Disaffiliating: When leaving religion means leaving your entire life behind

Leaving religion, or disaffiliating, can be difficult. This is true even when a religion doesn’t make a lot of demands on an adherent. But when that religion demands absolutely everything, disaffiliating becomes a whole new ballgame. Some religious groups demand so much that their adherents don’t even know what a ballgame is. In those cases, disaffiliating means leaving your entire life behind. You lose your entire extended and immediate family, your livelihood, your home, and sometimes the basis of your entire conceptualization of yourself.

Thankfully, new groups are rising up to meet this challenge, helping disaffiliates from extremely insular religious groups learn how to navigate modern society.

The high cost of disaffiliating from extremist religion

I joined Pentecostalism at about 16, then deconverted at about 23.

When my slow-burn deconversion finally finished up, I disaffiliated from church culture and belief entirely. And I lost every friend I had in the world. Eventually, I lost my marriage—and when my super-Jesusy ex-husband Biff decided to stalk me for about 18 months, I also lost my sense of safety and security. I went on the run to Canada for a few years until he fixated on something else.

Around 1998, I returned to America. But I recognized almost none of it. I hadn’t really engaged much with popular culture during those critical years of my young adulthood. I’d been too busy Jesusing my little heart out. And then, I’d been in other countries.

If something major happened between 1986 and 1998, I knew almost nothing about it.

Example: In 1994, after Biff and I moved briefly to Japan, a torn scrap of an English-language newspaper revealed that a popular musician named Kurt Cobain had overdosed on drugs in Rome. That, and John Candy’s death around the same time, was all the news I received about home while I lived in Japan. At the time, I had next to no idea who Kurt Cobain even was. John Candy’s death, though, hit me hard.

For years after my return to my homeland, I found myself picking up those lost cultural pieces one by one to reconstruct my identity. In a lot of ways, I still feel like a tourist amid my own generation.

Pentecostalism can be very demanding of its adherents. Most adherents just nod and smile, playing along with those requirements only when someone important might be watching. Otherwise, they just live their lives on normal mode. But Biff and I were both converts, so we had no sense of normal mode. We took everything seriously.

That’s so easy to do when one has little to no experience with anything else in life. But once people leave such a group, they find themselves back at square one. I was very lucky; though I lost every friend I had at the time and eventually my marriage, I still had family and work relationships to get me through.

Some religions demand more than others, though

Even back before my deconversion, though, I knew of religious sects that demanded far, far more of members.

Homeless beggars called Seekers roamed Houston’s urban areas, preaching and scrounging food and sleeping places as they could.

A farming commune in Waco came a-recruitin’ once, too; its weirdo leader “Ezekiel” almost succeeded in snagging Biff. Two other young converts, Big Dave and Little Dave, went to Waco with Ezekiel. They eventually escaped—but not without harrowing tales of physical and mental abuse, top-volume struggle sessions into the wee hours every night, and forced labor around the clock.

I knew, too, of David Koresh and his Branch Davidians. When their commune went up in literal flames (archive) just down the road from Ezekiel’s farm in April 1993, Ezekiel and his followers watched the thick black smoke rising into the air. He told them that the smoke represented Yahweh’s rejection of the Branch Davidians—and divine approval for Ezekiel’s commune. Ezekiel used that tragedy to double down on his abuse.

And of course I knew of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. These groups likewise demanded way more of their followers than Pentecostalism did. An ex-Jehovah’s Witness I knew, James, briefly joined the church I attended before deciding we were all just “Pharisees” who hated him for his sheer Jesus-osity.

Of course, I don’t tell you all this to minimize my own suffering after deconversion, nor to minimize anyone else’s. The 1990s comedy forum Something Awful used to have a strict rule about contextualizing such anecdotes by comparing one’s situation to that of Darfur war orphans. (Yes, seriously.) I don’t think that’s a healthy thing to do. We all hurt and heal to our own degrees. Every hurting person’s pain is valid.

No, I’m just sayin’ that some religious groups are way, way, way more controlling than others, and their adherents exist in a way, way, way greater state of isolation. So when they finally disaffiliate, it’s like they’re the transplanted heroes in an isekai game.

(Related: When roleplaying games intersect with fiction and anime)

Disaffiliating from Omelas

When former believers in such groups finally walk away from Omelas, they lose almost everything.

(Related: Those who walk away from Ocabos)

Way back in 2014, a decade after my own deconversion, the skept-o-sphere learned that another one of the Fred Phelps clan had abandoned the homestead. In fact, a bunch of Fred Phelps’ grandchildren eventually flew the coop.

Most left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Thankfully, they generally had some extended family who were willing to help them. As I recall, one disaffiliating granddaughter also found a friend at her new job who gave her crash space.

I remember hearing about that crash space story and thinking back to my own time on the run from my stalker ex. I got similar help from friends online and my family. If I needed a job, I had past affiliations and skills that could help me get a decently good one.

Also around that same time, Americans began hearing about those Amish youth who disaffiliated (archive). For many decades, most people had considered the Amish to be these quaint, technology- and zipper-rejecting, family-oriented people. The Amish made great food and raised barns together. But they turned out to be the Gen X/Boomer version of 19 and Counting, right down to the very dark truth behind that pious veneer of family togetherness.

(See also: Meet the Duggars: The secrets and lies of Christian patriarchy)

For that matter, people leaving the more modern Duggar brand of Christian patriarchy have very similar problems—especially if they’re female.

Cultish isolation isn’t a bug—it’s a feature preventing disaffiliation

When the Phelps grandchildren were escaping back in 2014, I wondered: What did someone in such a cult do if they didn’t have any resources? What happened to them? How did they get by? Years later, it’s impossible for one full-time minimum-wage worker (archive) to afford their own apartment pretty much anywhere in the United States. So how do these disaffiliating folks even find shelter on their own?

Next time you hear someone ask “why they stay,” then, feel free to mention the logistics of being a single mother with absolutely no job skills, no vehicle (and maybe no driver’s license), nowhere to stay, and eight or nine mouths to feed. Because that’s about what happens when a third sister-wife in some out-there Mormon fringe cult finally figures out a way to get herself and her kids free.

For a variety of reasons, cults deliberately isolate their members from the outer world. One by one, they cut all the ties their members have to non-cult people. Bit by bit, they strip resources from their members until they have nothing.

This isolation is no accident, either. This isolation and whittling of resources drastically reduces members’ chances of breaking loose and escaping.

But some new nonprofits might be able to help the people seeking escape.

The Rights and Religions Forum seeks to make disaffiliation less traumatic

With all of this stuff in mind, I was very happy to see that some new nonprofits seek to help. A truly impressive bunch of new organizations have started to ease the pain of disaffiliation.

The main group orchestrating this assistance is the Rights and Religions Forum. Its leaders almost all seem to have a background in one super-controlling religious group or another.

Malkie Schwartz, one of the group’s founders, hails from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. In 2000, she founded Footsteps. Footsteps seeks to help others from her community to leave it. It offers emotional and social support, educational classes, career guidance, and other necessary resources.

The group’s other founder, Sarah Haider, was once Muslim. In 2013, she co-founded Ex-Muslims of North America. Like Footsteps, this group offers support and guidance. Its members also advocate for free speech and an end to blasphemy laws.

The Rights and Religions Forum recently started the Borgenicht Fellowship Program For Community Leaders. This fellowship allows the group to invest in similar leaders who are helping those disaffiliating from what they call Insular Religious Groups (IRG). Recipients of the fellowship come from a diverse range of IRGs. One was born Amish. Another was a Jehovah’s Witness. Still another is a humanist and secular Muslim. There’s even an ex-Pentecostal person in the mix.

Banding together works better than fighting alone

Almost all of the people in the Rights and Religion Forum, including the Fellowship recipients, run or have run various disaffiliation groups. Working on their own, these groups have relatively short reach. But if the Rights and Religion Forum can bring them together, their reach may grow much longer.

And we need that now more than ever.

A lot still needs to be done. Around the world, blasphemy laws alone frequently lead to the persecution of those who reject an area’s dominant religion. Disaffiliating people often find themselves at the mercy of outraged religious people in these areas.

(Related: My breath caught in my throat)

Even aside from those egregious abuses of human rights, people in a dominant religion often take for granted the perks and unwarranted privileges they enjoy at others’ expense. Those leaving particularly authoritarian and controlling sects often face heightened attacks and persecution from those still attending their former “church home.” That happens in America all too often, especially as its dominant religion, Christianity, continues to decline in membership and credibility.

As Michael Shemwell, one of the fellowship recipients (and an ex-Jehovah’s Witness), said in a press release:

In a society ‘of the people’ that reviles bullying and desires inclusion and equity, we shouldn’t be granting charitable status to organizations that promote the opposite. Rather, we should be promoting assistance for people that find themselves as domestic refugees, people that have literally lost everything due to extreme religious practices such as shunning, people that have been isolated socially and denied educational opportunities throughout their lives.

Press release from the Rights and Religion Forum

He’s absolutely right. Hopefully in the near future, disaffiliating from IRGs won’t mean stepping into an entirely new and frightening alien world.