When the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ prediction of the end of human history passed uneventfully in 1975, Gudrun and Werner, a young couple from Germany, discussed their growing doubts and left their faith community. Decades passed, and in 2003, they were attending a charismatic church. Ten years later, they told researchers that they left that church, too, but still read the Bible on their own or, in the case of Gudrun, participated in a women’s Bible study.
The couple’s story, elaborated in Ramona Bullik’s Leitmotifs in Life Stories, illustrates how faith develops over a lifetime in ways that defy commonly understood narratives. People deconvert, and then convert, and deconvert again. Further, many people may leave religious groups or phases in their life, but they don’t necessarily become nonspiritual.
Bullik’s book compiles Gudrun and Werner’s stories along with seven others. Her narrative builds on the research of psychologists Heinz Streib and Ralph J. Hood, who have interviewed hundreds of people in the U.S. and Germany who left religious groups. Their first-of-its-kind longitudinal study over 20 years recently completed a fourth wave of interviews following the same group of people.
Streib studied under theologian James Fowler and uses his faith development interview. But Streib’s research has led him to describe faith differently. In Fowler’s model, people advance in stages they grow spiritually. Streib counters, “It would be too easy to say that people grow in their faith as they get older.” Wisdom research indicates that people don’t necessarily get wiser as they get older.
“I cannot just say there are certain steps… or a trajectory as people grow older because there is so much variety, and if they encounter crisis or a different life situation, they may use different ways of coping with those challenges,”
he said.
Hood tells this example: If you take your baby to a pediatrician, she might ask about your child’s motor skills. Is he is crawling yet? Has he tried pulling himself to standing? Does he attempt steps while holding onto furniture? But once your child begins walking on his own, does that mean you’ll never see him crawling again? No. In fact, in a house fire, firefighters will tell adults to drop to their knees and crawl out.
To take that further, of course, after the fire—if they escaped injury—they’re going to go back to walking. Likewise, Streib said that people who change their religion don’t always actually completely lose faith—they’re still spiritually developing, sometimes differently and sometimes they find ways to stay.
For Gudrun, her marriage to Werner greatly impacted her religious trajectory. While she described herself as a devout follower of the denomination of her childhood—and she met her husband through the Jehovah’s Witnesses—Werner always held some skepticism. He described his mother’s own crisis mode in post-World War II East Germany as providing the grounds for her involvement in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who helped them flee to West Germany. As a young man, he wanted to distance himself from the group, but then he met his wife. Ultimately, it was Werner, who sought other perspectives and ultimately pushed Gudrun to accept the religious group’s shortcomings as reason to leave.
Werner describes transitions in his life of faith practically: after first leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they joined the regional Protestant Church because their daughter was born. When the pastor moved to another congregation, they found a new church—a charismatic one. Gudrun found herself at home in this new tradition, easily accepting the rituals and beliefs of a charismatic church. Werner was enthusiastic at first, but then felt intellectually stale. He found a theological awakening through examining his beliefs through a scientific lens and comparing the Bible with other ancient writings, such as Assyrian or Egyptian.
Changing religious identities
Psychologists Neal Krause and Gail Ironson have also weighed religious change over time, considering whether people consistently identify as religious, spiritual, both, or neither. In their two-wave study, one-fourth of the study participants changed their identity over a seven-year period. There were some limitations to their data, but they found that people are less likely to exit an identity as they age. Ultimately, Krause and Ironson concluded that religious and spiritual identities are relatively fluid and that any given time some people are in a flux of redefining their faith.
After leaving several religious groups, Werner, at age 79, no longer ascribes to literal interpretations of the Bible and feels liberated from institutional religion. He sees being “religious” much more broadly as simply an engagement with the ultimate questions of life. He rejects a narrow image of God, which sees him as a punisher of wrong, and no longer believes he is “almighty.” Yet, he believes in a benevolent God who empathizes with humans in the person Jesus. He’s a nonconformist, but his constant search for more enlightenment keeps him restless, and his wife and her faith serve as his only anchor due to his disengagement with religious community life.
At age 83, Gudrun has taken a slightly different faith direction. Though she seems to miss the more robust community practice of faith she once had, she maintains connection to a women’s Bible study. She is less concerned about how other people might label her faith. She’s more content in her personal belief in God and Jesus than in her younger years. She discussed the influence of a Catholic theologian and described her trust in God: “what the Church needs to recognize is that it has to abandon this punishing God and has to recognize that He is a God of infinite love. […] And that’s totally convincing for me.”
Media narrative is wrong
For Hood, a limited language about deconversion can lead to a misunderstanding that our culture grows more and more secular as people deconvert from a religious group. When people lose their faith, many don’t just simply become atheists, according to their study. Some people maintain spiritual beliefs. For some, as their faith develops through what appears to be a deconversion, they become re-enchanted, not more secular.
These developments can emerge in what falls outside of normal religious identities—for example, Werner’s intellectual engagement with other ancient writings or with modern science. For others, the practice of yoga or meditation. “Many people look for something else,” said Streib.
“They might not call it religion. They might look for other language. They may call it spiritual.”
“What makes people look for transcending experience?” Streib suggests looking beyond narrow definitions of religious communities or spirituality. “Then you have a very broad understanding of religion.” No matter what you call it, people continue to find ways to transcend the everyday realities they find themselves in.
Rebecca Randall is an independent writer and editor based in the Pacific Northwest. She writes on religion, psychology, the environment, and social issues. She is the former science editor for Christianity Today.
