When Teens Deconvert: What the Research Says

November 14, 2023 By Joel Furches

The Teenage Exodus It is an established fact that the teenage years are a time when many life changes are liable to occur. Early in conversion research, scholars noted that most religious conversions appeared to happen while the convert was an adolescent, and the same is true with deconversions. The mass exodus happening in churches around the world is largely happening with people in their adolescent years. Surprisingly, however, very little of the early work on deconversion aimed its lens... Read more

Deconversion Stories: The Camel with the Hammer

November 3, 2023 By Joel Furches

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Dr. Daniel Fincke has his PhD in philosophy from Fordham University and spent 11 years teaching in college classrooms. He wrote his dissertation on ethics. Daniel was born and raised on Long Island in a nominally Catholic home, although his father was personally agnostic. Daniel’s Journey to Belief When Daniel was five, his parents sent his brother – 8 years his senior – to an evangelical church camp. It was at this camp that Daniel’s brother became deeply convicted, got... Read more

Does Autism Contribute to Atheism?

October 23, 2023 By Joel Furches

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In a previous article, I reviewed Paul C. Vitz’s book Faith of the Fatherless which proposes that a contributing factor to atheism is the relationship one has with one’s father or father figure. The thesis being that an absent father or a poor relationship with one’s father increases the likelihood that one will take an atheistic stance on life. However, tucked away in the back of Vitz’s book, almost as an aside, is a novel proposition of another contributing factor... Read more

“Faith of the Fatherless”: Do Fathers Make or Break a Person’s Faith?

October 16, 2023 By Joel Furches

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Of Fathers and God Author, speaker, and former counselor Debbie W. Wilson writes about an experience she had in her counseling course: “During the course, each of us took an inventory on how we viewed our heavenly Father in a variety of issues. I zipped through the list checking the appropriate columns. “Later, we filled out the same inventory, this time as it related to our earthly fathers. I whizzed down the columns until my pattern arrested me. I flipped... Read more

The Academic Link Between Deconversion and Anger Toward God

October 9, 2023 By Joel Furches

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The very public conflict around atheism and religion was at its height during the 2010s, with both sides being equally vocal. During that time, it was not uncommon for religious people to claim that atheists were simply angry at God. The common response from atheists was that they were not angry at God so much as they were at religion – a response which makes sense, given that they did not believe in God. It was somewhat surprising, then, when... Read more

Reality Check: When Deconverts Feel the Sting of Discrimination

October 2, 2023 By Joel Furches

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In 2020, the American Atheist Society [AAS] released the results of an online survey they had conducted regarding discrimination against atheists. The results were posted on the organization’s website as an article, breaking the numbers down to percentages presented in various graphs and population maps. The resulting article boiled down to two essential points: atheists are widely persecuted, and their interests are underrepresented in the public forum. The article states: “…it is our goal to use the data acquired through... Read more

Can Parent and Peer Relationships Affect Deconversion?

September 25, 2023 By Joel Furches

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Two important studies have been released within the last several years, the topic of which relates to the role of social support in the process of religious deconversion. The first article is titled “Deconversion process and quality of life among Polish adolescents: The mediating role of Social Support” (Zarzycka et al., 2021). The research question of this study was how the process of deconversion in adolescence is affected by quality of life and social support systems. In this paper, deconversion... Read more

Crossing Over: A Case Study in Converting Between Religions

September 18, 2023 By Joel Furches

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Cross-Conversion Conversion studies began in the 19th century in a very religious culture. As a result, most “converts” being studied already had a religious background when they “converted.” What they essentially did was to commit to something more formal than what they already believed or practiced. Similarly, early deconversion studies took place in the 20th century, and largely relied on studying what happened when a person left one religion or denomination for another. As a result, both conversion and deconversion... Read more

Vander Elst: The British Atheist Who Converted Because of the Problem of Evil

September 11, 2023 By Joel Furches

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Philip Vander Elst is a freelance writer and lecturer who works primarily in the fields of politics and journalism. Growing up in an unbelieving family, Elst was given to believe that religion was passé. He was convinced that religion existed to enslave believers to a kind of blind, unthinking devotion; and that science had essentially discredited all religions. Since Elst was a strong believer in human rights and freedom, he was consequently opposed to the oppression he saw in religious... Read more

Interview With a Reconvert

September 4, 2023 By Joel Furches

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The Importance of Reconversion As under-studied as deconversion is, the matter of re-conversion is practically untouched in the literature. If studied, reconversion could tell us a great deal about both conversion and deconversion. So it is always a privilege when I, as a researcher, have the opportunity to speak to a reconvert. Such a person is author Wade Brown, whom I was able to interview upon the release of his first book. The God Conclusion The God Conclusion is a... Read more