religious disenchantment

Let’s talk about religious disenchantment.

First, let’s define disenchantment: a feeling of disappointment about someone or something you previously respected or admired; disillusionment.

E. Marshall Brooks wrote a book on religious disenchantment (titled Disenchanted Lives). Brooks, while not Mormon himself, studied ex-Mormons in Utah & wrote about their unique experience with religious disenchantment.

Brooks describes religious disenchantment as “an acute form of culture collapse…in which the all-encompassing symbolic-existential framework undergirding everyday reality crumbles.”

He writes that those who left the religion “experienced debilitating distress as their physical, social, and symbolic surroundings lost their once comforting familiarity and were transfigured into something strange and unsettling.”

He sums up these individuals’ experience by stating that their “system of meaning, of which their self-concept had been built, no longer brought comfort. Instead, they felt as if their world had collapsed…there was a sense of despair and meaninglessness. At its most extreme, these ex-Mormons experienced a total dissolution of their personality.”

It’s important that we bring research into these experiences, where not much research has been done. I want to highlight the main points & phrases of Brooks’ summary of religious disenchantment to normalize what some might experience when they leave a religion.

“culture collapse”

“everyday reality crumbles”

“debilitating distress”

“comforting familiarity is lost”

“strange & unsettling”

“despair & meaninglessness”

“total dissolution of personality”

These painful & devastating experiences should not have to be normalized, but this is a reminder that leaving religion is not simple. You have permission to acknowledge it for what it is: a complete shift of identity & everything you have known.

Religious disenchantment is complex. It is painful to feel disillusionment & disappointment over something that once provided you with meaning, structure, identity & community.

*You can read more of these posts on my instagram page, @religious.trauma.with.emilee