Reactionary Deconversion from Mormonism: Polarization of Ideological and Behavioral Religiosity among Active and Former Mormons

Abstract

In contrast to a growing body of literature examining the experiences and trends of those who leave their faith tradition—particularly among Christian denominations—relatively little is known about those who specifically disaffiliate from Mormonism, although some evidence suggests that former Mormons may be especially likely to embrace secularity or irreligion rather than other religious beliefs and practices. Pursuant to empirically investigating this reactionary dynamic, the current study compared the relative religiosity and secularity of an online sample of active Mormons ( n = 194) and former Mormons ( n = 109) using the Abbreviated Religiousness Measure (ARM), an updated questionnaire of multidimensional religiosity. Results supported the ARM's improved psychometrics and its hypothesized three-factor structure with both subsamples. Additionally, multivariate and univariate results indicated that active and former Mormon participants from our sample, significantly polarized in their self-reported level of religious beliefs, rituals, and influence on daily behaviors, with active Mormon reporting high religiosity and former Mormons reporting low religiosity or high secularity. Although these results comport with reactionary deconversion dynamics found in other high cost religions, limits to generalizability are discussed. Reasons for and implications of this reactionary phenomenon are also posited.

‘Like a Cord Snapping’: Toward a grounded theory of how devout Mormons leave the LDS Church

“…Although this is a much-debated practice in Grounded Theory (see Charmaz 2006, 2014), I chose to bracket as an intentional strategy to enable immersion in the data and to follow the emerging patterns without being channeled or constrained by theories of disaffiliation or studies about leaving Mormonism. James S. McGraw et al. (2018) produced a wide and thorough literature review of leaving the LDS Church in their work on “radical deconversion” from Mormonism.…”

“…Importantly, recent quantitative work clearly shows that most leavers quit the LDS Church young, before they are “credentialed”, and/or they are already marginal to the LDS communities, for example, because of their politics, social lives, sexual identities, etc. (see McGraw et al. 2018; Riess 2019).…”

“…Relatedly, my pool was focused on English-speaking and primarily North American Mormons, raising the question of what differences there might be among leavers living in the other half of the LDS world outside of North America. Second, as McGraw et al. (2018) noted, most recent studies, including my own, rely on online community sources for their data, but do not interrogate the impact or roll of online communities per se on leaving Mormonism.…”

Leaving religion: deconversion

“…Thus, the majority of early-and mostly interview-based, retrospective-studies on deconversion have focused upon exiters from NRMs [5,[7][8][9][10] with special attention to their search for freedom and autonomy, but also to their emotional suffering, crises, and wellbeing after deconversion. The study of deconversion from NRMs has continued to the present on a smaller scale, while deconversion research generally expanded its focus to include fundamentalist and evangelical Christians [11,12], Mormons [13,14], Orthodox Jews [15**,16], Muslims [17][18][19], and deconversions from a broad range of religious traditions [5,20].…”

Religious residue: The impact of childhood religious socialization on the religiosity of nones in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden

“…While Zuckerman (2012) distinguishes between shallow and deep, transformative forms of disaffiliation, the majority of the 87 people included in his study "became atheists or strong agnostics as the endpoint of their apostasy." It may be that those who disaffiliate from high-cost religions or highly religious families are more likely to reject religion entirely rather than retain a residue of their prior identity (Bengtson et al, 2018;Hookway & Habibis, 2015;McGraw et al, 2018). This is probably due to the difficulty associated with disaffiliation from such communities, which ensures that only those who are highly motivated to pursue a non-religious way of life do so (Wilkins-Laflamme, 2016a).…”