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Deconversion and Disaffiliation in Contemporary US Roman Catholicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2014

Tom Beaudoin
Tom Beaudoin*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Abstract

Disaffiliation—when members of religious communities leave—has recently become a popular topic for theological and social scientific investigation. Today, fewer Roman Catholics than in recent memory describe themselves as strong members of their church. Many have left to seek other spiritual paths, and many of those who remain do not believe and practice as the Church teaches that they should. These essays propose that the theoretical framework of “deconversion” provides a broader and more effective way to understand forms of religious change that are occurring in contemporary America. In the classroom, teaching theology can take on a specific productive shape when the surrounding culture challenges theologians to take deconversion seriously as an element of, and larger context for, spiritual identity today. Theology remains vital when patient curiosity about the current adventure of religious identity is foregrounded pedagogically. Concluding thoughts sketch some important characteristics of an evangelical church, more concerned with its mission and witness in the world than with maintaining its internal life.

Keywords

deconversiondisaffiliationCatholic identityauthoritypracticesocial scienceNew Evangelization
Type
Theological Roundtable
Information
Horizons , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 255 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2013 

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References

1 The most substantial theological study of deconversion is Streib, Heinz, Hood, Ralph W. Jr., et al. , Deconversion: Qualitative and Quantitative Results from Cross-Cultural Research in Germany and the United States of America (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2009)Google Scholar. For the Catholic context, see Beaudoin, Tom and Hornbeck, J. Patrick II, “Deconversion and Ordinary Theology: A Catholic Study,” in Exploring Ordinary Theology: Everyday Christian Believing and the Church, ed. Astley, Jeff and Francis, Leslie J. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 33–44.Google Scholar

2 On secular culture as the multiplication of paths to “fullness,” see Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. On “religious nones,” see the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Nones” on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation (October 9, 2012), http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx.

3 Personal communication, April 2, 2012.

4 Diarmuid Martin, “A Post-Catholic Ireland,” America Magazine, May 20, 2013, http://americamagazine.org/issue/post-catholic-ireland.

5 Dean, Kenda Creasy, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

6 The literature on “the New Evangelization” is already quite substantial. See Wuerl, Donald W., New Evangelization: Passing on the Catholic Faith Today (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2013)Google Scholar. Peter Steinfels speaks for many commentators in calling for a “massive, all-out mobilization of talent and treasure to catechize the young, bring adolescents into church life, and engage young adults in ongoing faith formation”; Steinfels, “Further Adrift: The American Church's Crisis of Attrition,” Commonweal Magazine, October 18, 2010, http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/further-adrift.

7 William J. Byron and Charles Zech, “Why They Left,” America Magazine, April 30, 2012, http://americamagazine.org/issue/5138/article/why-they-left.

8 “From the Editor's Desk: Listen to the People,” The Tablet, April 14, 2012, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/162590 (my emphasis).

9 Byron and Zech, “Why They Left.”

10 For example, Smith, Christian with Denton, Melinda Lundquist, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Wuthnow, Robert, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Rahner, Karl, “The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola,” in Rahner, Karl, The Dynamic Element in the Church, trans. O'Hara, W. J. (London: Burns and Oates, 1964), 84–170.Google Scholar

12 Jordan, Mark D., Telling Truths in Church: Scandal, Flesh, and Christian Speech (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003).Google Scholar

13 See Frawley-O'Dea, Mary Gail, Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2007).Google Scholar