Sacred Estrangement analyzes certain works by important American writers and thinkers in the context of the "rhetoric of conversion." Such analysis is especially valuable because it provides a reliable index of the relationship between the self and larger communities. Traditionally, "conversion" has served a socializing function, signifying that one has come into alignment with certain linguistic, behavioral, and cultural expectations. The socialization process is particularly apparent in the Christian conversion narratives of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: by...