As a deconversion researcher, it is becoming ever more apparent that culture and time period have a heavy influence on the form deconversion tends to take. In my review of the book You Lost Me, I demonstrated how the researcher had captured a time when millennials were the young adults of the world, and how the culture at the time influenced the reasons and ways they left religion. In my review of the more recent book Deconstruction of Christianity, I... Read more
Deconversion and Abuse Several years ago when I published my initial model of deconversion, one of the responses I received was that it did not include the people who left for reasons of abuse by the church. In the initial 32 case studies I considered when forming my model, I had not seen anything which resembled a pattern of abuse or mistreatment. Granted, several of the deconverts complained that the various teachings and doctrines caused emotional distress, but this was... Read more
Like so many of the books written in recent years on the topic of the exodus from Christianity, The Deconstruction of Christianity (2023) was written by Christians with the purpose of explaining this exodus, comforting Christians who have lost friends and family to the exodus, and defending the truth of Christianity to those who were in the process of “Deconstructing.” However, this book does add a unique element to the discussion which has been absent in previous literature I have... Read more
The movement most prominently embattled against Christianity in the United States has been labeled the “Deconstruction Movement.” But what is this movement, how did it arise, and what is the history leading up to it? The Founding of the United States Christianity has been an ever-present force in American culture, with the United States largely being founded by Christian sects attempting to escape persecution by government-sanctioned religions in Europe. As a result of this history, one of the founding principles... Read more
Conversion Within Christianity, there is a theological and social concept called “conversion.” In the mind of most Christian, there exists a demarcation line in time that represents the moment in which a person is “saved.” So that, if the person were to die a second prior to this moment in time, that person would go to hell, but if the person were to die the next second after, he or she would go to heaven. The social sciences, however, do... Read more
How Human Attitudes Form Versus How We Think They Form I am a researcher whose primary concern is Conversion (meaning how people transition into a religion) and Deconversion (meaning how people transition away from religious practice and belief). As such, it is within my interest to study how humans form attitudes, come to conclusions, and change their minds. Since at least the time when Aristotle began to write his philosophical works, it has more or less been assumed that humans form attitudes based... Read more
Atheism: A Relatively New Phenomenon The specter of atheism has always hovered at the edge of Western culture to a degree, since prior to the Middle Ages. Even during ancient Biblical times, when every culture the world over was deeply committed to some religion or another, the Psalmist allows for the fact that some people might put forth the proposal that no God exists when he says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1) During... Read more
The History of Religious Research While religious movement (people entering religious communities, switching religious communities, or leaving religious communities) has always been present, it tends to be a difficult topic to research given that religious movement has the tendency to be slow, sporadic, and unpredictable. Meaning that a researcher would have to sit about in any given church lobby for years to get enough samples for research. As a result, when studying the topic of religious movement in the past,... Read more
The book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God by Justin Brierley is hot off the presses (relatively speaking), and the premise suggested by the title runs wildly counter to the prevailing view of religious trends in the world. By all available data, religious involvement appears to be on the downswing worldwide rather than increasing. But one does not judge a book by its cover – or in this case, its title. Before attacking Brierley’s case, it is worth the... Read more
A subject I have addressed in previous articles is the concept of “Religious Trauma,” also called “Spiritual Abuse,” or “Church Hurt.” However, in those previous articles, I had not done any investigation into the formal academic literature on the subject. This was in part because I had not yet gotten to the point in my deconversion research that I was ready to tackle a tangential topic*. But it was also in part because there was practically no peer-reviewed research on... Read more
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