The construction of one’s identity is a search for a self that one would like to understand as “authentic”. This cognitive shorthand (which I argue is no different from being normative) that we use to try to box ourselves into certain categories is not just a violent process but also a process of constructing our rationality. From an academic lens of my reading of religion in organizational studies and beyond, I examine my experience of struggling with being a devout Christian, a person who on number of occasions has preached in church, to turning towards what can probably be identified as atheism. I use this frame of reference to try to argue that religion while being social is extremely personal in creating our rational frames of reference. And therefore, in a sense, the idea of constructing our identity, especially when it comes to religion, lies fundamentally entrenched within the construction of our ‘self’, which I further argue is the construction of our own rationality. However, through the idea of my own journey I explicate the temporal shifts in rationality which requires social interactions to confirm one’s own shift in rationality which I read through the lens of constitutional imagination. This, I argue, leads us towards understanding an idea of ‘constitutional rationality’, which simply means a rationality frame that is constituted through social processes (social because of experiences that are firmly grounded in trying to understand the ‘other’ in reference to the self). In other words, the idea that what we say makes sense to us can only exist when we believe something is rational, that is to say, making sense is firmly located in beliefs. Therefore, I argue that, conversion of religion is a violent conversion of our rationality.
