deathbed conversion

deathbed conversion

The adoption of a particular religion when one's death is near. A: "I didn't know Rita was Catholic." B: "She wasn't, not until her deathbed conversion." I see a lot of deathbed conversions when I work in the hospital—people seem to need religion especially as they near the end of their lives.
See also: deathbed
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • deathbed
  • be remembered as (something)
  • be remembered as/for something
  • at the end of (one's) fingertips
  • at (one's) expense
  • at expense
  • at somebody's expense
  • at someone's expense
  • be in (one's) good graces
  • be in somebody's good graces
References in periodicals archive
He reportedly said: "Did you hear about Ian Paisley's deathbed conversion to Catholicism?
But this is a deathbed conversion and admittance of failure.
These remarks about deathbed conversion are ironic.
(Many of the same commentators had declared Christopher Hitchens another Augustine or Saint Paul in the making, and had not only hoped for-- a good thing--but expected his deathbed conversion, no matter how often Hitchens assured them it would never come.) Just as Kourtney Kardashian was lauded as a pro-life hero back in 2009 when she revealed in an interview that she could not bring herself to abort her unborn child, conceived out of wedlock, so Jillette became, for a moment, the potential new face of the Catholic Church in America.
Is this another photographer grown weary of his metier, like Cartier-Bresson who embraced drawing in his later years in a sort of deathbed conversion? Simon Lee is, instead, embracing other people's vision and memory.
He admitted imbibing enough "to kill or stun the average mule." [bar] Diagnosed with cancer in 2010 he said any deathbed conversion could be attributed to sickness, dementia or drugs.
In the opening poem, "Traveling to Oklahoma for My Grandmother's Funeral, I Write a Poem about Wallace Stevens," Rader writes about "the priest attending to Stevens" who swore "he made a deathbed conversion // To Catholicism, a claim his daughter denies.
Even the morally upright Jimmy Carter undergoes something of a (political) deathbed conversion following the invasion of Afghanistan, a change of heart that the authors suggest was motivated by the quest for "personal and partisan credibility among voters" (p.
Surely the corrected version of the Huxley-Wilberforce "debate" and Jim Moore's deconstruction of Darwin's legendary deathbed conversion have sunk in by now?
Also in the news this week was Labour's plan for a referendum on proportional representation, a deathbed conversion that has something of the air of tragi-comic farce about it.
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "This is a deathbed conversion from a party facing defeat." However, he said it was a step in the right direction.
GORDON BROWN''S deathbed conversion to voting reform for the Commons is too little, too late, a would-be Liverpool MP warned.
Castro's apparent deathbed conversion to a religion with no Cuban adherents is the seal on this gruesome pact."
It's all a bit reminiscent of what was quite literally the deathbed conversion of Karl Rove's mentor and W.'s great friend Lee Atwater, the legendary South Carolina GOP operative and smearmeister who ran Poppy Bush's successful 1988 campaign, where his piece de resistance was the Willie Horton ad.
Is Gabo perhaps hinting that a deathbed conversion to carnality is the Last Best Rite ?