Sometimes, they return to faith after seeing the good in life, and other times, they break from religion forever. It is important to give them time to process, without trying to push them.
Consider whether your arguments are rational or faith-based. Someone who has based their decisions purely on rationality is unlikely to be swayed by emotional reasoning. It's okay to make decisions based on emotion and faith.
If you feel that Christianity gives your life spiritual meaning, emotional comfort, or a sense of community, then that is a good enough reason to be Christian! You are allowed to choose to follow your heart. Just remember that other people get to follow their own hearts too. Put yourself in your friend's shoes. Consider how you would respond, if someone were attempting to persuade you to reject your salvation in Christ.
You would want them to listen if you were to say "no" to them, and accept it if you didn't agree with them at the end. Speak to them the way you'd want to be spoken to. Nobody wants to be judged. Speak from a place of love and friendship, not judgment. Keep your kindness unconditional, and make peace with their decisions. Focus on living in peace with someone who is determined to be an atheist.
This is their choice to make, and you should not waste your time trying to fight it. Instead, show them unconditional kindness and friendship, without trying to change them. Part 2. Choose a good place and time. The conversation should be one-on-one, and it should be during a relaxed time when nobody needs to hurry to go somewhere else. It should happen in a private or semi-private place, like at home, at a coffee shop, at a park, or during a walk around the neighborhood.
You don't want to make someone feel embarrassed, blindsided, or trapped. If they look awkward, drop the idea.
Bring up the subject and ask if they're interested. This allows them to gracefully decline if they would prefer not to talk about it and gives them an opportunity to start expressing their thoughts and ideas if they are in the mood. Some people feel awkward or uncomfortable talking about religion, especially since religious discussion can result in heated debates or hurt feelings.
For example, you could say "I've been thinking a lot about religion lately, and I was wondering if you feel like talking about it. Don't push. If they say no to you several different times, assume it means that they are very shy about religion and don't like talking about it, so it's best to stop asking.
Keep your mind and heart open at all times. If the person feels ambushed or attacked, they'll shut down and have no interest in what you have to say. Thus, try to keep an open and friendly tone, without pressure for them to act a certain way. You want them to be comfortable with you. Know when it's best to leave it alone. Not every atheist is open to being converted, and it's important to make peace with this. Don't whine, wheedle, or browbeat your way through a conversation that someone else doesn't want to have.
If someone says "I don't like talking about religion," then stop bringing up religion. If you offer to talk about religion a few times, and they say no each time, that pattern may mean something.
Stop bringing it up, or ask "I've noticed that you've declined each time I asked you about religion. Is it a topic you're uncomfortable with? Part 3. Tell your friend what your Christianity means to you. Explain how religion has influenced your life, both for you as a person and for your relationships in the world around you. Keep the conversation focused on the tools that following God's son gives you.
You like being part of a community centered on good values. You appreciate the reminder to be your best self. You feel that religion helps you connect to a higher purpose. You find that the concept of an afterlife comforting. Don't try to debate about logic or the Bible. Believing in God is a fundamentally illogical choice because you are choosing to have faith in a power beyond what you know. It's a leap of the heart. It's best to acknowledge this and focus on the emotional power of faith.
Many Christians have very different relationships with the Bible, and you may be quite knowledgeable about Bible study and the history of the document. Conversely, many Christians emphasize a personal relationship with Christ as the fundamental aspect of their being blessed in Christ. Some atheists refuse to believe in things they don't have evidence for. Chalk it up to a difference in priorities, and agree to disagree.
Take time to truly listen to them and understand where they're coming from. You don't just want to lecture them. Ask about their experiences, ideas, and opinions.
Accept that they're coming from a different place than you are. Don't make assumptions about how they feel about atheism. Not all atheists are "angry" at God, lapsed believers, or are upset about their lack of belief. Listen to how they say they feel, and believe them. Be kind. Avoid condemnations or threats of hellfire. This is likely to drive a person away from faith and you. Share the best of Christianity instead of pushing negativity.
Let them see the good in religion. Let your friend ask questions and express their own opinions. Your friend may be curious about your beliefs, especially if they weren't raised as a Christian. Attractive and amusing as David Hume was, did he confront the complexities of human existence as deeply as his contemporary Samuel Johnson, and did I really find him as interesting?
The phenomenon of language alone should give us pause. A materialist Darwinian was having dinner with me a few years ago and we laughingly alluded to how, as years go by, one forgets names. More so, really. How could it come about that human beings all agreed that particular grunts carried particular connotations? How could it have come about that groups of anthropoid apes developed the amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence, let alone the whole grammatical mystery which has engaged Chomsky and others in our lifetime and linguists for time out of mind?
No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena — of which love and music are the two strongest — which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits.
For a few years, I resisted the admission that my atheist-conversion experience had been a bit of middle-aged madness. I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off Thought for the Day when it comes on the radio.
When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that as they believe they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion — prophets do that in every generation.
Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Therefore, only the third case would qualify as deconversion McAdams For Cragun and Hammer the use of the term deconversion is unwarranted and conversion should be used instead. The problem with this conceptualization, however, is that it overlooks the direction and the result of this change.
To say that a person who exits a religion has converted falls short as a description and does not do justice to the type of transformation.
Those who become atheists have shredded the religious aspect of their lives and as a result they no longer hold a religious identity. In fact, the formation of an atheist identity resides in the rejection of theism and faith Smith Therefore, it could be argued that although an individual who becomes an atheist experiences a change in religious identity, the distinctive outcome of this change is, more precisely, the abandonment of a religious identity and the adoption of a non -religious one.
The term deconversion is necessary because the narratives and elements involved in this process are qualitatively distinct from those present in conversion stories Barbour, For example, Fazzino compares conversion and deconversion journeys, showing that, although they share basic structural aspects ideological shifts, emotional responses, self-transformations , the nature of these aspects is different.
Namely, conversion stories often involve feelings of security, assurance, and certainty, whereas in deconversion individuals tend to feel guilt, alienation, and eventually freedom. Other frequently used terms applied to the phenomenon of religious deconversion are apostasy and disaffiliation.
These definitions are not incorrect from a descriptive point of view, but, as Cragun and Hammer argue, apostasy is a term used pejoratively by those who remain religious. Therefore, apostasy and disaffiliation are not better suited than deconversion to describe the phenomena addressed in the present study. As with most disciplines, the field of psychology of religion has not been free of certain biases taking the form of assumptions that have in turn influenced the research, results, and type of knowledge produced Belzen Three of these biases are explained here.
First, religion is assumed to be universal, and every person is expected to be religious in one way or another by default. Ultimate concerns refer to concerns that deal with questions of life meaning, rendering all other considerations secondary. In other words, as long as a person is occupied with these existential matters which are, of course, legitimate he or she can be considered religious.
However, although religion deals with ultimate concerns, it is not in itself the same as ultimate concerns. As a form of analogy, this would be similar to confusing a type of food with the feeling of hunger; the existence of the need itself must not be confused with the means whereby the need is satisfied.
As discussed previously, religion has at its core a supernatural element as well as the human relationship with it, and this is the way most people understand it. Therefore, the likening of religion to the over-encompassing concept of ultimate concerns departs from conventional ways of thinking about religiosity, and in turn, makes non-religious perspectives difficult to conceive.
In this fashion, non-religion is defined out of existence Campbell A second assumption stems from the first, where a similar tendency for universalization is applied to the concept of faith.
The work of theologian James Fowler on faith development has proved influential in this respect, generating theory as well as methods of research in the form of faith development interviews Fowler et al. For example, a cross-cultural study on deconversion conducted by Streib et al.
Given that atheism is characterized by the absence of faith Altemeyer and Hunsberger , it appears counterintuitive to state that those who identified as non-religious had a sense of faith more developed than religious persons themselves. It certainly seems that Streib et al. Thirdly, existing theories within the psychology of religion suggest a positive link between higher levels of religiosity and spirituality and physical and mental health Hood Jr et al.
However, most of the research that has been considered to propose this link suffers from the same caveat: a failure to differentiate those with low religiosity from the non-religious.
Rather than addressing the full spectrum from non-belief to strong belief, studies typically use measures such as church attendance, thus confounding religiosity with other variables like social capital, support, and group participation Galen Conversely, lower levels of wellbeing correspond to uncertainty and doubts about cherished beliefs Donelson ; Galen and Kloet ; Ross Furthermore, Kier and Davenport argue that uncritically accepting that religiosity promotes mental health, as a number of researchers have claimed e.
Hill and Pargament ; Miller and Thoresen , or that spirituality is a necessary part of the human condition Sue et al. Non-religion studies is a relatively new field that focuses on phenomena such as atheism, agnosticism, secularism and their relationship with other areas of research. The literature on deconversion suggests that deconversion involves a very gradual change, which tends to happen during adolescence and early adulthood Altemeyer and Hunsberger ; Brewster ; Hunsberger and Altemeyer ; Streib et al.
These four aspects of deconversion are commonly driven by discrepancies between a what one would expect from the world if religious tenets and beliefs were true and b what one sees and experiences in life. Furthermore, Barbour indicates that the abandonment of religious belief is also linked to striving for personal independence and identity in the immediate context of a religious family.
In a similar vein, Brewster states that deconversion in the United States, where the majority is religious, is related to a process of individualization such as leaving the family home to attend college. Based on an American sample, Smith argues that atheists form their identity based on the rejection of theism.
That is, atheists create their identity by emphasizing the behaviors they do not engage in and the beliefs they do not hold. A recurrent theme in the literature is the undermining effect of an intellectual orientation on religiosity Altemeyer and Hunsberger ; Barbour ; Caplovitz and Sherrow ; Fazzino ; Galen ; Hunsberger and Altemeyer ; Hunsberger and Brown ; Zuckerman For example, drawing on data from interviews with students who became atheists after a strong religious upbringing, Altemeyer and Hunsberger affirm that these students had considerably more questions and doubts compared to their religious counterparts.
According to the authors, these questions were characterized by belonging to the realm of ideas rather than emotional matters.
In trying to resolve these issues some students asked for help from other people but were typically unsatisfied with the answers received. Moreover, reading about history, science, social issues, and religion has been identified in research old Vetter and Green and new Brewster ; Hunsberger and Altemeyer as a catalyst for the loss of faith. This means that successful religious training would instill students with a drive to seek truth and integrity to such an extent that they would also assess the truthfulness of their own religion, should they detect any issues within their belief system.
Describing how deconverts dealt with these issues, Altemeyer and Hunsberger noted that individuals prioritized freedom of thought and, having abandoned their previous beliefs, they expressed feelings of confidence, open-mindedness, and being true to themselves.
This reaction against the teachings and traditions received during upbringing is similar to what Hunsberger noted in his observation that doubt and disagreement with parental religious doctrine predicted future deconversion. It is also worth mentioning the work of Dennett and LaScola , who interviewed ex members of the clergy as well as seminary students and professors who had lost their religious beliefs.
This piece of research is of interest because it deals with drastic cases of deconversion: a faithful priest who becomes an atheist, going from one end to the other in the spectrum of religious belief.
Naturally, individuals involved in the ministry would have their own particular challenges when abandoning belief, but ultimately these cases still illustrate clear examples of strongly committed religious persons who experience religious deconversion. The preparation they received did not equip them with the necessary skills to do the preaching their congregations were expecting. Moreover, as their faith eroded, they started to feel hypocritical about the work they were doing.
Research on deconversion is still in its infancy and to date has been mostly explorative, descriptive, and atheoretical in nature. This study seeks to further the understanding of this particular phenomenon, by proposing a model of deconversion that could be used as a possible starting point for future theoretical developments. The present qualitative study was conducted using a grounded theory GT approach.
GT was developed as a set of procedures to collect and analyze data in a systematic and cyclical fashion in order to allow concepts to emerge and generate theories grounded in data Glaser and Strauss We have chosen GT because it offers the opportunity to rigorously generate theory from data in those areas where theory is lacking or poorly developed Henwood and Pidgeon Specifically, we used the Straussian version of GT Strauss and Corbin due to its coding techniques.
By definition, deconversion involves change and the process associated with it, and therefore this coding paradigm dovetails with the aims of this study. Applying Straussian grounded theory, Pinto and Moleiro presented a theoretical model consisting of five stages of gender identity development and transition triggers between stages.
Data was collected from two sources: testimonies from The Clergy Project and interviews with participants recruited through Atheist Ireland. The Clergy Project hereafter CP is a non-profit international organization that provides support for former clergy members who no longer have religious beliefs.
This association, based in the United States, has already attracted the attention of some researchers; Dennett and LaScola interviewed many of these ex-clergy members as part of their study, as mentioned in the previous section.
In the present study, all 30 online public testimonies from the CP website were used The Clergy Project Clergy testimonies came from mostly male individuals from the United States with a few exceptions , who defected from different religious denominations; these were mainly Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical, Pentecostal and Presbyterian. The available demographic information from the testimonies is shown in Table 1.
These testimonies were collected and used with the permission of the Board President of the CP. They were compiled into a single document for analysis to be worked on as a whole, since individual testimonies varied in length, averaging words each.
Participants for the semi-structured interviews were recruited through advertising on the social media page of Atheist Ireland. Atheist Ireland is an Irish atheist advocacy group founded in that promotes atheism and reason, and an ethical and secular society without special treatment for any religion Atheist Ireland A total of six voluntary participants were purposely sampled based on relevance to the research question i.
With the exception of two participants, their deconversion happened in the Republic of Ireland. Their general demographic information is presented in Table 2. Interviews were arranged with each participant at a convenient location; two were conducted via Skype. The interviews were semi-structured and questions were designed to foster conversation and stimulate explanations. Consistent with a grounded theory approach, questions were modifiable according to the data analysis from previous interviews.
This resulted in three slightly different versions of the interview questionnaire throughout the course of the study. For the purposes of the study, what is important is that both testimonies and interviews show the mechanisms whereby a religious system of belief is replaced by an atheistic worldview. Moreover, most of the individuals in these samples came from two countries the United States and Ireland that share a common trend: an accelerated secularization from a Christian tradition and a weakened relationship between national identity and religion Cragun Therefore, the analysis of the stories and experiences of deconversion of these 36 individuals serves to address the research question.
In line with a GT approach, the study was conducted systematically and consisted of a series of alternated stages of data gathering and data analysis Strauss and Corbin Once the data from the CP testimonies was compiled, the first stage of analysis comprised the following steps. First, open coding forced a line-by-line in depth analysis to discover concepts in the data. Next, axial coding generated categories, which are concepts at a higher level of abstraction representing a problem, event or phenomena that seems to be significant to the process under study.
Coding consists of analytical strategies such as asking questions to the data e. After this the main categories and subcategories were selected and articulated as contexts, conditions, interactions, and consequences of the central phenomena to yield an initial deconversion explanatory framework.
The technique of constant comparison, involving the examination of similarities and differences between instances of a phenomenon, codes, and categories, was applied during every stage of the analysis. Constant comparison allows for the identification of the common thread within a category as well as the differences between its component elements or subcategories Willig There were three more stages of data analysis, this time using the data gathered from two interviews in each stage.
Open coding, axial coding, and the selection of main categories were applied as before. Subsequently each participant was presented with the analysis of their individual contribution to obtain validation and feedback. They were asked whether the analysis truthfully captured what they tried to express, and if anything had been missed, overemphasized or misinterpreted.
All participants responded, expressing high levels of agreement, positive feedback and some more valuable comments. After analyzing the explanatory framework derived from the CP testimonies in the first stage and the two interviews of the second stage, a general theory started to emerge.
The emergent theory evolved twice more during the third and fourth stages of analysis, to finally reach the current proposed model of deconversion. Memo writing, an important element of GT, was carried out throughout the process.
This was useful to keep a record of the analysis and theory development, capturing ideas, reflections, questions, and alternative explanations. Triangulation between interviews and the CP testimonies, representing individuals from different backgrounds, offered converging categories adding more reliability to the findings.
As the main author I turn now to first-person voice to address this section. I grew up moderately religious, however, during my mid-twenties I started to reflect on my religious views. This, coupled with a growing interest in mythology, philosophy and science, led me to abandon my beliefs and become an atheist.
Naturally, I had my own pre-assumptions and ideas on the topic, but I made a conscious effort to put them aside from the beginning of the project. I tried to maintain a neutral and naive attitude throughout, making sure my findings were grounded in the data and being aware of my own confirmation bias. From an epistemological standpoint, although I favour the view that social reality is mainly socially constructed, I believe that there is an objective reality behind it that can be accessed to some degree, and I avoid notions of extreme relativism and postmodernism.
From the outset of this study I have speculated that there would be some factors that, independently of each particular individual, would be common to most people going through deconversion. The full analysis generated a proposed model of deconversion See Figure 1. The three emerging core categories of this model include: reason and enquiry ; criticism and discontent ; and personal development. Each category was further divided into more specific subcategories.
The core categories, while strongly interlinked, were still identified as separate emerging themes. While certain categories were more influential than others depending on the individual, all three were generally present in the process of deconversion. Taken together, our findings reflect the process of deconversion as a gradual progression characterized by a cumulative effect and by significant events or milestones that hold special meaning for individuals.
The following sections further detail each of the main features of the model of deconversion. A strong cognitive element, the core category of reason and enquiry is characterized by an intellectual impetus, the use of reason, and the act of questioning. Doubt was pervasive and it emerged during the early stages of the analysis. Most of the time doubt prompted nagging questions that felt unavoidable and needed to be asked, sometimes starting as early as childhood. In other cases doubts were ignored and suppressed until they accumulated and became too numerous and impossible to evade.
Participants also recalled how faith-based answers to these questions were particularly unsatisfying, since they felt that answers grounded in logic and everyday experience were more appropriate. Reflecting on the factors that played a role in her deconversion, Participant C commented:. A former minister from the CP articulated clearly the role of reason and logical explanations in his experience:. This comes out when theologians and other theists speculate that it must be rather sad to be an atheist, lacking as they think atheists do so much of the philosophical, ethical, mythical and aesthetic fulfilments that religious people have access to — stuck in a cold world of rationality only.
The problem that any rational thinker needs to tackle, though, is that the science increasingly shows that atheists are no more rational than theists. For example, religious and nonreligious people alike can end up following charismatic individuals without questioning them. And our minds often prefer righteousness over truth , as the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has explored.
Even atheist beliefs themselves have much less to do with rational inquiry than atheists often think. We now know, for example, that nonreligious children of religious parents cast off their beliefs for reasons that have little to do with intellectual reasoning.
The latest cognitive research shows that the decisive factor is learning from what parents do rather than from what they say. Throughout our evolutionary history, humans have often lacked the time to scrutinise and weigh up the evidence — needing to make quick assessments.
Even older children and adolescents who actually ponder the topic of religion may not be approaching it as independently as they think.
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