Abstract
I wonder if you’ve ever ‘left’ your religious group, or what you think of those who do. If so, this collection of 27 short chapters might be for you. Arranged in three parts – ‘Historical and major debates’, ‘Case studies’ and ‘Theoretical and methodological approaches’ – it heralds an emergent field of study encompassing those who abandon, desert, reject or simply quietly leave the religious world that nurtured them or hosted them for decades.
Its informative editorial spotlight on ‘Leaving Religion’ as a discrete field of study leads into Part 1, covering Hinduism, Buddhism, religions in Antiquity, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as ‘world religions’. Each follows a pattern of introduction, key terms, historical developments, major controversies and case studies, major texts, key figures, conclusion and full references.
Part 2 reflects the world traditions of Part 1 through very particular cases determined by their authors’ largely social scientific perspective, often as a summary of previous publications. Collectively, hundreds of narratives document personal, family and community contexts, revealing deep-felt conflicts involving rejected conventions, leaders and fellowship groups, as changing circumstances foster shifting identities. Exemplary cases depict ‘leaving’ Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism in Myanmar, Vipassana meditation, Orthodox Judaism, the Amish, Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. One discusses asylum seekers in Norway leaving Islam for Christianity. Exploring ‘conversion as a migration strategy’, it raises the seldom researched topic of churches as physical structures offering a sense of safety and refuge, and highlights the significant theoretical ‘difference in method and material’ between ‘web-based text analysis and fieldwork’ (p. 217). Further methodological issues are highlighted in ‘Leaving Islam from a queer perspective’, which emphasizes how this approach fosters the ‘destabilising’ of accepted social and theoretical norms. Overall, we see how an individual’s sense of life and desired identity may shift over time and place, something evident in the final two cases covering ‘Leaving new religions’ and ‘Non-religion and atheism’.
Part 3’s seven valuable chapters and extensive references cover historical, geographical and demographic, statistical, sociological, psychological, and media and communication approaches to leaving religion. But Peter Stromberg’s chapter on ‘narrative and autobiographical’ approaches appealed to me most. While noting both the complex significance of economic-political reasons for leaving and joining and how ‘deconversion’ – associated with the ‘cult’ groups of the 1970s – has overly influenced subsequent theoretical approaches, he goes further to depict the nuance of autobiography inherent in a person’s reporting of life changes. He contrasts the ‘positivist’ style of analysis that codes complex narrative material in an ‘extended form of questionnaire research’ with the ‘discursive’ approach that allows subtlety to ‘the moment of telling’ when someone seems to ‘build a world’ of their own (p. 331).
This collection with its myriad valuable references furnishes an excellent introductory overview of religious exits and entrances, albeit in highly condensed chapters and in an extremely high-priced book whose language needed better editing. Still, I enjoyed it and learned much, especially when taken at many different sittings.