What Happens in the Brain When Beliefs Change?

Last updated on: January 31, 2023 at 10:49 am By Joel Furches

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

Leftward Drift: Why Deconverts Begin at the Religious Right and Migrate to the Atheist Left

Last updated on: January 26, 2023 at 4:28 pm By Joel Furches

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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 Whereas the term “Fundamentalist” has gradually been replaced by the word “Evangelical,” culturally the same stigma applies: Right Wing politics loosely disguised in the garb of religion.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

Rapture Anxiety and Deconversion

Last updated on: January 10, 2023 at 6:58 pm By Joel Furches

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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

The Asbury Revival and Religious Intensification Phenomenon

Last updated on: February 22, 2023 at 7:09 am By Joel Furches

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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,” What can 50-Year-Old Research Tell Us About Conversion and Deconversion?

Last updated on: February 13, 2023 at 8:20 am By Joel Furches

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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

The son of a Famous Evangelist who Became a Convinced Atheist

Last updated on: December 29, 2022 at 10:15 am By Joel Furches

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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

Research into Religious Deconversion Flourishes in the Post Christian West

Last updated on: January 30, 2023 at 8:01 am By Joel Furches

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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

The Boy Preacher who Became an Adult Atheist Advocate: Anthony Pinn

Last updated on: January 23, 2023 at 8:13 am By Joel Furches

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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

What the Book “How Minds Change” Tells us About Deconversion

Last updated on: January 3, 2023 at 12:16 pm By Joel Furches

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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

Deconversion and “Cuss-Words”

Last updated on: January 9, 2023 at 8:16 am By Joel Furches

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Thirty or forty years ago, investigating the phenomenon of religious deconversion would have been a challenging task. Surely people were leaving the church at that time, but finding those people and getting quality data from them would have been difficult. In the 1960’s, for instance, Lofland and Stark had to camp out in a cult compound and observe new recruits in order to study religious conversion. Imagine camping out on a college campus waiting for students to leave the faith... Read more