Versions of Deconversion

Versions of Deconversion
Author: John D. Barbour
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1994
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780813915463

In Versions of Deconversion John Barbour examines the work of a broad selection of authors in order to discover the reasons for their loss of faith and to analyze the ways in which they have interpreted that loss. For some the experience of deconversion led to another religious faith, some turned to atheism or agnosticism, and others used deconversion as a metaphor or analogy to interpret an experience of personal transformation. The loss of faith is closely related to such vital ethical and theological concerns as the role of conscience, the assessment of religious communities, the dialectical relationship between faith and doubt, and the struggle to reconcile faith with intellectual and moral integrity. This book shows the persistence and the vitality of the theme of deconversion in autobiography, and it demonstrates how the literary form and structure of autobiography are shaped by ethical critique and religious reflection. Versions of Deconversion should appeal at once to scholars in the fields of religious studies and theology who are concerned with narrative texts, to literary critics and specialists on autobiography, and to a wider audience interested in the ethical and religious significance of autobiography.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802198724

The New York Times–bestselling author’s Whitbread Prize–winning debut—“Winterson has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel” (The Washington Post Book World). When it first appeared, Jeanette Winterson’s extraordinary debut novel received unanimous international praise, including the prestigious Whitbread Prize for best first fiction. Winterson went on to fulfill that promise, producing some of the most dazzling fiction and nonfiction of the past decade, including her celebrated memoir Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?. Now required reading in contemporary literature, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a funny, poignant exploration of a young girl’s adolescence. Jeanette is a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an evangelical household in the dour, industrial North of England and finds herself embroidering grim religious mottoes and shaking her little tambourine for Jesus. But as this budding missionary comes of age, and comes to terms with her unorthodox sexuality, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household dissolves. Jeanette’s insistence on listening to truths of her own heart and mind—and on reporting them with wit and passion—makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an eccentric, moving passage into adulthood. “If Flannery O’Connor and Rita Mae Brown had collaborated on the coming-out story of a young British girl in the 1960s, maybe they would have approached the quirky and subtle hilarity of Jeanette Winterson’s autobiographical first novel. . . . Winterson’s voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you’ve never heard before.” —Ms. Magazine

Deconverted

Deconverted
Author: Seth Andrews
Publisher:
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2019-08-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781977217639

"...and then Noah loaded the dinosaurs onto the ark." Assertions like these seem comical until you realize that many Christian parents aren't kidding when they teach them to their children as facts. Every day, impressionable young minds are conditioned to blindly accept wild biblical tales of floating zoos, talking shrubbery, 900-year-old humans, the undead, curses, levitation, demon/human hybrids and men who obtain super-human strength from the length of their hair. Allegiance to these teachings is expected, often demanded. Curiosity is muted. Doubt is frowned upon as a sin. And for those who dare to raise a dissenting hand, the threat of Hell looms ominously. A former religious radio host raised in the cradle of Christianity, Seth Andrews battled his own doubts for many years. His attempts to reconcile faith and the facts led him to a conclusion previously unthinkable, and this once-true believer ultimately became the founder of one of the most popular atheist communities on the internet.

Deconversion

Deconversion
Author: Heinz Streib
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2011-07-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647604399

This book presents case studies and empirical data of a phenomenon which increasingly gains popularity in Western societies: deconversion. There is, the authors argue, no better word than deconversion to describe processes of disengagement from religious orientations because these have much in common with conversion. Termination of membership may eventually be the final step of deconversion, but it involves biographical and psychological dynamics which can and need to be reconstructed by qualitative approaches and analyzed by quantitative instruments.In the Bielefeld-based Cross-Cultural Study on Deconversion disengagement processes from a variety of religious backgrounds in the USA and in Germany were examined, ranging from well-established religious organizations to new religious and fundamentalist groups. Nearly 1,200 persons participated in thestudy and were interviewed from 2002 to 2005. In the focus of the study are 100 deconverts from the USA and from Germany who were examined with narrative interviews, faith development interviews and an extensive questionnaire. For case study elaboration, the study followed a research design with an innovative triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data. Four chapters, corresponding to four types of deconversion, present 21 case studies. The highlights of the research project are new data on spirituality – the deconverts in particular appear to prefer a »more spiritual than religious« self-identification – and in-depth analyses of a variety of deconversion narratives with special focus on personality factors, motivation, attitudes, religious development, psychological well-being and growth, religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism. The results of this project which was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft are of special relevance for counselling and pastoral care, for religious education and for people concerned with administration and management of religious groups and churches, but also for a wider audience interested in contemporary changes in the religious fields in the USA and Germany.

Unbelievable

Unbelievable
Author: Rob J Hyndman
Publisher: Rob Hyndman
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2015-09-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1517363195

A journey from faith via evidence. Why a university professor gave up religion and became an unbeliever. Rob J Hyndman is Professor of Statistics at Monash University, Australia. He was a Christadelphian for nearly 30 years, and was well-known as a writer and Bible teacher within the Christadelphian community. He gave up Christianity when he no longer thought that there was sufficient evidence to support belief in the Bible. This is a personal memoir describing Rob's journey of deconversion. Until recently, he was regularly speaking at church conferences internationally, and his books are still used in Bible classes and Sunday Schools around the world. He even helped establish an innovative new church, which became a model for similar churches in other countries. Eventually he came to the view that he was mistaken, and that there was little or no evidence that the Bible was inspired or that God exists. In this book, he reflects on how he was fooled, and why he changed his mind. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you will be led to reflect on the nature of faith and evidence, and how they interact.

Journeys of Transformation

Journeys of Transformation
Author: John D. Barbour
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2022-03-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009098837

Compelling exploration of how journeys to a Buddhist culture changed 30 Western writers as they explored the meaning of 'no-self'.

Creative Negativity

Creative Negativity
Author: Carol Hanbery MacKay
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804738293

Focusing on the early Modern and Victorian periods, the author finds covert revolutionaries in four familiar practitioners of a strategy she calls creative negativity: poet-photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), novelist-essayist Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919), activist-spiritual leader Annie Besant (1847-1933), and actress-writer Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952).

Out on Waters

Out on Waters
Author: James Michael Nagle
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2020-03-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725255790

For a denomination like Roman Catholicism that is canonically difficult to leave, many American Catholics are migrating beyond the institution’s immediate influence. The new religious patterns associated with this experience represent a somewhat cohesive movement influencing not just Catholicism, but the whole of North American religion. Careful examination of the lives of disaffiliating young adults reveals that their religious lives are complicated. For example, the assumption that leaving conventional religious communities necessarily results in a non-religious identity is simplistic and even, perhaps, misleading. Many maintain a religious worldview and practice. This book explores one “place” where the religiously-affiliated and religiously-disaffiliating regularly meet—Catholic secondary schools—and something interesting is happening. Through a series of ethnographic portraits of Catholic religious educators and their disaffiliating former students, the book explores the experience of disaffiliation and makes its complexity more comprehensible in order to advance the discourse of fields interested in this significant movement in religious history and practice.

Drifting Through Samsara

Drifting Through Samsara
Author: Masoumeh Rahmani
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2022
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0197579965

Introduction -- 1. Conversion Career -- 2. Tacit Conversion -- 3. Pragmatic Leaving -- 4. Vipassana Disaffiliation Narratives -- 5. Disaffiliation Trajectories -- 6. Deconversion: Breathing New Self into Not-Self -- Bibliography -- Appendix 1: Vipassana Ten-day Course Timetable -- Appendix 2: Participants' Information.

A Place Somewhat Apart

A Place Somewhat Apart
Author: Philip E. Harrold
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2006-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630878650

The story of secularization and religious disestablishment in American higher education is told from the standpoint of a lively community of professors, students, and administrators at the University of Michigan in the late nineteenth century. This campus culture--one of the most closely watched of its day--sheds new light on the personal and cultural meanings of these momentous changes in American intellectual and public life. Here we see how religion was not so much displaced or marginalized in the heyday of university reform as translated into new arenas of public service and scholarly pursuit. The main characters in this story--professors Calvin Thomas and Henry Carter Adams--underwent profound religious crises of faith accompanied by major adjustments in their interpersonal relationships. Together, with students and administrators, their lives constituted a communal biography of religious deconversion. A close examination of these private and public worlds provides a more complete understanding of the dynamics behind new academic policies and intellectual innovations in a leading public university. The non-cognitive, intersubjective, gendered, quasi-religious shadings of academic modernism and early pragmatist philosophy, in particular, come to light in vivid ways. As John Dewey later observed, Michigan became an experimental laboratory for "new meanings to unfold, new acts to propose."