The Nature of Research When William James formed his model of religious conversion in 1902, he was working off a collection of stories gathered by another researcher to come to his conclusions. When Rodney Stark and John Lofland formed their model of religious conversion in 1965, they did so by extensive interviews with a variety of converts to a New Religious Movement. And when Lewis Rambo formed his model of religious conversion (which still stands as the standard in the... Read more
“William James (1901) in his famous study, Varieties of Religious Experiences, understood conversion to be a kind of healing. The healing, as James understood it, was that of a sick, divided soul that sought healing and unification of personhood in religion …modern scholars are skeptical about James’ claim that a conversion experience can change a person’s personality.” -Marriott, 2023 While the trope of “seeing the light” or “finding Jesus” has somewhat fallen out of vogue, it is nevertheless true that there... Read more
A Researcher is Born In the year of 2019, the young PhD candidate, Jana Harmon, dotted the last i, crossed the last t, and finally published her years-long dissertation on the subject of educated, intelligent atheists who converted to Christianity. With a century of research about religious conversion in the rear-view mirror, surprisingly little research had been done on the so-called “amazing converts*,” meaning people who go from a position which denies religious ideas and beliefs to one that embraces... Read more
Bart Ehrman is arguably the best-known and best-respected Bible scholar of the modern era. He is also very contrary to Christian belief. While Christians and skeptics alike are fond of citing his work, Ehrman lands solidly in the camp of skeptics, and has published a number of books challenging anything resembling truthfulness or soundness of scripture. Among Ehrman’s claims are that scripture has become very corrupted over the years of transmission, and that Jesus was a itinerate speaker who was... Read more
William James and other conversion researchers have long noted that adolescence is a time of change and identity formation, and as such, the period during which religious conversion is most likely to occur. Upon the rise of deconversion research, it was similarly noted by researchers, particularly the pollsters at the Pew Research Center, that religious exit happens most frequently during adolescence. Children who grow up in the church will enter an age when they begin to consider their parents’ views... Read more
“Tinkering” In his 2018 study on internet and religion, researcher Paul McClure coined the word “tinkering” to refer to the mental juggling one does in order to deal with new ideas one comes across which do not neatly cohere to previously held ideas. Outside McClure’s work, social psychology has generally held that individuals who encounter concepts which contradict the ideas they already hold will enter a state known as dissonance. Dissonance is uncomfortable, and the general route to escape the... Read more
The Ads An ad pops up on your social media. It features a woman sitting in a pew, alone in an empty church. She says “Frozen by fear of rejection by God, my family, my community, I banished my inner voice, distrusting myself and all my feelings.” The ad gives a link to learn more about something called “Religious Trauma Syndrome.” Another ad from the same source shows a weary man on the ground looking into a cracked mirror. It... Read more
Social Psychology began within philosophy. It was assumed early in the development of psychology that inward reflection was the key to understanding behavior. This shifted within the mid-20th century when Behaviorism became the dominant paradigm in the field of psychology. Behaviorism rejected the idea of an unseen mind or even those activities which occur in the brain but cannot be seen. Instead, the focus of behaviorism was only on what could be seen: that is, how the person physically acted... Read more
The Dawn of Deconversion Research and the Emergent Church Despite the comparative lack of research on deconversion as a whole, work on this topic can be traced back as far as 2009 and Adam’s paper titled “Leaving the fold.” Prior to this, research related to deconversion was targeted at defectors from new religious movements rather than Christianity specifically (Streib & Keller, 2004; Cardano & Pannofino, 2018). At the time Adam wrote his paper, the word “deconversion” was not yet in... Read more
Introduction Psychology, in terms of study and practice, began as a focused on a sort of poorly-defined concept of the “mind,” whatever that may be. In fact, many of the early forays into psychology, Frued, Jung, James, and the like, spent their time trying to define what the “mind” even was. Skinner came along and did away with the idea of a mind altogether, and in modern times the “mind” is largely considered an emergent property of the brain. But... Read more
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