{"id":407682,"date":"2026-04-20T03:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/407682\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T03:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:56:10","slug":"who-is-most-likely-to-be-done-with-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/407682\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Most Likely to Be “Done” With Religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My core identity<\/a> remains deeply Christian. However, after 48 years of attending church at least once per week (almost without exception, even during college), I am \u2013 at least temporarily \u2013 \u201cdone\u201d with the local church.<\/p>\n

Part of this stems from the era of COVID-19<\/a>. At the same time my family and I try to do what we feel is responsible in preventing further spread of the virus, others in our area see no problem with in-person worship, contributing to a new sense of disconnection. <\/p>\n

Even if COVID-19 never happened, though, I still might be \u201cdone.\u201d For years, although I earnestly joined with others in my local church community to recite the same creed and prayers of the Christian faith and to pour my heart into collective worship and service, I often \u2013 ironically enough \u2013 had the sense we didn\u2019t share the same worldview or many of the same values. I never felt comfortable attending the men\u2019s Bible study because I believed my questions or divergent thoughts would not be welcome. Maybe this is an aside \u2013 or maybe not \u2013 but my kids never significantly connected with anyone in the church\u2019s youth program either. As time passed, I realized we didn\u2019t really have a place at that table.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not happy about being \u201cdone.\u201d I feel failure\u2026 isolation\u2026 and profound loss. I\u2019ve described this split as being like divorce<\/a>. And, yet, in my brokenness, I also feel some degree of new freedom.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The first time I heard of a religious \u201cdone\u201d was when I was in a meeting with my colleague, Josh Packard, a sociologist at the University of Northern Colorado, the Executive Director of Springtide Research Institute<\/a>, and author of \u201cChurch Refugees: Sociologists reveal with people are DONE with church but not their faith<\/a>.\u201d The term \u201cdone\u201d is a play on words, referencing the more common term religious \u201cnones,\u201d the broader, growing<\/a> group of individuals in the developed world who express no religious affiliation.<\/p>\n

As Packard writes in this excerpt<\/a> published in Christianity Today \u2013 and drawing on interview data his team collected over the years \u2013 religious \u201cdones\u201d generally: (1) were highly active in a local church, (2) didn\u2019t really want to drop out, but (3) felt stifled by church structure.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The psychology of religion generally concerns itself with why individuals are more religious than not (see this post<\/a> for one summary) but in recent years, a few psychological scientists have started to examine why some are irreligious. As I\u2019ve written elsewhere<\/a>, Julie Exline is a pioneer in this line of research, demonstrating how the movement away from faith sometimes may stem from an extreme protest reaction against adversity. More generally, non-belief often may reflect a variety of relational and emotional factors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Recently, in an online-only article in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality<\/a>, a set of some of the first psychological studies of religious \u201cdones\u201d was published.<\/p>\n

In an initial study, the researchers asked 114 individuals who said they were once \u2013 but no longer \u2013 religious to write about their primary reason for the change. Fifty-two percent cited intellectual reasons, such as a perceived incompatibility of their previous religious beliefs with science or logic, or described how they simply \u201coutgrew\u201d their old beliefs. Twenty-two percent described how they couldn\u2019t be part of an institution they felt caused trauma<\/a> to themselves or others or perpetuated hatred toward particular groups they supported. Fifteen percent wrote about experiencing personal adversity they couldn\u2019t reconcile with their beliefs. Finally, 11% noted social reasons, such as feeling like they didn\u2019t \u201cfit in\u201d with a religious community. <\/p>\n

A larger study focused on 643 people recruited from the United States, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong who said they were formerly \u2013 but not currently \u2013 religious. Seventy-two percent of this overall sample seemed to have \u201cdiscontinued\u201d from faith, exhibiting relatively lower levels of religious belief, commitment, and practice. In contrast, 28% were \u201cstill practicing,\u201d despite their lack of formal affiliation. This group showed relatively higher levels of religious belief, commitment, and practice, and also revealed more favorable attitudes toward religion and religious people. Interestingly, however, the \u201cstill practicing\u201d group also displayed more emotional distress, maybe because they continued with a religious identity that was not supported by a specific community.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It\u2019s intriguing to consider what it means to be \u201cstill practicing\u201d a religion without being part of a religious community. Although many religious people are also spiritual, this \u201cstill practicing\u201d group may be even more clearly so, as the term \u201cspirituality\u201d evokes more of a sense of autonomous quest. Still, without a community surrounding them, I can see why emotional distress would be high, as individuals would seem more likely to feel isolated and unsupported in their core identity.<\/p>\n

Although this recent research is making progress, it still seems to be largely scratching the surface, and more research will be needed to appreciate the full complexity and nuance of individuals\u2019 religious experiences.<\/p>\n

As I think about where I stand, for example, I wouldn\u2019t consider myself irreligious at all \u2013 even though I\u2019m not connected with a local church at this point \u2013 and therefore I wouldn\u2019t have even qualified to participate in this research. In addition to private disciplines I practice daily such as study, prayer, and meditation<\/a>, I\u2019ve used the unusual opportunities in the pandemic to participate in several excellent online churches from across the world, and I continue to talk and text with Christian friends about matters of faith on a regular basis. In a tradition that is inherently communal, I wonder how to continue to claim an identity in Christ without being a part of a local church, but I\u2019ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be part of a mystical \u201cglobal body.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, it\u2019s my longing and prayer to be a part of a local community where I can know and be known, and so after the pandemic lifts, we will begin the laborious process of \u201cchurch shopping\u201d again. Hopefully, we\u2019ll find a community that \u201cworks\u201d for us, but we may not. Maybe for some people, as Phyllis Tickle suggests in her book, The Great Emergence<\/a>, Christianity will need to evolve, again, to truly have an open table. Maybe Christianity will need to return, again, to the margins \u2013 where it has always functioned best \u2013 and find a way to balance exclusive truth claims with inclusive community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With faith and hope, I believe out of darkness, again, can come a great light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My core identity remains deeply Christian. However, after 48 years of attending church at least once per week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-407682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}