The flip side of this freedom is the opportunity to convert. In some sense this is an essential element of the American experience. In Louisville there is a Christian church with 15,000 members. And Mormons, always on the lookout for converts, take their largest number from those who once warmed the pews of a baptist church. There is no shame in conversion.
Life often demands a radical change of direction.
And more than that, conversion is at the core of a vital religious tradition. It is not too strong to say that any religion, Baptist, Jewish, or Muslim, that is not attractive to others, that does not appear to at least some outsiders as a viable answer to life's most important questions, that does not welcome the stranger seeking the transcendent, that does not have a steady stream of first generation converts, has lost a good bit of that which brought it into existence in the first place. Do not fear conversion. It is, after all, the freedom to hear and heed the voice of the Living God.