Handbook of Leaving Religion最新文献

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Leaving Orthodox Judaism 离开正统犹太教
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2020-02-11 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_012
David Belfon
{"title":"Leaving Orthodox Judaism","authors":"David Belfon","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_012","url":null,"abstract":"Leavetaking in Judaism is a deeply individual experience, very much informed by personal choices, power dynamics, as well as complex mechanics of identity change. My ongoing research study investigates the ways in which this process occurs in a Canadian context through interviews with twenty leavetakers from several varieties of Jewish observance in the Greater Toronto Area (gta). Participants run the gamut of observant Judaism from the moderatelyobservant to highly-traditionalist former haredim (ultra-Orthodox). They range in age from early twenties to late forties, relating their experiences in an Orthodox community, the process of leaving, and their current lifestyle and selfidentification. This chapter presents some preliminary findings of this work, wherein I have endeavored to give careful attention to the numerous identities that exist in-between and beyond the standard poles of observant Judaism—experiential categories that add a new dimension to studying leavetaking and disaffiliation. There is no formal mechanism in place for leaving Judaism wholesale. According to longstanding Orthodox Jewish ethos (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 44a; Yevamot 47b), if a person is born Jewish or has undergone an authorised conversion into the tradition, they are considered Jewish in perpetuity. This standing remains immutable, regardless of their intent to leave the religion or if their community shuns them for divergent beliefs or activities. Renouncing religious beliefs does not correlate to leaving Judaism either, unlike in some Christian contexts (Roof and Hoge 1980), given that faith is not necessarily the core criterion for Jewish membership. Furthermore, there are no records of members “on the rolls” or officially “active,” aside from synagogue affiliations (Lazerwitz and Harrison 1980). After all, “[m]embership in the Jewish faith is conferred by birth, not belief” (Phillips 2010: 81). Arguing for the centrality of “ethno-apostasy” in religious leaving and switching, Phillips and Kelner contend that “in Jewish culture the boundaries between religion and other aspects of life are blurred, and native discourse defines piety more in terms of practice rather than belief” (2006: 509). As such, one can identify with Judaism’s cultural or ethnic dimensions aside from its spiritual and ritual elements (Troen","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115883702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Leaving Buddhism 离开佛教
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2020-02-11 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_004
Monica Lindberg Falk
{"title":"Leaving Buddhism","authors":"Monica Lindberg Falk","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_004","url":null,"abstract":"Leaving Buddhism is a theme seldom addressed in Buddhist studies. Buddhism is generally perceived as a tolerant religion and followers are encouraged to scrutinise the Buddhist teachings and are free to leave the Buddhist faith. Buddhism does not sanction violence against apostates, there is no formal religious pretext for apostasy and Buddhism has not developed a concept of apostasy. However, for people who do apostasies from Buddhism, the worst consequences they suffer tend to be negative reactions from the family, including the risk of being ignored and shut out from family and community activities. The Buddha’s (c. 480 bce–c. 400 bce)1 attitude to apostasy is represented by an account of a meeting with one of the Buddha’s attendants Sunakkhatta. He was a disciple of the Buddha, but after a while he became dissatisfied with the Buddha’s practice and decided to renounce the teacher and his teaching. Sunakkhatta came to the Buddha and said: “Lord, I am leaving you, I am no longer living by your teachings.” The Buddha responded to this declaration by asking Sunakkhatta following questions: “Did I ever say to you; come, live by my teachings?” Sunakkhatta: “No Lord.” The Buddha: “Then did you ever say to me that you wished to live by my teachings?” Sunakkhatta: “No Lord.” The Buddha: “That being the case, who are you and what are you giving up, you foolish man?” (Digha Nikaya, iii 2–3). Sunakkhatta’s defection occurred when the Buddha was eighty years old and that was his last year in life (Batchelor 2015: 172). Neither in this case nor others did the Buddha suggest that apostates should be punished. The Buddhist traditions are so wide, diverse and multiplex that it often makes sense to refer to Buddhism in the plural form (see Strong 2015). Buddhism(s) is broadly divided into Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions and these traditions are historically evolved and culturally embodied. Because of the great diversity within the Buddhist traditions, this chapter on","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116791525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Non-Religion and Atheism 无宗教和无神论
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2020-02-11 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_021
Caleb H Schaffner, Ryan T. Cragun
{"title":"Non-Religion and Atheism","authors":"Caleb H Schaffner, Ryan T. Cragun","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_021","url":null,"abstract":"The other chapters in this part examine the process and experience of leaving a variety of different religions. However, there are several topics that those other chapters do not address, and the aim of this chapter is to fill some of these lacunae. Specifically, we are hoping to offer some insight into both the beliefs of those who have left religions in general – in our particular case, atheists – and explore how confident atheists are that they have made the correct decision. In a sense, then, we are examining those who have already left religions, but with the aim of understanding how certain they are in their new beliefs. This connects back to the broader topic of leaving religion both because the people who were interviewed for this study all left religions but also because it is exploring whether those who have left religion in general consider returning to religion. We explore two aspects of this question. First, we examine the various ways that atheists understand their new worldview, as not all atheists understand atheism to mean the same thing. Second, we explore how dogmatic atheists are with their new beliefs. Are atheists open to the possibility that they are wrong? And, if so, to what extent are they open to this possibility? To address these questions, we draw upon data gleaned from 201 surveys and fifty semi-structured interviews with Chicagoland atheists who had exited religion. The former contained scales measuring childhood religiosity, childhood religious ethnocentrism, and present-day dogmatism, which form our quantitative analysis. Fifty interviewees were randomly selected from survey participants. Interviews lasted twenty to seventy minutes, investigating present-day beliefs concerning atheism, among other topics. Many reflected on their previous theistic beliefs, offering varying degrees of certainty that they would not return. Their explanations are the focus of our qualitative analysis.","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127616642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Leaving Hinduism: Deconversion as Liberation 离开印度教:反宗教化为解放
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2020-02-11 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_009
Michael Stausberg
{"title":"Leaving Hinduism: Deconversion as Liberation","authors":"Michael Stausberg","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_009","url":null,"abstract":"Leaving one religion, and in its place committing to another one, tends to appear as two sides of one coin, or as two steps in one process. Conversion narratives typically emphasise dissatisfaction with and imperfections of the former and the superiority of the new religion respectively. Another model of conversion is the adoption of a religious self-assertion by previously religiously uncommitted persons who discover religion and a religion; or, alternatively, the dissolution of a religious identification and the adoption of a non-religious one;. for example, former religious believers now profess new identities as humanists or atheists. Leaving religion, however, is not the same as leaving a religion. In this chapter, we will consider the case of a public person who decided to leave Hinduism, the religion he was thrown into by birth in colonial Western India. The decision to leave this religion, however, did not emerge in the process of converting to another religion, nor did he leave religion altogether – in fact, he did not profess to be nonor anti-religious but he found religion useful and necessary. Apparently, he was not tempted to create a religion of his own making. Instead he proceeded to adopt some already extant religion, but this protracted or retarded quest for the religion he would adopt went on over several decades. The religion he and several hundred thousand of his followers adopted eventually, Buddhism, was being remade in the process. The person is question was Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956), often hailed as the ‘father of the Indian constitution’.","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131231671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Leaving Vipassana Meditation 离开内观禅修
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2020-02-11 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_011
Masoumeh Rahmani
{"title":"Leaving Vipassana Meditation","authors":"Masoumeh Rahmani","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_011","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the disaffiliation narratives of former members of one of the most successful international Buddhist organisations – S.N. Goenka’s (1924–2013) Vipassana meditation movement. To date, Goenka’s network is the largest donor-funded Vipassana organisation with over 170 official, and over 130 non-official centers worldwide. These centers offer courses of varying durations (3–60 day), thought the standard ten-day retreats mark one’s entry into this organisation, and hence they are the most frequently held and best attended (Dhamma 2017). Around the globe, Goenka’s courses are conducted more or less identically; they all follow the same guidelines and are taught via pre-recorded audio and video footage of Goenka. Goenka’s teachings are theoretically underpinned by the basic Buddhist doctrines of the Four Noble Truths and his selective interpretation of the Buddhist text, Satipaṭṭhana Sutta in light of the Theravada text, Abhidhamma and “the Path of purification” (Rahmani and Pagis 2015). According to Goenka, human existence is characterised by suffering, resulting from attachment and aversion to things that are impermanent. He therefore follows the Buddhist premise that all phenomena are marked by suffering (dukkha), impermanence (anicca), and not-self (anatta). Goenka asserts that insight into the true nature of reality, can be gained through the observance of Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, which is divided into three sections: morality (sila), concentration (samadhi), and wisdom (panna). A standard ten-day course is structured meticul ously in order to practice these three stages and to develop insight into the true nature of reality, as it is understood within the Theravada tradition (Pagis, 2010). However, Goenka (1997: 12) argues that a mere intellectual understanding of these concepts and processes does not produce “real wisdom,” and therefore cannot liberate one from suffering; rather one must understand the true at an experiential and embodied level. Hence, students are advised to invest more time in meditation than reading or engaging in “useless intellectual games.” This epistemic strategy undergirds much of Goenka’s enterprise including his continuous effort to abstract his movement and its teachings from the category","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125868362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Statistical Approaches to Leaving Religion 离开宗教的统计方法
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2020-02-11 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_024
Isabella Kasselstrand
{"title":"Statistical Approaches to Leaving Religion","authors":"Isabella Kasselstrand","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_024","url":null,"abstract":"Quantitative research has relatively recently become a prominent approach in the social scientific study of religion. While there are a handful of examples of such studies from the first half of the past century, quantitatively oriented research on religion has been a more common occurrence since the 1960s (Voas 2007). Predominantly a result of significant technological advancements in the second half of the twentieth century that allow for complex calculations to be carried out instantaneously by a computer, this development follows a similar surge in the application of statistical methods across the social sciences more broadly (Blalock 1989). Early quantitative researchers on apostasy (for example Caplowitz and Sherrow 1977; Hunsberger 1976; Roof and Hadaway 1977; Wuthnow and Glock 1973) responded to a need for measuring a changing religious landscape – an undertaking that required statistical tools. Since then, quantitative research has continued to thrive. Today, the amount of resources available for scholars interested in studying religious disengagement quantitatively are abundant and constantly growing. Such resources, which are discussed in this chapter, include a wide range of publicly available data sets as well as statistical software programs that have the capacity to perform advanced statistical analysis. Although statistical methods are increasingly popular in the study of religion, this approach has been criticised for its limited ability to thoroughly capture diverse meanings that exist in the social world (Gergen 1999). This has also been noted specifically in relation to research on religion and nonreligion. Yamane (2000), for example, asserts that highly subjective phenomena, such as religious feelings and experiences, are inherently unquantifiable. Despite this criticism, statistical methods provide important strengths and insights on apostasy that cannot be discerned from the use of qualitative approaches. Along these lines, Voas (2007) maintains that quantitative research provides rigor, clarity, and the ability to distinguish social trends and patterns. In this chapter, I explore approaches, opportunities, challenges, and limitations of using statistical methods to study the phenomenon of individuals","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131161726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Psychological Approaches to Leaving Religion 离开宗教的心理学方法
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2019-09-26 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_026
K. Messick, M. Farias
{"title":"Psychological Approaches to Leaving Religion","authors":"K. Messick, M. Farias","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_026","url":null,"abstract":"Why do some people leave the religion they were brought up in? Are there individual differences between believers and unbelievers? These are some of the questions that have sparked a recent interest in the cognitive, socio-cultural, and neurological study of the non-religious individual. This chapter will summarise and discuss some of these perspectives. We will use the terms “unbelief” and “unbelievers” as blanket terms to refer to atheists and others who perceive themselves as having no religious belief or affiliation. For the purposes of this chapter, unbelief is defined as an explicit absence or rejection of supernatural belief. There are, of course, different types of unbelievers; one only needs to recall that Socrates was sentenced to death for not believing in the Homeric gods, although he still believed in a metaphysical being that guided the universe. He was only an unbeliever to the culture he found himself in. This chapter focuses on those who do not believe in the existence of any god(s), but this does not mean that these individuals are devoid of other kinds of non-supernatural beliefs, or they may even, at least unconsciously, espouse some kinds of supernatural beliefs.","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124988390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Leaving the Amish 离开阿米什人
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2019-09-26 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_013
David L. Mcconnell
{"title":"Leaving the Amish","authors":"David L. Mcconnell","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_013","url":null,"abstract":"Contrary to the persistent myth that they are dying out, the Amish population in North America continues to grow at a rapid pace. Numbering over 330,000 in thirty-one states and four Canadian provinces, the Amish population doubles every twenty years (Young Center 2018; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). While over 60 percent of the Amish still reside in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, home to the four largest Amish settlements, population pressures are increasingly resulting in out-migration to areas where land prices are more affordable. Because the Amish do not actively seek converts, this population surge is a result of two major forces—large family sizes and a high retention rate. Though family size differs by affiliation, Amish families still average approximately five children. At the same time, the retention rate is at an all-time high. Fully 85 percent of Amish youth get down on their knees in front of their congregation and pledge to uphold the Ordnung, or unwritten code of conduct, of their local church district (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner, and Nolt 2013). Less visible in this overall picture are the approximately 15 percent of Amish youth who leave the community. Like other Anabaptist groups, the Amish require youth to make a conscious decision to join the church at some point after they reach “the age of accountability,” usually age sixteen, and enter the period known as rumspringa, where parental supervision is relaxed. The focus on adult baptism arose during the Radical Reformation in the early 1500s as a sign that believers had made a “conscious decision to follow Christ and form a church apart from the state” (Nolt 2003: 12). Because the state church used infant baptism as a means of controlling the population, however, it saw adult baptism as a grave threat to its legitimacy. The persecution of Anabaptists over the next century—as many as 2500 were killed—was a key factor in their subsequent migration to the U.S. in the 1700s (followed by another wave in the 1800s) at the invitation of the Quaker governor of Pennsylvania, William Penn (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner and Nolt 2013: 24). Because adult baptism remains a cornerstone tenet of the Amish faith, the individuals who decide not to join the church, or who join but later decide to leave, provide a useful mirror on the rapidly changing relationship between the Amish and the outside world.","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123466527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Leaving Religion: Introducing the Field 离开宗教:介绍这个领域
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2019-09-26 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_002
Daniel Enstedt, G. Larsson, Teemu T. Mantsinen
{"title":"Leaving Religion: Introducing the Field","authors":"Daniel Enstedt, G. Larsson, Teemu T. Mantsinen","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_002","url":null,"abstract":"In 1968, the New York Times published the sociologist Peter Berger’s now famous prediction about the coming decline of religion worldwide. In this context, Berger stated that the remains of religion in the twenty-first century would consist of religious believers “likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture” (Berger 1968: 3). People around the world were, in short, expected to leave religion altogether as their societies became modern. It was not a question about if the change would occur, only a matter of time. More than 30 years later, in 1999, Berger revised his earlier claim and instead declared the world as desecularised (Berger 1999). He is, however, far from alone in criticising, or even dismissing, the century old secularisation thesis, where modernisation of a society goes hand in hand with secularisation.1 Even though leaving religion – that is the focus in this handbook – has, from time to time, been associated with irreligiosity, agnosticism, and atheism, and, in particular, modernised Western predominantly Christian countries, it can very well also be about leaving one religion from another, or even changing position within the same religious tradition, for example when orthodox Chassidic Jews becoming reformed, liberal Jews (see, for instance, Davidman 2015). In 2015, pew Research Center published the report The Future of World Religions, where the overall global tendencies, at least until 2050, are about growth of religion. Around the world, religious population is increasing according to the prediction – the Muslim population will grow significantly, and in 2070 Islam will be at the same size as Christianity, that is around one third of the world population – and only a small percentage of the world’s population are expected to be disaffiliated or non-religious. Leaving out a critical discussion about the accuracy of this study and its methodological problems, one of the factors analysed in the statistically based projection was “religious switching,”","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128834929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Leaving New Religions 离开新宗教
Handbook of Leaving Religion Pub Date : 2019-09-26 DOI: 10.1163/9789004331471_020
C. Cusack
{"title":"Leaving New Religions","authors":"C. Cusack","doi":"10.1163/9789004331471_020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_020","url":null,"abstract":"Early studies of joining and leaving new religious movements (henceforth nrms) exhibited deficiencies found in research on religious conversion in general. These include a tendency to sharply distinguish the preand postconversion identity of nrm members, and to view leaving as a simple process. New religions were compared to established religions, and the vocabulary used to describe nrm members differed from that used for Buddhists or Christians. Terms like “recruit” for “convert,” and “affiliation” and “disaffiliation” for “conversion” and “apostasy” showed that nrms were regarded as social movements or “cults” not “religions” (Richardson 1993: 352–354). Disaffiliation, except in cases of alleged “brainwashing” involving deprogrammers (Melton 2004: 232–235), was rarely of interest. From the 1980s the study of joining and leaving nrms became more nuanced; it is evident that people leave for a range of reasons. All leavers (like all joiners) are not identical; some retain faith while abandoning membership, while others abandon both. David Bromley has posited three exit roles for leavers departing organisations: Defector, Whistle-blower, and Apostate (Bromley 1998a: 145). The status of each leaver depends upon the degree of tension with broader culture that the organisation manifests. The majority of leavers do not engage in public airing of grievances, loss of faith, or dispute with religious organisations, but experience departure as an “uncontested leave-taking” (Bromley 1998a: 146). Whistle-blowers and apostates have more difficult exits; they are perceived as disloyal and may be voluble critics of their former religion. Apostates may receive threats and even go into hiding. Because nrms are, in Bromley’s terms, “subversive,” exhibiting a high degree of tension with society, apostate roles are prominent for ex-members (Bromley 1998a: 153). There is also doubt about the use of ex-member testimonies. Benjamin D. Zablocki posited “believer,” “apostate,” and “ethnographer” sources in research on nrms. He argued “there is very little difference between the reliability (that is, stability across time) of accounts from believers and ex-believers (or apostates)” (cited in Carter 1998: 222). The validity of ex-member accounts is harder to ascertain, given believers","PeriodicalId":364665,"journal":{"name":"Handbook of Leaving Religion","volume":"279 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116557914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
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