Abstract
This chapter deals with an aspect of religious behaviour that has remained in the shadows, both in the scientific literature and in public discourse: deconversion from New Religious Movements. The chapter analyses the deconversion process from Damanhur, starting from an outline of the process and then focussing on two distinct processes of exiting from Damanhur through the close reading of narratives of deconversion of former Damanhurians interviewed in 2010 and 2021. Both narratives of deconversion describe a process that is at once prolonged and sometimes tortuous, but while the first respondents show a dramatic feature, those who decided upon Vajne citizenship showed a more cautious negotiation of their life courses.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
In this chapter we use the term ‘deconversion’ in the broad meaning attributed it by Heinz Streib, as a process of disaffiliation from a religious organization that implies the withdrawal of the cognitive and emotional dimensions of faith (Streib, 2014).
- 2.
The data examined here are taken from a more extensive study of disaffiliation from four NRMs: Damanhur, Soka Gakkai, Scientology and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The empirical material consists of the narratives provided by a selected set of people. For three of the case studies—Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soka Gakkai and Scientology—the narratives are taken from websites administered by defectors. In the case of Damanhur, the process of deconversion was analyzed by conducting 20 in-depth interviews and a focus group. For the contact with the Damanhur ex-members, we took advantage from a previous relationship with the community of one of the authors of this essay. The participants who contributed to the study by narrating their own experience were selected using a theoretical sample strategy, designed to maximize heterogeneity. Specifically, the selection criteria guaranteed heterogeneity of gender (10 men and 10 women) and in the rank reached in the participants’ ‘career’ as initiates. Nearly all our participants had a medium-high level of education, that is, at least a high school diploma, and all displayed considerable capacity for analysis in reconstructing the events they narrated. All interviewees had spent a large portion of their lives in the community: 19 years on average, with a range from 6 to over 25 years. Leave-taking from the community took place between 2004 and 2009, during adulthood, as participants were over 30 years old when they left Damanhur. For a more detailed discussion of the study design, see Cardano and Pannofino (2015, pp. 19–24, 321–326).
- 3.
The survey was part of an ethnographic study, carried out in a season of the community story when exactly three-quarters of the leave-takers, interviewed for this study, were living in Damanhur.
- 4.
Among our interviewees, the average duration of the process of disaffiliation can be estimated at around three years, with a minimum of slightly under a year and a maximum of nearly eight years.
- 5.
All interviewees quoted in the text are identified by a pseudonym to protect anonymity, except for the three interviewees in the chapter about Vajne citizenship who have specifically allowed the use of their names.
- 6.
The Truman Show is a 1998 film directed by Peter Weir. The protagonist, Truman Burbank, has lived since birth in an artificial world built by a television network that adopted little Truman as an infant. Truman thus becomes the involuntary star of a reality show that broadcasts his life as shaped by the show’s director, who deploys a mass of actors and extras around Truman.
- 7.
- 8.
For confidentiality reasons, the person who made these statements cannot be identified even with a pseudonym.
- 9.
Wright proposes that the metaphor of divorce is a better model of this process than the common view promulgated by the anti-cult movements, which see it as a liberation from imprisonment. With compelling arguments, the author demonstrates that the keys to interpretation suggested by the analogy between divorce and deconversion are both more adequate and more parsimonious, restoring agency to apostates, without relieving the organization to which they belonged of responsibility for harming devotees through violence, abuse or coercion (Wright, 1991, p. 127).
- 10.
The representation of the deconversion process proposed in these pages shows some clear ‘family resemblances’ with some of the most authoritative schemes present in the literature. The first step of the process, the vague and unfocused discomfort, reproduces and combines the triggering categories elaborate by Skonovd (1981), Ebaugh (1988), Barbour (1994) and Streib and Keller (2004). Skonovd identifies in the appearance of a ‘crisis’, combined with the emergence of a condition of ‘cognitive dissonance’, the triggering of the deconversion process; Ebaugh attributes it to the emergence of ‘first doubts’; Barbour links the emergence of ‘doubts’ with the ‘denial of the truth of a system of belief’; finally, Streib and Keller identify in the ‘loss of specific religious experience’ the start of the deconversion process. We also include, in our first step, some elements of the second and fourth stages identified by Streib and Keller in the emerging of ‘intellectual doubts’ and in the ‘emotional suffering’. Through these combinations, we develop the emotional dimension by considering, besides the cognitive dissonance, the emotional dissonance as well. The second step proposed, that of the repair, combines the theoretical categories of Wright (1991), Skonovd (1981) and Ebaugh (1988). We borrow from Wright the key notion of repairing the relationship, drawn from the analogy between cult and marriage (Wright, 1991). The family resemblance between our repairing step with the second step of the process identified by Skonovd, that of ‘negotiation of identity, belief and membership in the organization’, is quite evident. Also evident is the correspondence with the second stage of the process postulated by Ebaugh, ‘seeking and weighing of role alternatives’. The third stage, the reflexive opening, coincides essentially with the third stage of the Ebaugh scheme, which identifies the emergence of a ‘turning point’. Our fourth step, leaving the community, coincides with the fourth and fifth stages proposed by Skonovd: ‘preparation of the leaving’ and ‘transition in the mainstream society’, and also with the fifth stage identified by Streib and Keller: ‘disaffiliation from the community’. In the definition of the theoretical tool used in this work, we chose to privilege the goal of the harmonization between empirical data and theoretical tools, instead of adhering as strictly as possible to an established theoretical scheme, present in the specialist literature.
- 11.
The average duration of the three taking leave processes we’ll be discussing is widely varied, stretching from a minimum of two years to a maximum of nearly five years. A rather interesting issue is that the new citizenship allowed our respondents to critically reflect about their experiences in Damanhur even after the detachments.
- 12.
Throughout its history, the Community has progressively emphasized the issues of environmentalism, conceiving the planet as a whole living structure. Assumed that Damanhur’s core dwells in its own peculiar spiritual hermeneutics, it is undeniable that its social approach has widely absorbed influences from those perspectives that Bron Taylor (2010, p. 16) calls Gaian spiritualities.
- 13.
As Cardano pointed out in the previous pages, a recurring feature of the taking leave process is the reworking of past involvement through one’s own current intellectual and emotional categories.
- 14.
Roberto’s experience is quite peculiar, as he approached the Community when he was searching for alternative therapies to help his brother, fighting his heroin addiction.
- 15.
Termed by Gary Alan Fine and following interactionist theory, idioculture represents those cultural contents of small social groups that are known to members, usable in group activities, functional in supporting them, appropriate in representing groups structures and triggered by peculiar events (Fine, 1979, p. 733).
- 16.
The increasingly recurring definition of spiritual but not religious (Fuller, 2001) takes on a different shade in the case of our three respondents. Kee** a distinction between the two terms, they consider Damanhur to be a more nuanced organization, in which although it declares to be more broadly spiritual, it expresses many purely religious aspects.
- 17.
The legitimacy of this extension by analogy is borne out—at least in part—by the comparison between the four NRMs investigated in the study cited above (Cardano & Pannofino, 2015).
References
Adam, R. J. (2009). ‘Leaving the Fold’: Apostasy from Fundamentalism and the Direction of Religious Development. Australian Religion Studies Review, 22(1), 42–63.
Barbour, J. D. (1994). Versions of deconversion: Autobiography and loss of faith. University Press of Virginia.
Bellah, R. N. (1976). New religious consciousness and the crisis in modernity. In C. Y. Glock & R. N. Bellah (Eds.), The new religious consciousness (pp. 333–352). University of California Press.
Bonica, L., & Cardano, M. (Eds.). (2008). Punti di svolta. Analisi del mutamento biografico. il Mulino.
Bourdieu, P. (1971). Genèse et structure du champ religieux. Revue Française de Sociologie, 12(3), 295–334.
Brinkerhoff, M. B., & Burke, K. L. (1980). Disaffiliation: Some notes on falling from the faith. Sociological Analysis, 41(1), 41–54.
Bromley, D. G. (Ed.). (1998). The politics of religious apostasy. The role of apostates in the transformation of religious movements. Praeger.
Cardano, M. (1997). Lo specchio, la rosa e il loto. Uno studio sulla sacralizzazione della natura. Seam.
Cardano, M., & Pannofino, N. (2015). Piccole apostasie. Il congedo dai nuovi movimenti religiosi. il Mulino.
Clarke, P. (2006). New religions in global perspective. Routledge.
Coser, L. A. (1956). The functions of social conflict. The Free Press.
Coser, L. A. (1974). Greedy institutions: Patterns of undivided commitment. The Free Press.
Currie, S. E. (2016). Disaffiliation and new religious movements. In J. R. Lewis & I. B. Tøllefsen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of New Religious Movements (Vol. 2, pp. 50–59). Oxford University Press.
Dawson, L. L. (1998). Comprehending cults: The sociology of New Religious Movements. Oxford University Press.
Ebaugh, H. R. (1988). Becoming an ex. The process of role exit. University of Chicago Press.
Fine, G. A. (1979). Small groups and culture creation: The idioculture of little league baseball teams. American Sociological Review, 44(5), 733–745.
Foucault, M. (1976). La volonté de savoir. Gallimard.
Fuller, R. C. (2001). Spiritual, but not religious. Understanding unchurched America. Oxford University Press.
Goldman, M. (2012). The American soul rush. Esalen and the rise of spiritual privilege. New York University Press.
Gooren, H. P. P. (2010). Religious conversion and disaffiliation: Tracing patterns of change in faith practices. Palgrave Macmillan.
Granqvist, P., & Hagekull, B. (2001). Seeking security in the New Age: On attachment and emotional compensation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(3), 527–545.
Healy, J. P. (2011). Involvement in a New Religious Movement: From discovery to disenchantment. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 13(1), 2–21.
Heelas, P. (2013). On transgressing the secular: Spiritualities of life, idealism, vitalism. In S. J. Sutcliffe & I. S. Gilhus (Eds.), New Age spirituality. Rethinking religion (pp. 66–83). Routledge.
Jacobs, J. (1987). Deconversion from religious movements: An analysis of charismatic bonding and spiritual commitment. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 26(3), 294–308.
Kent, S. A. (2001). From slogans to mantras. Social protest and religious conversion in the late Vietnam war era. Syracuse University Press.
Khalsa, K. S. (1986). New Religious Movements turn to wordly success. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 25(2), 233–247.
Lilliston, L., & Shepherd, G. (1999). New Religious Movements and mental health. In B. Wilson & J. Cresswell (Eds.), New Religious Movements. Challenge and response (pp. 123–139). Routledge.
Lofland, J., & Stark, R. (1965). Becoming a world-saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective. American Sociological Review, 30(6), 862–875.
Mauss, A. L. (1969). Dimensions of religious defection. Review of Religious Research, 10(3), 128–135.
Morin, E. (1969). La rumeur d’Orléans. Seuil.
Riis, O., & Woodhead, L. (2010). A sociology of religious emotion. Oxford University Press.
Roof, W. C. (1999). Spiritual marketplace. Baby boomers and the remaking of American religion. Princeton University Press.
Sherkat, D. E. (2003). Religious socialization. Sources of influence and influences of agency. In M. Dillon (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of religion (pp. 151–163). Cambridge University Press.
Skonovd, L. N. (1981). Apostasy: The process of defection from religious totalism. PhD Dissertation, University of California.
Smelser, N. J. (1980). Issues in the study of work and love in adulthood. In N. J. Smelser & E. H. Erikson (Eds.), Themes of work and love in adulthood (pp. 1–26). Harvard University Press.
Streib, H. (2014). Deconversion. In L. R. Rambo & C. E. Farhadian (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of religious conversion (pp. 271–296). Oxford University Press.
Streib, H., & Keller, B. (2004). The variety of deconversion experiences: Contours of a concept in respect to empirical research. Archive for the Psychology of Religion [Archiv fűr Religionspsychologie], 26, 181–200.
Taylor, B. R. (2010). Dark green religion. Nature spirituality and the planetary future. University of California Press.
Weber, M. (1978 [1922]). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. : University of California Press.
Wright, S. A. (1988). Leaving New Religious Movements: Issues, theory, and research. In D. G. Bromley (Ed.), Falling from the faith. Causes and consequences of religious apostasy (pp. 143–165). SAGE.
Wright, S. A. (1991). Reconceptualizing cult coercion and withdrawal: A comparative analysis of divorce and apostasy. Social Forces, 70(1), 125–145.
Wright, S. A. (2007). The dynamics of movement membership: Joining and leaving New Religious Movements. In D. G. Bromley (Ed.), Teaching New Religious Movements (pp. 187–209). Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cardano, M., Castagnetto, M. (2023). Leaving the City of Light: Two Deconversion Paths. In: Palmisano, S., Pannofino, N. (eds) Damanhur. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10137-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10137-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-10136-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-10137-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)