This article discusses the possibility and consequences of the idea, concept, and discourses of freedom and free choice in apostasy. The issue is explored from theoretical perspectives of discrepancy, rational choice, and free will and grounded with examples from original research on Finnish ex-Pentecostals and comparison to previous research on apostasy. The article claims that even though our choices are influenced and our freedom is limited by our personal attributes, personal and social environments, and backgrounds, the subjective assertion, belief, and experience of freedom is essential to apostates’ wellbeing and new identity.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Ahmad, Nehaluddin, Ahmad Masum, and Abdul Mohaimin Ayus, “Freedom of Religion and Apostasy: The Malaysian Experience,” Human Rights Quarterly 38/3 (2016), 736–753.
Aumann, Robert J., Rule-Rationality Versus Act-Rationality (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008).
Barbour, John D., Versions of Deconversion: Autobiography and the Loss of Faith (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994).
Baumeister, Roy F., Isabelle M. Bauer, and Stuart A. Lloyd, “Choice, Free Will, and Religion,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 2/2 (2010), 67–82.
Baumeister, Roy F., and Lauren E. Brewer, “Believing Versus Disbelieving in Free Will: Correlates and Consequences,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 6/10 (2012), 736–745.
Beckford, James A., “Accounting for Conversion,” British Journal of Sociology 29/2 (1978), 249–262.
Bruner, Jerome, “Life as Narrative,” Social Research 54/1 (1987), 11–32.
Caldwell-Harris, Catherine, Caitlin Fox Murphy, Tessa Velazquez, and Patrick McNamara, “Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 33 (2011), 3362–3366.
Cottee, Simon, The Apostates (London: Hurst & Company, 2015).
Durkin, Kevin, Developmental Social Psychology: From Infancy to Old Age (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995).
Ebaugh, Helen Rose Fuchs, “Leaving Catholic Convents: Toward a Theory of Disengagement,” in David G. Bromley (ed.), Falling from the Faith: Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy (Newbury Park: Sage, 1988), 100–121.
Elster, Jon, “Interpretation and Rational Choice,” Rationality and Society 21/1 (2004), 5–33.
Enstedt, Daniel, and Göran Larsson, “Telling the Truth about Islam?: Apostasy Narratives and Representations on WikiIslam.net,” CyberOrient 7/1 (2013), 64–93.
Enstedt, Daniel, Göran Larsson, and Teemu T. Mantsinen (eds.), Handbook of Leaving Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
Epstein, Seymour, “The Self-Concept: A Review and the Proposal of an Integrated Theory of Personality,” in Ervin Staub (ed.), Personality: Basic Aspects and Current Research (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980), 87–132.
Fazzino, Lori L., “Leaving the Church Behind: Applying a Deconversion Perspective to Evangelical Exit Narratives,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 29/2 (2014), 249–266.
Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957).
Festinger, Leon, “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes,” Human Relations 7/2 (1954), 117–140.
Feldman, Gilad, Roy F. Baumeister, and Kin Fai Ellick Wong, “Free Will Is About Choosing: The Link Between Choice and the Belief in Free Will,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 55 (2014), 239–245.
Fitzsimons, Gráinne M., and John A. Bargh, “Automatic Self-Regulation,” in Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs (eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Application (New York: The Guilford Press, 2004), 151–170.
Gartrell, C. David, and Zane K. Shannon, “Contacts, Cognitions, and Conversion: A Rational Choice Approach,” Review of Religious Research 27/1 (1985), 32–48.
Ghanea, Nazila, “Apostasy and Freedom to Change Religion or Belief,” in Tore Lindholm, W. Cole Durham Jr., and Bahia Tahzib-Lie (eds.), Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 669–688.
Gooren, Henri, Religious Conversion and Disaffiliation: Tracing Patterns of Change in Faith Practices (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).
Heller, Yuval, and Eyal Winter, “Rule Rationality,” International Economic Review 57/3 (2016): 997–1026.
Higgins, E. Tory, “Self Discrepancy: A Theory Relating Self and Affect,” Psychological Review 94/3 (1987), 319–340.
Holm, Ruurik, Yksilönvapaus: Tulevaisuuden hyvinvointivaltion peruskivi (Helsinki: Into, 2017).
Jansz, Jeroen, and Monique Timmers, “Emotional Dissonance: When the Experience of an Emotion Jeopardizes an Individual’s Identity,” Theory and Psychology 12/1 (2002), 79–95.
Johnson, Mark, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
LeCount, Rose M., “Leaving Religion: A Qualitative Analysis of Religious Exiting,” Inquiries 9/12 (2017).
Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Random House, 2012).
Kisner, Matthew J., Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason, Autonomy and the Good Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Köse, Ali, and Kate Miriam Loewenthal, “Conversion Motifs Among British Converts to Islam,” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 10/2 (2000), 101–110.
Mantsinen, Teemu T., “Conversion and the Transformation of Culture in the Finnish Pentecostal Movement,” Approaching Religion 5/1 (2016), 44–56.
Mantsinen, Teemu T., “Leaving Pentecostalism,” in Daniel Enstedt, Göran Larsson, and Teemu T. Mantsinen (eds.), Handbook of Leaving Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 175–185.
McCallum, Gerald, “Negative and Positive Freedom,” Philosophical Review 76/3 (1967), 312–334.
McDowell, John, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).
McNamara, Patrick, Raymond Durso, Ariel Brown, and Erica Harris, “The Chemistry of Religiosity: Evidence from Patients with Parkinson’s Disease,” in Patrick McNamara (ed.), Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion—Volume II: The Neurology of Religious Experiences (Westport: Praeger, 2006), 1–14.
Mele, Alfred R. (ed.), Surrounding Free Will: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Messick, Kyle, and Miguel Farias, “Psychological Approaches to Leaving Religion,” in Daniel Enstedt, Göran Larsson, and Teemu T. Mantsinen (eds.), Handbook of Leaving Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 307–322.
Newcomb, Theodore M., “Interpersonal Balance,” in Robert P. Abelson, Elliot Aronson, William J. McGuire, Theodore M. Newcomb, Milton J. Rosenberg, and Percy H. Tannenbaum (eds.), Theories of Cognitive Consistency: A Sourcebook (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), 28–51.
Osgood, Charles E., and Percy H. Tannenbaum, “The Principle of Congruity in the Prediction of Attitude Change,” Psychological Review 62/1 (1955), 42–55.
Paloutzian, Raymond F., Sebastian Murken, Heinz Streib, and Sussan Rößler-Namini, “Conversion, Deconversion, and Spiritual Transformation: A Multilevel Interdisciplinary View,” in Raymond. F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park (eds.), Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2nd edn. (New York: Guilford Press, 2013), 399–421.
Paloutzian, Raymond F., James T. Richardson, and Lewis R. Rambo, “Religious Conversion and Personality Change,” Journal of Personality 67/6 (1999), 1047–1079.
Richardson, James T. “The Active vs. Passive Convert: Paradigm, Conflict in Conversion/Recruitment Research,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 24/2 (1985): 163–179.
Rosenthal, Gabriele, “Reconstruction of Life Stories: Principles of Selection in Generating Stories for Narrative Biographical Interviews,” in Ruthellen H. Josselson and Amia Lieblich (eds.), The Narrative Study of Lives (London: Sage, 1993), 59–76.
Saeed, Abdullah, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (London: Routledge, 2004).
Sen, Amartya, Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
Sherkat, Darren E., and John Wilson, “Preferences, Constraints, and Choices in Religious Markets: An Examination of Religious Switching and Apostasy,” Social Forces 73/3 (1995), 993–1026.
Simon, Herbert, “Bounded Rationality and Organizational Learning,” Organization Science 2/1 (1991), 125–134.
Simon, Herbert, Models of Man, Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting (New York: Wiley, 1957).
Sperber, Dan, and Deidre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
Stanley, Maclen, and Anthony L. Burrow, “The Distance Between Selves: The Influence of Self-Discrepancy on Purpose in Life,” Self and Identity 14/4 (2015), 441–452.
Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Stausberg, Michael, “Leaving Hinduism: Deconversion as Liberation,” in Daniel Enstedt, Göran Larsson, and Teemu T. Mantsinen (eds.), Handbook of Leaving Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 99–115.
Steward, Helen, A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Streib, Heinz, Ralph W. Hood Jr., Barbara Keller, Rosina-Martha Csöff, and Christopher F. Silver, Deconversion: Qualitative and Quantitative Results from Cross-Cultural Research in Germany and the United States of America (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009).
Vanberg, Viktor J., “Rational Choice, Rule-Following and Institutions: An Evolutionary Perspective,” in Christian Knudsen, Bo Gustafsson, and Uskali Mäki (eds.), Rationality, Institutions, and Economic Methodology (London: Routledge, 1993), 171–200.
Visala, Aku, Vapaan tahdon filosofia [Philosophy of Free Will] (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2018).
Vohs, Kathleen D., Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, Jean M. Twenge, Noelle M. Nelson, and Dianne M. Tice, “Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94/5 (2008), 883–898.
Wegner, Daniel M., The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 171 | 170 | 0 |
Full Text Views | 105 | 104 | 20 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 163 | 163 | 25 |
This article discusses the possibility and consequences of the idea, concept, and discourses of freedom and free choice in apostasy. The issue is explored from theoretical perspectives of discrepancy, rational choice, and free will and grounded with examples from original research on Finnish ex-Pentecostals and comparison to previous research on apostasy. The article claims that even though our choices are influenced and our freedom is limited by our personal attributes, personal and social environments, and backgrounds, the subjective assertion, belief, and experience of freedom is essential to apostates’ wellbeing and new identity.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 171 | 170 | 0 |
Full Text Views | 105 | 104 | 20 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 163 | 163 | 25 |