Today, nearly half of America is unchurched. But even though more and more Americans are abandoning the institutional church and its defined boundary markers of religious identity, many still believe in God and practice faith outside its walls. –Barna Group, 2017 The Declining Church It is old news by now that there has been a dramatic spike in secularization and a dramatic decline in church attendance within America over the last decade. Most of the attention in research has been... Read more
Since the challenging and changing of beliefs is integral to the study of conversion and deconversion, it seems relevant to examine the neurological research on this topic. An Experiment Commences The year was 2016, and one of the most contentious presidential elections in recent memory was underway. It was likely due to the political climate of the time that researchers at the University of Southern California decided to conduct a study on how the brain responds when challenged by views... Read more
In 2009, during the height of the “New Atheism” trend, but a comfortable distance prior to the “Deconstruction” trend, researcher Raoul J. Adams noticed that what he called “apostacy” seemed to be coming primarily from Fundamentalism. Whereas the term “Fundamentalist” has gradually been replaced by the word “Evangelical,” culturally the same stigma applies: Right Wing politics loosely disguised in the garb of religion. In 2020 the American Atheists published a massive survey it had conducted on the state of... Read more
A significant portion of my initial investigation into deconversion involved listening to interviews and reading stories from people who had left Christianity. When people talk about their exit, they talk about the various difficulties they had with religion, anxieties they felt, and various occurrences which were very emotional for them. Many of these were very predictable: being forbidden to listen to certain music, watch certain movies, or even think certain thoughts. Much talk of “purity culture” and the effects it... Read more
On February 8th, of 2023, a group of students at Asbury University, a private Christian school in Kentucky, began a typical Wednesday worship service in the school chapel. However, as the time for the worship service elapsed, the worship did not stop, the students did not leave, and the service stretched on for days and then weeks. Visitors to the chapel describe students praying, worshipping, reading out loud from scripture, dancing, weeping, and otherwise having what appear to be very... Read more
Stages of Faith is a 1981 book by psychologist James Fowler wherein he lays out his model of faith development. This book was recommended to me by someone who was reading my research. It is written at a popular level, however it does contain data from the study used to support its thesis, and Fowler is a serious psychologist with a long career as a researcher. He compiled his model of faith development from around 600 interviews done by himself... Read more
As a column that discusses the process of religious conversion and deconversion, this space will occasionally feature the stories of individuals who have either dramatically entered or exited the Christian faith. This is one such story. Bart Campolo grew up on the shadow of his father, Tony Campolo, a world-renowned evangelist, author and Christian sociologist. This being so, Bart was immersed in the Christian environment wherein practically everyone he knew was Christian. This was difficult for Bart, who never found the... Read more
A Brief History of Conversion Research Ever since William James’ landmark study, A Variety of Religious Experiences (1902), the topic of religious conversion has been an open interest in the fields of social sciences. James’ book was the standard in the field for decades, however in 1965, John Lofland and Rodney Stark published their now-famous study in the field of religious conversion which provided the first widely recognized model of religious conversion (Lofland & Stark, 1965). Since Lofland and... Read more
As a column that discusses the process of religious conversion and deconversion, this space will occasionally feature the stories of individuals who have either dramatically entered or exited the Christian faith. This is one such story. While Anthony Pinn may be an academic in career, he is a poet at heart. While addressing the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago in 2014, he made certain to let the audience know that he finds poetry to be a far more effective way... Read more
How Minds Change is a book by David McRaney in which the author, a science journalist, details what he has learned in his many years of investigation on how people make radical changes to their deeply held views on subjects. The primary example he uses is that of a so-called “Truther,” a person who believes that the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th of 2001 were engineered by the United States government rather than attacks from a... Read more
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