People struggle with religion and spirituality in several ways, including challenges in trusting God, confronting supernatural evil, tolerating other perspectives on religion, maintaining moral propriety, finding existential meaning, and managing religious doubt. These religious and spiritual struggles relate to both physical and mental health independently of other religious and distress factors. Causality in this connection needs further study, but evidence supports many potential causes and moderators of the link between R/S struggle and health. These include personality, social, and environmental influences, (...) including traumatic experiences and subcultural differences. Many theoretical questions remain unresolved, including how change in R/S struggle can predict or be predicted by change in health and other connected constructs, and how one might intervene to aid those who struggle with religious or spiritual challenges. Nonetheless, research momentum has grown, having already produced a wealth of information that underscores the need for greater attention to this domain. R/S struggle poses an important exception to generally positive overall associations between religion and well-being, though even R/S struggle may promote growth. This review offers a brief introduction to emerging psychological theory and research on R/S struggle with an emphasis on its relevance to wellness and illness. (shrink)

Early parental loss or trauma has been proposed by some as a significant factor in the adoption of atheist, non-theist, or irreligious worldviews. Relevant empirical data, however, have been limited, impressionistic, methodologically questionable, or limited to historically prominent figures. Survey data from the GSS and a study of affirmatively non-theistic and irreligious secular group affiliates in the U.S. do not provide evidence of disproportionately high rates of early parental loss among individuals who describe themselves as “atheist” or “anti-religious,” reject belief (...) in God, or express strong anger about religion. Loss of a parent or other loved may play a role in turns toward, as well as away from, God and religion for some. There is also evidence of comparatively high rates of parental loss in the lives of historically prominent figures, both religious and non-religious. Present results, however, do not support the hypothesis that early loss is a disproportionately frequent experience in the lives of atheistic or irreligious people. (shrink)

A review of recent research suggests that academic and popular distinctions between “religion” and “spirituality” are unfounded. Working from a meaning systems perspective, it is argued that recognizing that “religious” and “spiritual” are part of the same broad category does not go far enough. It is argued that a wider perspective that considers the interplay of many different cultural and social factors on both beliefs and practices is more useful. This broadening of the multi-level, interdisciplinary paradigm to examine all existential (...) cultures, including the secular and non-religious, offers the potential to better understand the complexity and diversity of lived religion. Increased use of idiographic methodologies and a more reflective approach to the constructs used in nomothetic methodologies are advocated as a way to advance the field and better explore beliefs and practices in a more ecologically valid way. (shrink)

This article presents an outline of historical and situational arguments which suggest a focus on deconversion, an outline of conversion research and its consequences for deconversion, and a discussion of extant empirical research on deconversion. The discussion then focuses on the conceptualization of deconversion and compiles the features from which a comprehensive concept of deconversion may emerge. The core features of the deconversion concept which is suggested in this article are complemented by dimensions of diversity which also include a developmental (...) perspective . This has implications for future research. (shrink)

Since Durkheim’s characterization of the sacred and profane as “antagonistic rivals,” the strict dichotomy has been framed in such a way that “being religious” evokes images of a life filled with profound meaning and value, while “being secular” evokes images of a meaningless, self-centered, superficial life, often characterized by materialistic consumerism and the cold, heartless environment of corporate greed. Consequently, to identify as “neither religious nor spiritual” runs the risk of being stigmatized as superficial, untrustworthy, and immoral. Conflicts and confusions (...) encountered in the process of negotiating a nonreligious/nonspiritual identity, caused by the ambiguous nature of religious language, were explored through qualitative interviews with 14 ex-ministers and 1 atheist minister—individuals for whom supernaturalist religion had formed the central core of identity, but who have deconverted and no longer hold supernatural beliefs. The cognitive linguistics approach of Frame Semantics was applied to the process of “oppositional identity work” to examine why certain identity labels are avoided or embraced due to considerations of the cognitive frames evoked by those labels. -/- Through the constant comparative method of grounded theory, a host of useful theoretical concepts emerged from the data. Several impediments to the construction of a “secular but not superficial” identity were identified, and a framework of new theoretical concepts developed to make sense of them: sense disparity, frame disparity, identity misfire, foiled identity, sense conflation, and conflated frames. Several consequences arising from these impediments were explored: (1) consequences of sense conflation and conflated frames for the study of religion; (2) consequences of conflated frames for religious terminology; and (3) consequences of the negation of conflated frames for those who identify as not religious, not spiritual, or not Christian. Additionally, four types of oppositional identity work were identified and analyzed: (1) avoidance identity work, (2) dissonant identity work, (3) adaptive identity work, and (4) alternative identity work. Finally, the concept of conflated frames was applied to suggest a new interpretation of the classic Weberian disenchantment narrative. (shrink)