Pragmatic Leaving

Abstract

This chapter explores the narratives of pragmatic leavers, which represent the accounts of those individuals who disengaged prior to developing commitment and therefore had minimum exposure to this movement. Because empirical studies on leaving religion are primarily built upon the experience of those individuals who leave a movement after long periods of intense devotion and commitment, this chapter prioritised a descriptive approach in order to adequately depict this phenomenon. It argues that pragmatic leavers are (to some extent) experience seekers, and their narrative plots were amenable to the types of meditative experiences they had. The chapter presents three interrelated themes that characterised the language of these disengagement narratives—(1) pragmatism, (2) dualistic discourse, and (3) ambivalence—and demonstrates how each narrative differs based on a particular dynamic between these features.