Leaving the Church Behind: Applying a Deconversion Perspective to Evangelical Exit Narratives

Abstract

The motivating factors and structural processes of religious exits have been important inquiries in the sociology of religion and are increasingly important to the field of non-religious studies. Based on qualitative research with 20 former post-Boomer Evangelical Christians, this article takes a phenomenological–hermeneutical approach to understanding religious exiting by examining narratives of deconversion. The narrative data presented in this article depict Evangelical exits from a deconversion perspective where exiters emphasize breaking away from the constraints of hegemonic Christianity rather than turning to secularity. The findings suggest that framing the intentional rejection of faith as ‘deconversion’ transforms exit narratives into a necessary cultural repertoire that encourages individuals to challenge religious domination and makes finding acceptance and validation easier in an established community of non-believers. By emphasizing the negative impact of religion, even after non-religious worldviews have been adopted, deconverts come to know who they currently are in the light of who they once were.

Introduction

The idea that people can freely pick and choose their belief systems is a modern social phenomenon. Some scholars argue that the United States has evolved into a post-traditional society characterized by the immense amount of doubt and choice that surrounds people (Giddens). As the cultural and social milieu changes, so do people’s religious preferences, allowing the emergence of a robust ‘spiritual marketplace’ for religious consumers that both represents and supports mobility in a pluralistic society. In a market context, the members of religious institutions are ‘spiritual entrepreneurs’ who can alter their spiritual styles based on their social and psychological needs (Berger; Roof). This allows individuals to become religious ‘seekers’ who move in and between religions/denominations until they find a belief system that favors their current life-styles; this is a growing trend for post-Boomer generations (Roof). Religious mobility is not only an important part of religious studies, encompassing movement into and between religions or denominations, but is also crucial to the growing field of non-religion studies (see Lee), looking at movement out of religion altogether.

The macro-structural social conditions that construct and perpetuate the spiritual marketplace in the United States are important and have been understood primarily from a rationalist perspective that focuses on logical thought at the expense of non-rational factors like emotions. A large portion of the religious mobility literature is dominated by this approach, which is represented by the religious economies model (Stark and Finke) rather than by the traditional theoretical paradigm that recognizes religion as a human enterprise (Berger) and participation in terms of collective experience and effervescence (Durkheim). Approaching religious mobility strictly in terms of choice and rationality is much too reductionist, as this approach ignores to a large extent the emotional ‘lived’ experiences of religious shoppers. Uncovering the micro-interactional and emotional experiences that motivate religious change is just as important as understanding the macro-structural conditions (see Borer and Schafer). Religious mobility, regardless of direction, involves social acts individuals must perceive, interpret, and classify (Mead).

This article seeks to expand sociological understanding of religious mobility by focusing on exiting Evangelical Christianity; in so doing, it reveals the structural dynamics and symbolic meanings which are associated with the experience of deconversion. The analysis, informed by a phenomenological–hermeneutical perspective, draws on data from in-depth interviews with 20 individuals who constructed exit narratives from a deconversion perspective. I begin by highlighting the ambiguity associated with understanding exactly what scholars are describing when they use the terms ‘conversion’ and ‘deconversion’ to contribute to the emerging literature on deconversion and non-religion studies. The findings of my analysis reveal a multifaceted understanding of deconversion as involving “non-religious phenomena … primarily defined by [their] opposition to religion” (Lee 131). Deconversion is both a dynamic multi-stage experience of transformative change marked by both liberation from and opposition against religion and a repertoire of symbolic meaning that supports a rapidly growing secular culture. I conclude by offering implications for the inclusion of non-belief in the spiritual marketplace.

Exiting Religion: Conversion or Deconversion?

Several scholars have examined the range of conversion phenomena, including identifying motivations and conceptualizing models (see Gooren; Lofland and Stark; Snow and Machalek). Their investigations resulted in a broadening of early conceptualizations that understood conversion as a spiritually transforming experience (James) to a diluted generic term that describes an array of phenomena, ranging from religious changes, such as the alteration of religious identity (Cragun and Hammer), to secular transformations marked by “radical personal change of life and worldview, and a commitment to a new community” (Gooren 154).¹ Conversion has been defined from a macro-structural perspective as “a process of religious change that takes place in a dynamic force field of people, events, ideologies, institutions, expectations, and orientations” (Rambo 5) as well as from an micro-interactional perspective as “a change in one’s universe of discourse” (Snow and Machalek 170). Although this conceptual expansion encourages different methodological approaches from multiple perspectives, the study of conversion is fundamentally limited by a plethora of ambiguous conceptualizations that do not distinguish conversion from other types of radical change (ibid).²

A recent addition to terminology describing religious mobility is ‘deconversion’ which is conceptualized as a particular exit characterized by “disaffiliations without re-affiliation” (Streib 1).³ Unlike denomination switching, deconversion occurs when individuals reject their beliefs, cease participation, and have no foreseeable plans to re-convert.⁴ However, is this not a form of conversion? Scot McKnight and Hauna Ondrey propose that movement toward one thing is simultaneously movement away from another; conversion to is analogous with conversion from. Hence, movement away from religion is essentially movement toward secularity. In his seminal work examining the loss of faith, John Barbour states that “In one sense, every conversion is a deconversion, and every deconversion is a conversion” (3). According to Ryan Cragun and Joseph Hammer, the term ‘deconversion’ is much too reductionist. They argue against limiting the use of conversion solely to describe religious entrances, claiming that rejecting religious faith is undeniably a change in one’s religious identity and should be viewed as a conversion (159). Together, these scholars provide a strong argument for eliminating the use of ‘deconversion’ as a descriptive term for religious exits, if all religious change is really a conversion of sorts.

Jumping on the ‘pro-conversion/anti-deconversion’ bandwagon might be easy if one only examines reasons for and stages of exiting religion. A structural perspective alone, however, is limited by its narrow scope and does not offer a complete picture of religious change in a post-modern world. By applying an interpretative lens to his autobiographical data, Barbour finds that, while the processes of conversion and deconversion might be identical, the narratives of converts and deconverts are not. Barbour arrives at this insight by identifying four characteristics which are present in most deconversions. The first two—intellectual doubt and moral criticism—address the causal factors which precipitate deconversion, while the last two—emotional suffering and disaffiliation from the religious community—address how religious ‘exiles’ tell their stories, which indicates that the lived experiences of religious change must not be overlooked (see Harrold). Barbour concludes that “the ‘turning from’ and ‘turning to’ are alternative perspectives on the same process of personal metamorphosis, stressing either the rejected past of the old self or the present convictions of the reborn self” (3). One’s prevailing disposition, the embracement of either a conversion or deconversion perspective, shapes transformation outcomes and makes studying the experience of losing faith justifiable in its own right (Barbour; Harrold). Figure 1 presents a visual representation of the classic Christian conversion perspective (hereafter conversion perspective) and Barbour’s deconversion perspective.⁵

Figure 1. Conversion and Deconversion Perspectives.

The study of deconversion situates its focus on the rejection of religion rather than on the positive aspects of re-conversion to a non-religious worldview. As seen in Figure 1, the conversion perspective focuses on what is gained rather than on what is left behind (McKnight and Ondrey).⁶ Religion plays a major role in easing the convert’s transformation by providing an institutionalized set of guidelines for beliefs, behaviors, and expectations that are socially supported and reinforced (Berger; Gooren). One’s ideological destination is identified, embraced, and immediately available. A positive emotional response arises from a sense of control and reliance on a higher power, a sense of assurance, feelings of ecstasy, and liberation through self-surrender (James; Mahoney and Pargament). Biographical reconstruction relies on canonical metaphors (e.g. God is love), begins with forgiveness of the ‘old’ self, and culminates in a strong emphasis on continual affirmations of the ‘new’ self (Mahoney and Pargament). Personal transformation is marked by personality re-orientation, behavioral alterations, and the suspension of analytic reasoning (James; McKnight and Ondrey). The Christian conversion perspective encourages conformity within a system of religious hegemony and a privileged status in contemporary American society.

The deconversion perspective relies on crisis rhetoric to situate spiritual struggle at the narrative core, emphasizing movement away from faith (Barbour; Chalfant; Harrold). Ideological destinations are often ambiguous or unknown (Harrold). Disillusionment and disenchantment preceding deconversion provoke feelings of rejection, alienation, grief, and guilt (Adam; Harrold). Biographical reconstruction draws on “emotionally-charged metaphors” that convey emotional pain and become incorporated into the deconversion crisis rhetoric (Harrold 83; see also Barbour). The emphasis is kept on the loss of the old self and all religious ties while the individual reaffirms a commitment to seeking truth, morality, and community (Barbour; Harrold). The transformation from believer to non-believer is marked by eventual feelings of relief, liberation, and freedom (Barbour; McKnight and Ondrey) despite the stigmatized status of non-believers in the United States (Cragun et al.). The trajectory associated with the deconversion perspective is filled with difficult obstacles exiters must overcome to adopt a non-religious worldview that is unjustly stereotyped and socially devalued, which begs the question why somebody would intentionally choose this path.

Cragun and Hammer cite McKnight and Ondrey’s study of religious exiting among switchers and exiters, who, despite having identical exiting processes, were assigned the labels ‘convert’ and ‘apostate’, respectively. Cragun and Hammer find this problematic, claiming that the ‘apostate’ label “distinguishes them [exiters] from other converts in a way that suggests they have done something deviant” (160). They conclude by addressing the limitations of using the current terminology to discuss religious mobility, specifically how language favors religion over non-religion. While I can understand how these authors arrived at their conclusion, I believe a different interpretation can be offered. Philosophically, I agree with Cragun and Hammer’s proposition that non-religion is the default category at birth. However, discursive strategies ranging from moral campaigns to the development of civil religion, which are driven by a rhetorically constructed Christian narrative, have reified the relations of religious domination, creating a ‘realized morality’ and thereby privileging Christianity as the de facto default category in the United States (Bourdieu 77).

Those with privilege have power to enact domination by defining categories of acceptability and marginalization; religion is a privileged position and non-religion is not (Cragun and Hammer). When exit narratives take a ‘turning from’ perspective, using the term ‘deconversion’ does not favor religion over non-religion because the label, in and of itself, highlights the fundamental difference in conversion and deconversion narratives—breaking away from the power structure of hegemonic religious ideology (Barbour; see also Gramsci). Deconversion highlights the subjectivity of religious mobility by offering an alternative perspective to conversion, in which religious participation generates intellectual doubt and/or moral criticisms, leading to emotional distress and spiritual trauma. Believers’ inability to reconcile these issues produces questions that cannot be answered by dogma or reconciled by faith.⁷ Unanswered questions devolve into spiritual crises, which are only assuaged when re-constructed explanations, understandings, and biographies create new secular paradigms that replace old religious paradigms that malfunctioned. Thus, examining the negative impact of religious participation through deconversion narratives is a worthy and necessary avenue of inquiry.

Methods

This analysis relies on a qualitative study examining religious exit narratives of former Christian believers who have rejected their Evangelical affiliations (n=20). I was less concerned with macro-structural explanations and outcomes and more concerned with the lived experiences associated with exiting Christianity in the United States. This study is thus limited in terms of breadth and representativeness and is therefore not generalizable to the entire population of non-believers. I was also interested in exploring how deconverts re-construct new worldviews independent of religious belief. There were two criteria for sample inclusion: age and prior religious affiliation. I recruited participants between the ages of 18 and 46, which indicated their generational classification as either Gen-X or Millennial.⁸ In addition, I only recruited participants who formerly identified as Evangelical Christians, a Protestant category that makes up approximately 26.3% of the adult population in the US.⁹ Table 1 presents the sample characteristics.

Table 1. Sample Characteristics.

Participant	Sex	Age	Former Denomination	Non-Religious Identity
Adam	M	29	Non-Denomination	Atheist
Elizabeth	F	27	Reformed Presbyterian	Atheist
Kimberly	F	18	Non-Denomination	Atheist
Barclay	M	24	Southern Baptist	Atheist
Joe	M	39	Four Square	Atheist
Rodney	M	26	Non-Denomination	Atheist
George	M	29	Baptist	Atheist
Steve	M	27	Non-Denomination	Atheist
Edward	M	23	Baptist	Atheist
Stacey	F	27	Non-Denomination	Atheist
Mandy	F	23	Baptist	Spiritual, not Religious
Phil	M	34	Baptist	Spiritual, not Religious
Burton	M	29	Baptist	Spiritual, not Religious
Jane	F	42	Non-Denomination	Spiritual, not Religious
Mitch	M	46	Southern Baptist	Spiritual, not Religious
Jonnie	M	33	Non-Denomination	Spiritual, not Religious
Becca	F	34	Southern Baptist	Agnostic
Laura	F	33	Non-Denomination	Agnostic
Tom	M	34	Non-Denomination	Agnostic
Emma	F	27	Non-Denomination	Agnostic

Sample: Total N = 20 (m = 13, f = 7): mean age = 30; Atheist n = 10, Agnostic n = 4, Spiritual, not Religious n = 6.

Three types of non-believers were present in my sample: atheists, agnostics, and those who identified as ‘spiritual but not religious’ (hereafter SBNR). Together, these classifications, each of which has important characteristics which distinguish them from one another, contribute to the larger category of ‘spiritual nones’ (Kosmin et al.). Atheism is generally understood as a “lack of belief in a God or gods” (Bullivant 363). Most atheists will acknowledge that, while the existence of a higher power is possible, the probability of the existence of such a power is statistically so small that the more logical option is to reject the possibility. Agnosticism differs from atheism in that agnostics suspend their belief and disbelief in god, claiming that neither religion nor science can prove or disprove the claims of theism (Baggini 4). SBNR individuals maintain a “concern for spiritual issues but choose to pursue them outside the context of a formal religious organization” (Fuller 4). They can choose to address these issues in a variety of ways and are more concerned with personal development than with personal spirituality (ibid). Together the ‘unaffiliated’ or ‘unchurched’ category represented just under 20% of the US adult population in 2012 and continues to rise by as much as 660,000 people annually (Kosmin et al.). Millennials are identified as the largest age bracket (30 and under), making up 31% of the unaffiliated category.¹⁰

I recruited participants by getting involved with the area’s well-established secular community, which is comprised of a secular student group on the university’s campus, an atheist meet-up group with a large online membership, and a well-known humanist organization. My status as a self-identified agnostic facilitated entrance into both the secular and atheist groups, allowing me to recruit participants through convenience sampling. Since sociologists are unable to study religious experiences as they occur, they must rely on individuals’ accounts of what they experience (Yamane). Such accounts do not mirror reality; however, as the primary vehicle by which people construct and communicate the meaning of their experiences, they are useful data (Riessman; Yamane). In order to understand how participants assigned meaning to their religious exits, I took the conversational approach of interviewing and I used open-ended questions, simply asking participants to tell their stories. The participants were all familiar with my deconversion account prior to the interview, which helped create the rapport necessary for eliciting detailed descriptive narratives. I met participants either at my university office or in a location of their choice. Interviews lasted one to two hours; they were audio-recorded and then transcribed within two days of collection. In addition, pseudonyms were assigned to protect participants’ identities. I used an inductive analytic approach, following the guiding precepts of grounded theory (Charmaz) and line-by-line as well as focused coding techniques. On a few occasions I contacted specific participants for follow-up interviews, after seeing patterns of common themes across multiple narratives. Once I had completed data collection and analysis, I validated my results by presenting a preliminary version of the study’s findings to participants from each group. The data presented in this article should be interpreted as subjective discursive constructions, not as empirical facts (Riessman).

Findings

The participants in this study shared multiple types of stories about their experiences as Christian believers that shaped their cognitive and emotional dispositions. Upon exiting their Evangelical traditions, participants amalgamated these stories into a single cohesive account of religious exile that was told from a deconversion perspective and situated in their biographical narratives. Their deconversion stories emphasized negative cognitive, social, and emotional experiences with religion, difficulties in rejecting faith, movement away from religious belief and participation, and personal transformations. I organized participants’ deconversion experiences into three narrative stages. The first stage, pre-deconversion, is characterized by stories of experiencing spiritual doubt and emotional distress that evoked the re-evaluation of religious beliefs. The second narrative stage, cognitive deconversion, reflects the movement from belief to non-belief.¹¹ The final narrative stage, post-deconversion, is characterized by stories of personal transformation where participants made paradigmatic transitions by engaging in cognitive and social activities or what I call ‘paradigmatic work’.

Findings from this analysis offer an important phenomenological contribution to understanding the rejection of faith, suggesting that, while deconversion as a process is ambiguous and culminating, deconversion as a narrative is distinctive and perpetual. Evangelical deconversion narratives (1) symbolize fortitude through perspective, (2) form a discourse that offers ‘strategies of action’ for leaving religion, and (3) become a cultural repertoire that contributes to supporting the plausibility of non-religious worldviews (see Swidler).¹²

Pre-deconversion: Narratives of Spiritual Doubt

All of the participants in this study were raised in Christian homes and had been exposed to varying levels of religious socialization. None of them reported experiencing a conversion transformation, as they were unaware that living without religion was a option. The choice not to believe in God began to crystallize when the tenets of Evangelical Christianity were repeatedly contradicted by intellectual discrepancies and unexpected social realities, creating spiritually traumatic emotional distress that became the foundation for spiritual doubt. The atheist participants in this study consistently recounted instances of informational inconsistencies when scientific pedagogy and Evangelical dogma were juxtaposed (see Barbour). A common discrepancy across the narratives emerged from inconsistencies between theology and science. As George (atheist) explained:

He [the pastor] would preach about the Earth being less than 10,000 years old. Everything that we know about science, everything that we know about geology and the formation of the Earth completely contradicted everything I was hearing in church.

Trying to reconcile contradictions and discover which ‘truth’ was empirically correct required challenging the epistemological and moral exemplars of theism and science. Participants often turned to family members or pastors with their questions and were met with varying responses. George recalled his pastor “dancing around the issues like a politician”, while Edward (atheist) was encouraged to question as a way to stabilize his faith, claiming that

He [the youth pastor] told me that people question to get through shaky faith. The key was to keep reading the Bible. I kept reading and it made me feel better, but didn’t tell me anything. It just reinforced my questioning.

Participants recognized contradictions between religious teachings and the information they were receiving in the classroom, which contributed to the simultaneous processes of learning and unlearning (see J. Smith). Kimberly (atheist) said,

I started learning about some basic psychology of why we believe certain things and I found that my beliefs weren’t supported by much!

The idea that increased education is correlated to decreased belief in religious claims is not new and has been suggested by several scholars (Roof; Uecker, Regnerus and Vaaler). This supports Jesse Smith’s argument that there is a positive relationship between education and skepticism.¹³ Many of the atheist participants used skepticism to address intellectual discrepancies that religion could not answer and eventually arrived at the conclusion that theism and science were incommensurable.

For agnostic and SBNR participants, spiritual doubt resulted from confronting an unexpected social reality in their Christian communities. Experiencing rejection and hypocrisy began to invalidate their perceived authenticity of Christianity (see Harrold). Rejection often stemmed from failing to meet Christian expectations. Phil (SBNR) explained:

We were expected to be these [biblical] types of Christians, so we all tried to be the most Christian; the best of the best.

Becca (agnostic) was stigmatized for transgressing gender norms and was labeled an outcast by believers who considered her a “tomboy”. She did not fit into the “Christian mold”, which required a young woman to be “the girlie girl who always wore dresses”. Mandy (SBNR) described a similar experience, stating,

If you didn’t dress the right way, you weren’t part of the team. People just looked down on you.

Appearances and attitudes that defy Christian norms were typically perceived as dangerous problems that believers resolved by using hypocritical tactics such as gossip and rejection. John (SBNR) admitted:

We used prayer as a way to justify gossiping about somebody’s problems. Pretty soon the whole church knew what that person was going through.

Since believers assumed the responsibility of protecting the church community, gossip, stigma, and exclusion were morally justified according to their beliefs. John explained,

When people continued to live in sin, we had to exclude them. It was our responsibility to protect the community from Satan.

Spiritual doubt was the result of traumatic intellectual and social experiences that induced emotional distress. Feelings of guilt, rejection, depression, and self–abasement ensued in the pre-deconversion stage. Desiring acceptance only to be rejected was painful. Emma (agnostic) explained,

Christians are taught to be not in this world, but above this world. You don’t expect to be judged by people in church and letting your guard down because you think you’re safe intensifies the pain of betrayal.

For many people, religious participation is responsible for maintaining established social and moral orders. For these participants, however, religious participation compromised ontological security by destabilizing faith in church and community, producing “fateful moments” where participants were “forced to rethink fundamental aspects of [sic] existence” (Giddens 202–03).

Cognitive Deconversion: Narratives of Moving from Belief to Non-Belief

In the pre-deconversion narrative stage, participants confronted intellectual and behavioral discrepancies, which led them to serious consideration of whether to reject theism. The pre-deconversion stage was often gradual; however, consistent with Eric Chalfant’s findings, the actual moment of moving from belief to non-belief—what I refer to as ‘cognitive deconversion’—was instantaneous. An example of this rapid shift comes from Adam (atheist) who decided to explore the arguments of one of the most influential atheists, Richard Dawkins, by reading his book The God Delusion. Adam’s goal was to inform his Evangelical agenda of debating with non-believers; however, he was unexpectedly confronted with the paradox of his religious beliefs:

I was reading through one of the arguments that he [Dawkins] made in his book. I accepted the premise and followed step by step through the argument. When I got to the end I realized that it was a correct argument. I go back in my head to look for an error, but I accepted the premise, and I accepted the arguments. I had no choice but to accept the conclusion, and I am like F***. I didn’t expect that, and I didn’t know what it meant. Eighteen hours ago I was leading a Bible study and now I just read this thing that says God doesn’t exist, and I believe it.

Adam recalled the emotional difficulties and ideological ambiguities associated with leaving his faith, admitting that “in that moment, I had no idea what that meant for my life”.

Most participants had visceral responses to the experiences that precipitated their movement to non-belief, which, unlike conversion, is often a movement into an unknown (Harrold). This is where the religious economies model falls short of accurately capturing the deconversion experience. General assumptions of rational choice theory posit that religious institutions exist in a market dominated by individual preference. Success is dependent upon the institution’s ability to produce and market a desired spiritual product. It is competition that drives consumption among individuals looking to maximize rewards through social and divine exchanges (Stark and Finke 38; 42–3). However, deconversion among the non-believers in this study was not driven by the diversity of religious options (see Giddens) in the spiritual marketplace—participants had no plans to re-affiliate. Nor were they concerned with maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. The high cost of stigmatization, alienation, and exclusion (Cragun et al.) overshadowed any unforeseen benefit. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that there was nothing to gain from deconversion. As I will discuss below, breaking away from hegemonic Christianity resulted in positive micro- and macro-level outcomes for both the individual and the growing community of non-believers.

Post-deconversion: Narratives of Personal Transformation

In the hours, days, weeks, and months after deconversion, new existential and social issues emerged that participants needed to resolve. Reconciling these issues was a necessary part of identity transformation and paradigmatic restructuring. Scholars have suggested that the effects of religious socialization are often extremely strong (Zuckerman), resulting in the pervasive integration of religion into individuals’ core identities. Thus, the majority of Americans adhere to a Christian belief system that they, arguably, follow blindly. Before participants were able to transform their identities, they needed to explore who they were without religion and how non-belief could shape who they would become. The path to personal transformation was driven by ‘paradigmatic work’, which I define as the range of intersecting cognitive and social activities that an individual undertakes in order to change his/her worldview. Participants engaged in paradigmatic work at varying degrees, tailoring cognitive and social activities to their specific pre-deconversion experiences.

Cognitive activities included seeking information and self-reflection (see Barbour). Some participants used information-seeking to answer existential questions like what does it mean to be a non-believer? Edward started “researching atheism and agnosticism”, while Kimberly read “a lot of science books”. Both discussed being influenced by the works of Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins. Exposing one’s self to new information and/or new secular environments often became the impetus for self-reflection. According to Anthony Giddens, “religious authorities often cultivated the feeling that individuals were surrounded by threats and dangers” (194). However, Phil explained:

When I was no longer sheltered from the secular world, I realized there were a lot of really good people out here who weren’t going to hell. I really had nothing to fear.

Besides learning to see the good in others and in the world, participants learned to see the good in themselves. Barclay (atheist) stated:

Religion conditioned me to believe that I was a piece of crap and I didn’t have anything beside the love of my holy father and leaving unmasked this negative worldview of self-hatred.

Social activities generally required finding new associations, as deconversion often has social consequences that must be addressed. Religious affiliation is comprised of a web of multiple social ties and disaffiliation often requires the severing of both primary and secondary associations (Sandomirsky and Wilson). For example, Elizabeth (atheist) re-located to a new city 2,000 miles away after her parents had told her to pack her things and leave their home. Social activities were crucial for mitigating the emotional consequences of deconversion. Unsupportive networks were replaced with congruent associations, determined by participants’ social needs. George acknowledged that he had a strong intellectual social need in stating that

I like being around intelligent people and more times than not, those tend to be non-theist. I tend to run out of things to say when talking to theists.

Some participants had difficult life situations unrelated to their deconversions. After leaving the church, Becca was thankful to find a home in martial arts while her parents were divorcing. She explained:

I was so mad all the time, but going to train for an hour or two let me focus on other things. It didn’t matter how bad things were getting, I had a surrogate family at the dojo.

Finding new secular social networks provided participants with validation, acceptance, and support. They had been unable to find these qualities in their previous religious communities.

The result of paradigmatic work was the complete elimination of any remnants of old sacred canopies, which engendered the adoption of new secular canopies. The secular canopy becomes a “symbolic vehicle of meaning” for non-believers whose cultural “tool-kits” include the deconversion discourse, dictating various “strategies of action” for the formation and perpetuation of a non-religious, and arguably anti-religious, culture (Swidler 273–6). Under this canopy, participants regained a sense of ontological security, became more tolerant, and were empowered to stand against religious injustices. For instance, Adam said:

I feel like I won the cosmic lottery just by being here. I just feel so fortunate that I have any level of happy relationships and meaning in life. It’s a depth of new experience that I just, I wasn’t aware that that was there when I believed in God.

Jane (SBRN) was able to realize that

there are so many other ways for people to connect even if they believe different things, and that’s okay. There is more than one way to live.

Emma and Barclay were able to achieve self-empowerment by promoting the secular club on their campus and taking every opportunity to oppose religious bigotry. The result of becoming empowered is articulated best by Barclay, a participant who overcame an extended period of depression that had resulted from experiencing spiritual doubt. He said:

It was literally through non-belief that I found my voice and self-confidence. We only have a finite time on this Earth, so you can’t be depressed about anything.

Although deconversion resulted in many personal revelations, which is consistent with Heinz Streib’s study, an overwhelming majority of the participants in this study shared a dominant emotional transformation; deconversion was eventually a liberating experience (see McKnight and Ondrey). Mandy stated:

Leaving the church gave me relief because I didn’t have to unsuccessfully try to fit into the Christian mold anymore.

Both Mandy and Phil used the same language to describe the ultimate satisfaction of deconverting, finally experiencing “a sense of freedom”. Years after her deconversion, Elizabeth was able to be reconciled with her parents, using the following analogy to describe a “happiness” she had never before experienced:

I told my mom that I felt like I was born to run marathons. I felt like I was born to run like the wind and every time I would start running, somebody would bash me in the knee caps. I would heal and get back up and somebody would bash me in the knee caps again. That somebody was religion. Finally, I got rid of religion and now I can run; I can run free and unimpeded. I’m happy because I am living the way I was born to.

These emotional outcomes seemingly marked the completion of the participants’ paradigmatic transitions and personal transformations from believers to atheists, agnostics or SBNR individuals, which—analytically—could be framed as secular conversions. However, as Elizabeth’s quote above shows, the majority of the participants continually emphasized who they were as believers in order to develop, understand, perpetuate, and justify who they are as non-believers. Emphasizing the negative cognitive, social, and emotional effects of religious belief and participation solidified participants’ transformations as non-believers by allowing their experiences with spiritual doubt and trauma to serve as a constant reminder of the effects of religious discrepancies which had a negative impact on their lives.

Conclusion

How should we attempt to understand deconversion in a post-modern American society which has a spiritually diverse religious landscape? Exit narratives from Evangelical Christianity form a deconversion discourse that requires us to consider the discursive features and power dynamics associated with this particular type of religious exit. I have argued that deconversion is a perspective, a discourse, and a cultural repertoire. As a perspective, deconversion emphasizes leaving religion, focuses on the difficulties associated with rejecting faith, and highlights the emotional disposition of religious exiles. As a discourse, deconversion provides examples of leaving religion; as a cultural repertoire, deconversion supports the plausibility of non-belief. Exit narratives told from a deconversion perspective can counter religious hegemony by using stories about the social and emotional consequences of non-conformity to unmask and potentially de-reify religious domination.

The findings from my analysis suggest, firstly, that the discourse of deconversion can be organized into three narrative stages: pre-deconversion, cognitive deconversion, and post-deconversion. The discursive features of pre-deconversion, such as having ontological security compromised and experiencing existential anxiety, were reflected in stories of spiritual doubt. Spiritual doubt emerged from confronting fateful moments of intellectual discrepancies and unexpected social realities and was religiously traumatic, inducing emotional distress among the participants who began to re-consider the authenticity of their Christian beliefs (Barbour; Chalfant; Harrold).

Cognitive deconversion was marked by the conscious decision to reject religious beliefs, regardless of participants’ levels of religious participation. Unlike conversion, which can described as the first step in moving toward a prescribed ideology, deconversion from Evangelical Christianity is the final step in breaking away from a religiously hegemonic ideology.

Finally, the post-deconversion narrative stage produced personal transformations when participants confronted new existential and social issues that were resolved through paradigmatic work. Paradigmatic work resulted in the adoption of a new secular canopy. Similar to Peter Berger’s sacred canopy, the secular canopy is comprised of non-religious worldviews that are governed by a new moral order where reason and rationality are the dominant values (Ecklund; Hunsberger; J. Smith).

My second finding addresses the different motivations of deconversion in relation to rational choice theories, which—I have argued—do not explain deconversion among the non-believers in this study. While deconversion eventually resulted in being a net positive for participants, the initial transition required a much higher cost than an expected return. Exiting Evangelical Christianity often resulted in the loss of family and peer groups and was a catalyst for negative emotional experiences. Clearly, the participants were not trying to maximize the benefits or minimize the costs associated with exiting religion, as rational choice theory suggests. Participants no longer had a sincere conviction of the cultural repertoire of Evangelical Christianity. Rather than continually deliver inauthentic, albeit socially acceptable, displays of beliefs, deconversion was motivated by participants’ intellectual, social, and emotional commitments. Despite the risks associated with deconversion, the non-believers in this study displayed a commitment to authenticity, self-preservation, and “moral order(s) grounded in some ordering reality that is not superempirical but immanent”(C. Smith 101). This supports Christian Smith’s argument that people are, at their base level, “moral, believing animals” (114).

Lastly, and this is perhaps the most significant finding and contribution of my research, deconversion was eventually a liberating experience that evoked feelings of freedom, relief, and happiness. Fifteen to twenty years ago, leaving religion was considered to be an isolating and alienating experience. The findings from Merlin Brinkerhoff and Marlene Mackie’s study, comparing religious adherents and apostates, indicate that religious apostates reported lower rates of life satisfaction, happiness, and self-esteem compared to religious adherents, thus leading to the conclusion that religious adherents were significantly happier than religious apostates. It is likely that in 1993 this was an accurate portrayal of leaving religion; however, it may no longer represent the experiences of non-believers in the new millennium. Comparable to noted historical actors like Martin Luther and Karl Marx who produced innovative ideologies, the ‘four horseman of atheism’—Dawkins, Sam Harris, Hitchens, and Daniel Dennet—are responsible for the resurgence of the non-religious, free-thinking ideology many have coined ‘New Atheism’ (see Wuthnow). Their collection of written works, published between 2004 and 2007, topped the best-seller charts in the US and enhanced the rising demand for secular reform; when combined with the new technological advances that perpetuate secular ideology, we can see that non-belief has simply become another choice in the spiritual marketplace. According to Giddens (200), “A market system, almost by definition, generates variety of available choices… Plurality of choice is in some substantial part the very outcome of commodified processes.” By transposing an economic model on to religion, the option of non-belief in the plurality of beliefs was bound to emerge. If this is true, the deconversion discourse provides individuals who are leaving religion with a cultural repertoire that makes finding acceptance and validation easier in an established community of non-believers.

The findings of this study must be considered in the light of some limitations. Firstly, given the relatively small sample size, I do not claim that they are generalizable across the population of non-believers. Various socio-demographic factors and social conditions produce experiences unforeseen in this study. Secondly, participants were asked to recall their experiences within their religious communities, the events that precipitated their deconversions, and their experiences afterwards. Recall bias is likely to occur when individuals recount negative life events, especially when these events may have engendered social anxiety and/or depression (Edwards, Rapee and Franklin), and potentially presents problems with reliability (Pescosolido and Wright). Thirdly, it is impossible for me to witness the changes in participants’ experiences as non-believers over a longer period of time. Finally, using convenience and snowball sampling techniques may have influenced the depth of the data collected. While my relationship with the participants could have certainly contributed to them feeling emotionally safe enough to discuss private events, knowing the majority of the participants personally could have altered what information they felt comfortable sharing with me, regardless of my researcher status.

Despite the noted limitations, future research can benefit from this study by using these findings as a springboard to explore deconversion across different denominations and religions. In addition, researchers can continue to examine non-belief in America and elsewhere, using the experiences of non-believers to further studies of non-religion. Rather than dismiss these narratives as nothing more than interpretative constructions, we can use them to help us recognize the ways in which non-belief is altering the cultural landscape in the United States amid the early stages of a newly rejuvenated secular social movement.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Michael Ian Borer, David R. Dickens, Shannon M. Monnat, and the referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for providing helpful comments on previous versions of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lori L. Fazzino

Lori L. Fazzino is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. Her research examines the lived experiences of everyday irreligion, with a focus on the way irreligious members of the Las Vegas Atheist community construct their moral selves and collectively construct and re-construct their moral order. CORRESPONDENCE: Department of Sociology, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA.

Notes

1. Broadening the criteria for what counts as conversion by eliminating religious belief as a defining characteristic has generated some epistemological challenges. ‘Personal radical change’ and ‘change in life and worldview’ are nebulous concepts. The notion of ‘change’ is subjective, ambiguous, and difficult to measure systematically. In addition, ‘commitment to a new community’ is overly broad. For instance, adopting a new political affiliation or being initiated into a gang could be described as a radical change that generates a new worldview and requires a personal commitment, but would we describe these processes as conversions?

2. See David Snow and Richard Machalek’s discussion of conversion and adhesion, alteration, consolidation, and regeneration (169–70).

3. Religious exits have also been described by using terms such as ‘defection’, ‘disaffiliation’, and ‘apostasy’. The lack of consensus among scholars about which words appropriately describe religious exits greatly contributes to the ambiguity of using any of these terms.

4. Individuals who move from one religion or denomination to another are technically converts but are primarily referred to as ‘switchers’ in the literature (Cragun and Hammer; Roof).

5. There is no one general experience of conversion. I am presenting the classic Christian conversion perspective here as a stark contrast to deconversion from Evangelical Christianity. This model should not be interpreted as being generalizable across all conversion or deconversion narratives.

6. A conversion perspective is applicable to movement into, between or out of religion. However, it should be noted that there are few, if any, studies on formerly religious people who describe their exits as a conversion to non-belief.

7. As I will show, the inability to reconcile spiritual doubt comes largely from 1) seeking answers from religious family, friends, and/or clergy members and finding them unsatisfying, 2) a lack of having any type of religious experience, and/or 3) increased frustration with the behavior of church members, leading to a generalization that all religious believers act hypocritically and contributing to unwillingness to reconcile doubt with other religions.

8. Although there is a fair amount of ambiguity regarding the actual range of birth years for each generation, according to the Pew Research Center, the years are as follows: Silent Generation, born 1928–1945; Boomer Generation, born 1946–1964; Generation X, born 1965–1980; and Millennial Generation, born 1981–1993. The Pew Research Center does not identify the generational classification for individuals born in 1994 and later.

9. According to James Hunter, an Evangelical is “a Protestant who attests to the inerrancy Scripture and the divinity of Christ and either (1) believes that Jesus Christ is the only hope for salvation or (2) has had a religious experience—that is, a particularly powerful religious insight or awakening that is still important in his everyday life, that involved a conversion to Jesus Christ as his personal savior; or (3) both” (141).

10. See Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2012. Available at: http://www.pewforum.org/unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx, access date: 15 January 2013.

11. This is the major difference between exiting and deconversion. Exiting does not necessitate deconversion and deconversion does not necessitate exiting. An individual can decide that s/he no longer subscribes to a religious belief while still attending church or, conversely, an individual can stop attending church long before s/he rejects religious belief.

12. The culmination of one’s deconversion experience might be more accurately described as conversion to a specific secular ideology. More research is needed to gain better insight into the ideological transformation processes of deconverts.

13. It is important to note that skepticism does not automatically result in the rejection of religious beliefs. Rather, it encourages individuals to use critical thinking and the scientific method to reconcile inconsistencies in contradictory spheres.