Let's talk about religious disenchantment! Disenchantment usually refers to the disappointment or disillusionment we feel toward something (or someone) we once trusted, respected or admired. In a religious context, though, that disillusionment can reach into so many parts of a person's life that "disappointment" doesn't come close to capturing it.
Religion can give us a lot more than beliefs. It can tell us who we are, why we're here, what makes someone good, who we should marry, how to raise a family, what happens after death, and what makes life meaningful. So when the framework holding all of that together starts falling apart, we can be losing SO much more than a belief system.
WHAT IS RELIGIOUS DISENCHANTMENT?
E. Marshall Brooks explores this experience in his book Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism among the Latter-day Saints. Brooks studied former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah and looked at what happened when people who had understood themselves and their lives through Mormonism no longer believed in the religious framework all around them.
Brooks describes religious disenchantment as an "acute form of culture collapse." I love that phrase, because it captures something really important about religious deconstruction, especially for people leaving a high-demand religion or one that's woven into nearly every corner of their life. It can be a lot bigger than "I used to believe this, and now I don't." It can feel more like, "The system I used to understand myself, other people, my purpose, my relationships and the ENTIRE world doesn't make sense to me anymore." That's an enormous loss!!
WHEN THE FAMILIAR BECOMES UNFAMILIAR
One piece of Brooks' research that really stands out to me is how parts of someone's world that used to be comforting can start to feel strange or unsettling after they leave. I think this is part of why religious disenchantment is so hard to explain to someone who hasn't been through it. Your family is still your family, your hometown is still your hometown, and the church building is still sitting exactly where it's always been. Everyone around you might keep living by the same rhythms, but your relationship to all of it has changed.
Something that used to mean safety might bring up anxiety now. A song that used to feel spiritual might make you cry in the car, and a totally ordinary conversation at a family dinner might suddenly show you how differently you see the world. Your surroundings stayed exactly the same while your UNDERSTANDING of them shifted, and that can be really disorienting.
WHEN YOUR SYSTEM OF MEANING STOPS MAKING SENSE
Brooks also describes the distress that can happen when the system of meaning someone built their identity around stops providing the comfort or coherence it used to. If religion answered life's biggest questions for you, questioning it can leave those questions wide open. Who am I? What makes something right or wrong? What happens when we die? How am I supposed to live, and which parts of the person I became are actually me?
Then there are the smaller questions that are somehow just as destabilizing. What do I do on Sunday now? Do I still pray? How do I talk to my family about this, what do I tell my kids, and what do I say when someone asks what I believe? There can be real freedom in getting to answer these for yourself! There can also be grief, fear, loneliness and a LOT of uncertainty, all at the same time.
THIS IS MORE THAN “CHANGING YOUR MIND” ABOUT RELIGION
I think it's important to have language like religious disenchantment because leaving a religion sometimes gets minimized as just "changing your beliefs." When religion has been tied up with your identity, family, community, morality, relationships and future, changing your beliefs can shake all of those at once.
You might be grieving your community while also feeling relieved that you left. You might feel betrayed by an institution and still love people inside it, or miss the certainty you used to have while knowing you can't make yourself believe again. You might even catch yourself thinking, "I was happier before I knew." That doesn't automatically mean leaving or questioning was a mistake. Sometimes seeing something differently comes with grief, because we can't go back to understanding it the way we used to.
RELIGIOUS DISENCHANTMENT & IDENTITY
This gets especially complicated when your religion gave you an identity along with your beliefs. Maybe you knew exactly what a good woman, good mother, good spouse or just a good person was supposed to look like. Maybe your goals, relationships, clothing, sexuality, career and daily choices were all shaped by what you believed God expected.
When that framework changes, the question can get a lot bigger than "What do I believe now?" It can become "Who am I now?", and rebuilding an identity takes time. You might realize some of what you were taught truly lines up with your values and you want to keep it, while other pieces don't feel like yours at all. There may also be parts of yourself you never got to explore because the answer was handed to you before you could even ask the question. You don't have to figure all of that out this week :)
YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO CALL THIS WHAT IT IS
One reason I wanted to write about Brooks' work in the first place is that research can help normalize how BIG this experience is for a lot of people. His descriptions include ideas like culture collapse, debilitating distress, lost familiarity, disorientation, despair, and a deep disruption in someone's sense of self. Those are big words because, for some people, this is a very big experience!
Of course, not everyone who leaves a religion goes through disenchantment this intensely. Some people mostly feel relieved, some drift away from their beliefs without a dramatic identity crisis, and others keep parts of their spirituality while changing their relationship with an institution. But if leaving or questioning your religion has felt like your entire reality shifted underneath you, you don't have to shrink that just because other people don't get why it's such a big deal.
This might have been about way more than changing your mind about religion. You may have lost certainty, community, identity, your picture of the future, or a framework that made the whole world feel understandable, and now you're doing the really complicated work of figuring out what you want to build in its place. Understanding why it feels so destabilizing won't make it easy, but it can give you language for what you're going through and help you meet yourself with a little more compassion while you figure out what comes next.
If this resonates with you, especially if questioning or leaving your religion has left you grieving your identity, community, certainty or the world you thought you understood, this is something we can explore together in therapy. Learn more about how I work with religious trauma →
I offer online therapy for women in Alaska, Arizona, Texas, Utah & Washington. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
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