Linking Social Structure and the Exit Process in Religious Organizations: Defectors, Whistle-Blowers, and Apostates

Bromley, David G.

doi:10.2307/1388034

Cited by 27 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Second, it is a negative description of transition, which, third, chiefly centres around one's former religion, rather than including the complex life-worlds people inhabit. 6 Other studies on the subject of 'moving out of Islam', or non-belief in Islamic communities, have adopted a more religiously inspired terminology, such as 'apostasy' (see, among others, Andre and Esposito 2016;Bromley 1998;Cottee 2015;Larsson 2018;Samuri and Quraishi 2014;Sidło 2016). The use of this term indicates a religioncentred approach and is therefore not suitable as an analytical description here.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It’s Not Just about Faith’: Narratives of Transformation When Moving Out of Islam in the Netherlands and Britain

Vliek

2019

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations

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This article investigates the narratives of people with Islamic backgrounds in the Netherlands and Britain who have moved out of Islam. Rather than focusing primarily on 'leaving faith' (i.e. a predominantly negative and religiously centred approach), it will present four types of thematic trajectories that consider the broader life-worlds and experiences of the interlocutors. These themes will illustrate the relative weight of the religious voice in trajectories, rather than presupposing the centrality of religion in one's (former) identity or trajectory. It will thereby display a broader understanding of the interlocutors' experiences as being in a negative relation to religion alone: not only religious, but also political, social, ethnic and gender boundaries provided the contexts in which people moved out of Islam. The themes ('religious break', 'social break-away', 'the entrance' and 'unconscious secularization') will be illustrated by four case studies. A fifth case will be presented to illustrate the potency of the intertwinement of the themes. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It’s Not Just about Faith’: Narratives of Transformation When Moving Out of Islam in the Netherlands and Britain

Vliek

2019

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations

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“…The stories we will analyze in the following pages are autobiographical 5 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2018 narratives by apostates who left the ranks of three religious movements, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soka Gakkai and the Church of Scientology 2 , as posted on line on critical websites run by leavers. These three cases are examples of high demand groups in terms of social and identity investment and disinvenstment, and they are subversive organizations (sensu Bromley 1998) if considered in the Italian context where the Roman catholicism is still the prevailing religion and members of religious minorities amount to 3.2% of population (Introvigne and Zoccatelli 2013). The ideological orientation and the polemical point of view of these Web sites offer a rhetorical framework in the narrative reconstruction of apostates' autobiographies.…”

Section: Narrating the Exitmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The on line accounts were selected by privileging biographical trajectories characterized by very polemical orientation and disaffiliation from the religious group. This criterion meets the definition of apostasy elaborated by Bromley (1998) and Wright (1998), but it does not permit to cover the heterogeneity of the exit trajectories: indeed, leavers who outspoken against a religious movement are not representative of the majority of the ex-members; many leavers maintain good relationship with the former group or do not publicly express a critical view (Lewis and Levine 2010). For a more detailed discussion of the study design, see Cardano and Pannofino (2015, 19-24).…”

Section: Interdictions: the Conditions Preceding Apostasymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many exit narratives, in describing the gradual loss of freedom that encroaches on them as members of the group, employ the metaphor of captivity (Bromley 1998). For example, Renato complains that:…”

Section: Interdictions: the Conditions Preceding Apostasymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Exiting from religious groups-like exiting from any other group (Ebaugh 1988)-is a recurrent phenomenon in an individual's life experience. In certain circumstances, however, it can have social significance, especially when leaving is contested, with a dispute arising between the leave-taker and the group of which s/he was a part (Bromley 1998). In a field where religious organizations showing different degrees of tension between each other and with society coexist, David Bromley distinguishes between "defectors," i.e., those who leave allegiant organizations such as the traditional institutionalized churches with broad social legitimacy; "whistle-blowers," who come from contestant organizations, or in other words religious associations with a moderate level of coincidence of interests and of tension with the surrounding environment; and lastly, apostates in the fullest sense, who disaffiliate from subversive organizations, or in other words, organizations that show a high degree of conflict with, or even opposition to, the surrounding society.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Exes speak out, Narratives of apostasy

Pannofino

2018

IJSNR

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The paper presents a study of the trajectories of apostasy from three religious movements, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Soka Gakkai Buddhist institute and the Church of Scientology, through the analysis of a body of autobiographical narratives posted online by Italian apostates. Even more than being the account of a past religious experience, these narratives are the last stage in the gradual articulation of a voice with which the disaffected believers publicly express a critical view of the organizations they have left, charging them with using practices of interdiction to prevent dissent by their members. The common theme that emerges from these stories is not the loss of faith, but the discovery of a hidden deception, the breach of the implicit pact of trust that bound the narrator to the religious group. The field of apostasy Apostasy, together with conversion, is one of the most visible of the life transitions affecting religious identity and mobility. Hence the importance of investigating apostasy in order to understand the specific nature of the contemporary spiritual experience (Hervieu-Léger 1999), where the religious actor is a seeker at large in a pluralistic religious landscape who chooses the religious option that best meets his/her personal needs (Wuthnow 2005; Barro et al. 2010). Apostasy, as the moment in which the relationship between the member and the group to which s/he belongs is broken off, is thus played out against the backdrop of a broader socioreligious field (Bourdieu 1971

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Disaffiliation from a New Religious Movement: The Importance of Self and Others in Exit

Coates

2013

Symbolic Interaction

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Challenging the popular belief that people who join new religious movements (NRMs) become “entrapped,” this study describes the way in which 23 former members of 11 different “cults” personally negotiated disaffiliation. The current findings support previous studies that posit exit as a resolution to unresolved doubts and dissonances, and contribute to this literature by suggesting that the nature of these dissonances, and the way in which exit constitutes a “solution” to these dissonances may vary. It is suggested that for approximately half of the participants in this study, the dissonances that precipitated exit, were relatively minor, primarily caused by organizational changes and inconsistencies in the teachings. While generally doubts were resolved privately and commitment sustained, exit occurred when alternate discourses or other identity resources became available through which doubts could become resolved. The remaining participants describe the conflicts that precipitated disaffiliation as pertaining to tensions between the groups' expectation of conformity and their sense of autonomy. These participants describe exit as a solution to the stress and emotional exhaustion of membership. To make sense of these different disaffiliation narratives, symbolic interactionist notions of the self as constructed in both the realm of “Self” and “Others” are applied.

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Linking Social Structure and the Exit Process in Religious Organizations: Defectors, Whistle-Blowers, and Apostates

Cited by 27 publications

References 36 publications

‘It’s Not Just about Faith’: Narratives of Transformation When Moving Out of Islam in the Netherlands and Britain

‘It’s Not Just about Faith’: Narratives of Transformation When Moving Out of Islam in the Netherlands and Britain

Exes speak out, Narratives of apostasy

Disaffiliation from a New Religious Movement: The Importance of Self and Others in Exit

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