Narratives of Return
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
We examined not only what happened in these stories, but the language the narrators used to tell their stories. This analysis of the rhetoric (how they used language to tell their stories) involved analyzing powerful and recurrent themes in both the stories themselves and in how they were told.
We have organized our most interesting initial findings into six essays. In these essays, you will find not only textual evidence from the narratives, but analysis of the rhetoric. We also analyze some of the implications of our findings. How can these narratives help us in practical ways? How can they help us better understand, cope with, and prevent the suffering that often accompanies deconversion? How can we expand our perception of what healthy, growing, expanding faith might look like?
Language and the Choice to Believe
In many of our Reconversion Narratives there is a fascinating correlation between the narrator’s use of language and their perception about the Church, their faith, and themselves. This language and their accompanying way of viewing their relationship to faith...
Anxiety in Returning
The anxiety that surfaced repeatedly in the narratives was surprising, but we can learn a great deal from it, especially as we consider how much people who are returning to Church dearly want to feel accepted and loved . . . The feelings of confusion and even...
Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies
The language we use, including our use of comparisons, reveals the truth of our experience and can become a guide to knowing how to better understand and help those who walk similar paths. In these narratives, the dominant comparisons highlight a pervasive sense of...
Spiritual Accompaniment
The specific alignment (or misalignment) between someone’s spiritual state and the actions of people around them plays, in many cases, a critical role in their decisions to leave and also return. The most effective examples of supportive ministry come from those who...
Reconciling Public and Private Religious Practice
The narratives we reviewed most often begin with some kind of misalignment between an individual's private religious feelings and public religious practices or beliefs. At the end of the narratives, a deeper private relationship with Christ and Heavenly Father...
Possibility and Permission
Once our narrators worked through anxiety and appreciated that returning was a real possibility, the way they describe their next steps often indicates that they seemed to need a kind of implied “permission” from an external source to come back. by Sarah d'Evegnée...
Share Your Reconversion Story
Have you had a personal experience in which you grappled with spiritual questions and found greater peace or understanding? Do you or someone you know have a story of returning to faith after a period of estrangement?
We’d love to hear your story.