace'; the formerly enslaved Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and Jarena Lee; the revivalist Charles Finney; the Indian sadhu Sundar Singh; and the Japanese writer Kanzo Uchimura — all of whom left first-person accounts of how they came to faith.
- What is a conversion story, or testimony?
- A conversion story (or testimony) is a first-person account of how someone came to Christian faith — the life they led before, the turning point, and the change that followed. The books gathered here are testimonies: people telling, in their own words, how they were changed.
- How did the Apostle Paul convert to Christianity?
- According to the Book of Acts, Paul — then Saul, a persecutor of Christians — was converted by a vision of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. He was struck blind for three days, was baptized, and went on to become the early church's foremost missionary.
- How did Augustine convert?
- In his Confessions, Augustine recounts hearing a child's voice in a Milan garden say 'take up and read.' He opened the Bible to Romans 13, was converted in 386, and was baptized by Ambrose the following year.
- What is the difference between a conversion and a testimony?
- A conversion is the change itself — turning to faith. A testimony is the telling of it. Every book here is a testimony: a person recounting their own conversion.
T.S. Baker Books — true stories of changed lives.