A Faithful Journey: Following a Married Couple’s Religious Trajectory over the Adult Lifespan

Abstract

This article addresses the question of how religious narrative identity and subjective religiosity change over the course of 15 years. The cases portrayed are deconverts who have changed their religious affiliations multiple times. It was carved out what led to their deconversion and what remains as a core of their faith after they have turned away from organized religion for good. Interviews were conducted at three time points and were analyzed using content analysis. It became clear that the needs and expectations of the two individuals differ highly, as well as the reasons for turning away from a religious community; yet, what could be identified as a common core in this joint faithful journey is their need to live their religiosity, now in a private setting.

1. Introduction

What happens with people who leave a religious community? Where do they go? Some of them find a new church, a new community which subjectively fulfills their needs and expectations in a more adequate way. Some turn their backs on religion completely. Others, while leaving the field of organized religion altogether, continue a private practice of religion. This paper chose the method of a detailed qualitative content analysis to present a case study of two people: Gudrun and Werner (names which are, of course, pseudonyms), a married couple from Germany, who serve as case illustrations for people who leave the field of organized religion—but also for a lifelong journey within faith. Because while they did leave first the Jehovah’s Witnesses and later a Charismatic parish, they did not leave the religious field, but instead established a privatized practice of worship and believing. Even though they have been together throughout this journey, they can still be described as two sides of the same coin, and the analysis shows how very different their needs and expectations toward (organized) religion are, even though they have left and joined the same communities. On the basis of three interviews from each spouse (conducted separately) taken over the course of 15 years (and thus following them from ‘young old’ to ‘old old’ age, from their sixties (time 1) to their early eighties (time 3)), I carve out how each of them describes attachment and disentanglement from their communities, and in a second step, how their subjective religiosities, i.e., the way they describe their own way of being religious, change over the years. Relying on self-reports and giving the participants the possibility to elaborate on what being religious actually means to them seems essential because only with these reports we reach the core of how religiosity is understood and lived. It is demonstrated how certain needs, but also hopes and aspirations, possibly cannot be fulfilled outside a religious community and how those two people found their way—individually and as a couple. The (religious) narrative identity that is carved out for each of them (and the way it changes over time) grants access to their respective focus and their priorities. Accordingly, the different areas of interest that this paper covers are highly intertwined. Parts of the analysis presented here were taken and adapted from my dissertation (Bullik 2021) in which I focused on the consecutive subjective reconstructions of narrative identities of married couples—something which has, at least to the best of my knowledge, never been done before. The case study here, in an exemplary fashion, demonstrates how these joint lives may differ regarding the way the individuals develop and how they reconstruct their own religiosity.

2. Previous Research and Theoretical Considerations

There is extensive literature on people who “deconvert,” i.e., who turn away from their religious tradition, and who either find another one or leave the religious field for good (see, for an overview, Steppacher et al. 2022; Enstedt et al. 2019a; Streib 2021). Enstedt and colleagues state in their introduction to their edited volume that while conversion (i.e., turning toward a new religion) is rather well-researched, the process of deconversion still needs more attention, especially regarding the aspect of what is carried along from one’s former denomination, which is a crucial point since “[b]ehaviours rooted in moral codes and religious teachings (especially if they have been adopted at a young age) tend to colour the life of the individual even though he or she has taken a new path” (Enstedt et al. 2019b, p. 3). That being said, there is literature on the deconversion processes from the religious groups that play a role in the lives of the cases presented here—and most of these studies also choose a qualitative approach and can be situated within the field of psychology of religion: For example, Nica (2018) investigated exiters from religious fundamentalism and Björkmark et al. (2021) portrayed, in a qualitative research design, people who had left various high-cost religious groups (among them Jehovah’s Witnesses), while Ransom and colleagues (Ransom et al. 2021) exclusively focused on gains and losses following the exit from JW. However, the aim of this study is to show continuity as part of the multiple deconversions experienced by the couple as well as outline where this “faithful journey” has led them. The case study presents their journey from a New Religious Movement (NRM) to a time with a mainline Protestant parish followed by an episode with a Protestant Charismatic parish. After that, they left the field of organized religion; however, they did not leave behind their religiosity. Thus, the couple can serve as an illustration of multiple deconversions from a variety of religious groups and worldviews. Having had the opportunity to interview each of them thrice makes it possible to trace the way the evaluation of these different groups changes, as well as depict what is discarded, but also what is kept of these groups’ beliefs and rituals.

The theoretical framework for this research is the Faith Development Theory as introduced by James W. Fowler (1981). This theory has, at its basis, a very broad concept of ‘faith,’ basically trying to examine what is of “ultimate concern” for each individual, regardless of whether they are traditionally religious or firm atheists. Thus, it is possible to follow and understand the trajectories of deconverts, even when they leave the field of organized religion for good.

The central instrument of the research project is the Faith Development Interview (FDI) which was developed by Fowler (1981) and has since then been refined and adapted (see Fowler et al. 2004; Streib and Keller 2018). This interview format consists of 25 questions covering the areas of life review, relationships, values and commitments, and religion and worldview. The questions thereby touch on complex topics and aim to elicit narratives that offer extensive material. As has been proposed by Streib and his team (Keller and Streib 2013; Streib 2005), the research focus here is directed toward narrative and other reflective responses in the interview. Accordingly, this article focuses on how a narrative identity, and consequently, a religious narrative identity, is created. Narrative identity is to be understood as “the integration of all the important elements of the person we are in the world, from the most public to the mainly private” (Josselson 2017, p. 16). Since the topic of religious development and the presentation of subjective religiosity is most relevant here, some aspects that may be constituent for the narrative identity necessarily have to be neglected in favor of carving out in detail the religious identity of the cases presented. Mapping the development of a religious identity over the lifetime is something that is only possible with a longitudinal research design that was—for the first time within this research tradition—applied here, and thus, results are so far scarce.

When people look back on their own life, they create a subjective theory about themselves by leaving out, by exaggerating, or by downplaying events in order to tell a coherent story of how they became who they are today. The event of leaving a religious community may clearly be seen as a turning point in life, thus eliciting the need for autobiographical reasoning, i.e., the creation of a chronology with motivational and thematical implications which elucidate the relevance of the memory (Habermas 2011). Autobiographical reasoning can accordingly be described as a crucial element of the identity work performed in the interview, and this may be realized in the form of autobiographical arguments as they were introduced by Habermas (2011) and Köber and colleagues (Köber et al. 2015, 2018) and which the narrating person may use by referencing a developmental background, by marking an event as a turning point, or by indicating that they have “learned their lesson.”

The design of the project makes it possible to reconstruct narrative identities and subjective religiosities in consecutive interviews. That means it is possible to “distinguish between change as reported and change as observed” (Keller et al. 2022, p. 100), i.e., to analyze the structure (of the narrative identities) as well as the processes leading to change (cf. Pasupathi and Adler 2021); in other words: people may report change as they perceive it, and in the analytical procedure, change may become apparent when looking at two or more subjective reconstructions of an individual biography. This perspective on assessing change has been termed as double diachronicity (Keller et al. 2022). This design gives the unique opportunity to study reconstructed subjective religiosities and religious narrative identity, allowing for answers to the question where people “go” after they have left their religious community which has shaped their life for a considerable amount of time.

3. Methods and Materials

The most important method in the analysis presented below is the qualitative content analysis (cf. Kuckartz 2019; Hsieh and Shannon 2005). In order to be able to obtain access to the different themes that the interview touches on, and with the aim to arrive at a “subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes and patterns” (Hsieh and Shannon 2005, p. 1278), a coding guideline was developed within the research project this study originates from, with the help of the qualitative data analysis software ATLAS.ti. The process of establishing a coding guideline was mainly bottom-up oriented, guided by what the material provided. However, there were some pre-existing categories that were deemed useful and important to keep and rediscover from earlier research (for example, the deconversion criteria that were found in the initial study on deconversion; see Streib et al. 2009) or from other areas of research, for example, focusing on argumentation techniques such as the autobiographical arguments described by Habermas and his research group (Köber et al. 2015; Bluck and Habermas 2000; Habermas 2011)—thus, deductive and inductive approaches to the material were combined (for a detailed description of the coding guideline, its development and application, see (Steppacher et al., forthcoming; Bullik 2021)). This form of analysis proves to be a suitable instrument when analyzing narratives and longer answers regarding their content as well as their argumentation structure, the analysis of those providing, as one method in qualitative psychology, “a window into meaning making as a fundamental process of human development” (Josselson and Hammack 2021). In the case study below, it was, in a first step, used to reconstruct the main elements of the couple’s “faithful journey,” i.e., the pathways they took together over the years, joining and leaving religious communities. Having the chance to analyze their accounts in interviews at different timepoints, this offers the possibility to observe how talking about this journey also has changed over the course of about 15 years.

In a second step, I analyzed the changing subjective religiosities of Gudrun and Werner, implementing a mixed-methods design which analyzes an answer from the FDI in combination with additional data from the extensive survey that has always been part of the study design as well (the method was first implemented as part of longitudinal 3-wave case studies in Bullik (2021)): the answers to Question 20 (“Do you consider yourself a religious, spiritual or faithful person? Or would you prefer another description? What does it mean to you?”) of the FDI are presented and analyzed, with special regard to how they changed over the years. These results are put into perspective by comparing them to a forced-choice item of the survey (asking “Are you: ’more religious than spiritual’; ’more spiritual than religious’; ’equally religious and spiritual’; or ‘neither religious nor spiritual’?”) and to free text entries from the survey in which the participants were asked how they define the terms ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality.’ These different kinds of data allow for a comprehensive assessment of the participants’ understanding of the terms religion and spirituality as well as a rather coarse self-categorization, and, in the interview, the opportunity to elaborate on what these terms mean for them personally and subjectively. As per the nature of Question 20, the kind of answer that is to be expected is a spontaneous, more or less extensive presentation of the participant’s own thoughts regarding their religiosity, spirituality, or lack thereof, combined with a possibly critical reflection on what the different concepts might mean. While being asked to choose between four options might make the participants opt for a statement that is “the least ill-fitting” in the space offered by the quantitative research method, the content analysis shows that there is a lot more to be found when people are allowed to elaborate on that question.

For the case study below, the data of a married couple were taken into consideration. Both were first interviewed in 2003 during the Deconversion study. As per the study design, the focus persons, i.e., those who had left a religious community, were administered a narrative interview before the FDI in which they were encouraged to describe the process of how they came to be a part of said community and how the deconversion happened. Accordingly, both individuals had a total of four interviews out of which I took the extensive quotes to outline their journey and their religiosity. Since the interviews were conducted in German, I provide the original German text in the Notes section of the article. The data used in this article stem from a project that was dedicated to investigating religious development over the lifespan. The original focus was on people who left their religious tradition (Streib et al. 2009) and with the consequently developed longitudinal design, we are able to follow these deconverts’ paths over the course of 20 years in the meantime (for the report on the 2-wave data, see (Streib et al. 2022); the publication for the 3-wave data is in preparation (Streib and Hood, forthcoming)). Gudrun and Werner are two of 59 German people who, until the end of the previous phase of the project, took part at three consecutive timepoints. They were chosen here because, having spent the largest part of their adult lives together, they look back at a joint life, yet from very different standpoints. Consequently, they allow for the illustration of different needs and different consequences drawn from their experiences with the different religious groups. Their different and evolving narrative identities serve to emphasize their different approaches to questions of faith and serve to show typical (not necessarily representative) trajectories.

4. Case Studies

Gudrun and Werner are a couple from Germany who were interviewed three times in the course of 15 years. At time 1, in 2003, they were in their middle to late sixties. The other interviews took place in 2013 and 2018, so at time 3, they had reached advanced old age. Their mothers each came into contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses, so they were both introduced to that religious organization as children. As adolescents, Werner and Gudrun met at a Witness congregation. Werner claims to have been on the verge of leaving the group before he met Gudrun, while she was rather convinced of the doctrine and “pulled him back in.” After years of marriage, doubts toward the Witnesses’ doctrine accumulated, especially articulated by Werner, and finally led to them both deconverting from that denomination in 1977, after having discussed controversially the Witnesses’ prediction of Armageddon for 1975. After a period of time in which they went to regional (“mainstream”) Protestant services, they started attending congregations of a Charismatic church, a group they were in the process of leaving at the time of the first interview. At the time of the third interview, they were both engaged in a private Bible study, supported by lectures of a theologian that they listened to together.

Werner and Gudrun look back at a long time period of a joint life and jointly lived faith, which went along with affiliations to different religious groups. In the German religious field, Jehovah’s Witness can clearly be placed in the corner of “oppositional” organizations (cf. Streib et al. 2009, 25f., adapting and expanding Bromley’s (1998) categories), while the regional Protestant church is well-integrated into German society. The Charismatic parish (a Protestant parish which, however, engaged inter-denominationally as well) they attended after that could be classified as “accommodating,” i.e., as “working toward integration” (Streib et al. 2009, p. 26); the time with that parish gave them inspiration for a more experience-oriented form of religiosity. The following analyses present their respective motifs for deconversion, including gains and losses going along with that, with a focus on the development of their subjective religiosity over time and a comparison of their approaches.

4.1. Joint Deconversions—Different Motifs

4.1.1. A Reconstruction of Their Deconversions

As has been mentioned in the introductory biographical remarks, Gudrun and Werner grew up and met in the context of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Werner, at the time of their first acquaintance, was, according to his reports, alienated from the group and was planning to leave it altogether:

During my vocational training I had colleagues and became friends with one of them and because of this friendship, I started my withdrawal by not attending congregations that regularly anymore. Erm, like, I just neglected that. We’d rather take our motorbike and drive to […] [city S] instead of being interested in the congregation.1

(Werner, Narrative Interview, time 1)

Werner describes his younger self here as someone who deviates from the expectations the group of JWs might have. Having made friends outside this group, he found other recreational activities more interesting and fulfilling than going to congregations. Thus, the narrative identity that is exhibited here is that of a rebellious, non-conformist adolescent who is not that interested in the rather narrow boundaries of his religious group. Interestingly, what is mentioned here is the social aspect of the group rather than any content or teaching with which he might disagree. This is brought across with an autobiographical argument referring to a developmental status, more or less implicitly alluding to adolescence being the time of deviation from established rules that are perceived as all-too-normative. Therefore, when, on the verge of deconverting, he met his future wife, he was rather unhappy about the fact that, as he went along with getting to know each other better, he was drawn deeper into the JW’s circles again. He presents this incident as a turning point in his biography:

And yes, one got to know each other a bit better and that’s what started my personal disaster because a clique with young Witnesses developed who drove to the nearby town after going from door to door on Sundays […]. And there one had lunch and studied the Watchtower together. Of course. And then, in the evening, one attended the assembly together. Like that. And so I was back on track. […] [My wife] was warned against me, I was a maverick or just not the right company for her. She was like a loyal, good, eager sister, while I was just tagging along.2

(Werner, Narrative Interview, time 1)

A more or less implicit reproach is made here: Werner blames his wife for tying him tighter to the group that he did not want to be a part of any more and in which he was, allegedly, as suggested by the label “maverick” that was attributed to him at the time, an outcast and rather unconvinced. The line of argumentation made up here is clear: Werner is the rebel, his wife the “eager sister,” and it was for the sake of the relationship with her that he had to swallow his doubts and remain in the sect for the next years, yet felt emotionally manipulated, which might have influenced the marriage in a negative way from the start.

It does not come as a surprise that the initiative for their withdrawal from the Witnesses mainly lay with Werner. This is not debated by his wife who, at time 1, described the process as follows:

And we were, since ’75, in a controversial discussion with each other. […] And I think that was part of the reason why we managed this exit so effortlessly. […] Because I was the convinced one and felt my husband drifting away more and more. But, yes, what can I say? I have tried to keep him. And I worked with counter arguments. My husband then ordered all kinds of literature. And I sensed, when I held the first book in my hands, that it is over now. And then I read it all myself, and funnily, in that instance, it fell like scales from my eyes. […] I was still like, “Yes, but this is the truth”. But then it was really like, “It is over now.”3

(Gudrun, Narrative Interview, time 1)

Gudrun outlines here the discussion they engaged in during the time in which the Watchtower Society, for the last time since, announced the end of the world in 1975. Especially Werner was not willing to follow the Witnesses’ doctrine anymore while Gudrun, as she said herself, was “the convinced one”; thus, this line of argumentation and the positioning of the respective other is strikingly similar in both of their interviews at time 1. It becomes clear throughout her interviews that, for the sake of sociability and harmony, Gudrun was willing to overlook discrepancies on the content level as long as she got along well with the people around her. Werner was of a different kind, and as becomes clear in the quote above, nursed intellectual doubts, which is one of the main criteria for deconversion (Streib et al. 2009). With the literature he chose and made her read, he finally achieved a moment of enlightenment with Gudrun, or so it may seem at least when she vividly described this realization as “scales [falling] from my eyes.” This narrative is mainly kept up in all of Gudrun’s interviews and is told in a similar fashion by Werner himself. Interestingly though, in his third interview, the deconversion process from the Witnesses was described as a joint decision that ended in them writing a letter to the Eldest (i.e., the congregation’s head or overseer) together, declaring their exit. Werner has, over the years, changed his story, presumably paying tribute to the fact that the image that he holds of his wife has changed considerably with time and he can, in the last phase of his life, see her strengths and her role as a partner that always stood with her husband.

A similar pattern can be observed when Gudrun and Werner, after a time of attending their regional church’s services, were part of a Charismatic parish whose teachings and practices (i.e., healing by laying on of hands) became more and more dubious to Werner. Again, Gudrun followed Werner when he left the parish for good, albeit rather reluctantly it seems when looking at this quote from her time 2 interview:

My husband basically always is the leading one and is always the first to notice the fly on the ointment (laughs). With the Witnesses, he was the one who got us out, I have to admit that. The same goes for the Charismatic movement, where he again was the one who said, “Listen, something’s not right here” and that’s … yes. I felt really comfortable there and for me that was a slump because he really worked against it to free me from these activities and … for me that was—(quietly) it is still a very hard time. I cried a lot. Because I always thought I’d lose my faith and have nothing left. Because I always thought, “That’s it! That’s the only way to cultivate or practice your faith … within that community.”4

(Gudrun, FDI, time 2)

It becomes clear here that Gudrun also noticed the parallelism of events and recognized a pattern in her husband’s behavior. The hierarchy in this relationship is underlined here, where Werner was the one making important decisions for them both, having his will and enforcing his convictions on his wife even if Gudrun visibly had a hard time bearing the consequences; the process of being forced to terminate her affiliation with that parish is marked as a formative experience for her biography, something that still has a negative effect on her well-being all those years later. This quote also makes clear what was (or still is) important for her in a religious community: she cherished the way faith was practiced in the Charismatic parish and she liked being part of a community of like-minded people. These obviously are two relevant factors for Gudrun which allows her to overlook flaws in the teaching and to tolerate opinions that are different from her own. Werner, on the other hand, is more focused on the “content” that is offered by the group. He presents himself as seeking personal enlightenment and as sensitive when the teachings do not agree with his own moral compass anymore. With his personality allegedly being more authoritative, he does not seem to consider Gudrun’s standpoint that much, even though he seems to be eager to convince her with good arguments.

4.1.2. What Do Gudrun and Werner Expect from Their Religious Community?

The reconstruction of their religious journey above shows that Gudrun and Werner, even though they have spent most of their adult lives together and have always formally been members of the same religious groups, have very different expectations toward the respective community—which might explain their different coping strategies.

Gudrun is a person who enjoys the community of others, especially when they are like-minded. In her interviews, there are some hints to connections with people outside her religious community as well, and she is able to see those people as enriching for her life, but her most important relationships are within the religious community of which she is a part. This is what made the deconversions so difficult for her: while she admits to understanding her husband’s intellectual doubts and his moral criticism (see below), she herself would presumably have been able to endure those dissonances for the sake of the community. Gudrun sees the community practice as an essential part of her own religiosity, and after turning away from the Charismatic group, she felt like she, and respectively her faith, may not ever be whole again.

Werner presents himself as a person with a critical mind (a characterization that is mostly supported by his wife). While he does admit to having been drawn toward the Charismatic congregation because of their open and more modern way of practicing faith and their insistence on a personal relationship with God, he is not willing to keep silent when he notices, as his wife puts it, “the fly on the ointment”; that is, when the teachings of the religious group do not align with his own moral or intellectual standards. His concerns with the Charismatic group are exemplified with a story about a congregation where people were supposedly healed by laying on of hands. In his narrative, he talks about a man with cancer who was part of the congregation:

And in Charismatic circles it is common to pray, to lay on hands, to pray. I wouldn’t even object to that. Because that is justifiable with the Bible, so I was not against it. But when there is a spiritual leader who says, “[…] God showed me you will be healed.” And also tells that to his wife. And not just this one. The leader as well as some members. […] And the man died. […] And he was heavily prayed for every 14 days. A lot of people who stood around him laid on hands and so forth. Like, I said, I don’t object to that. But for a leader, or a non-leader, to make such statements, and this happened more than once, […] “Oh well,” they said afterwards, “I was certain he’d be healed. I’m all surprised he died.” And you know, that’s where I draw the line. The hubris to convey hope to a terminally ill man and his wife, and people like them will clutch at every straw. […] I made myself guilty as well. I prayed intensely there as well.5

(Werner, Narrative Interview, time 1)

The way Werner builds his argument here is interesting: first, he names the procedures of laying on hands, stressing that this is something that can be justified by the Bible. What he does criticize, in the following passage, is the hubris displayed by the leader of that group who conveyed an inappropriate certainty about the positive outcome of the procedure. Emotional manipulation as a form of moral criticism can be found here as a motif for deconversion. At the end of this quote, Werner takes a bit of blame for himself too, since he also took part in the rituals—implying that, from today’s perspective, he thinks he should have known better. This is a line of argumentation that is found in different places in Werner’s interviews: when he criticizes an organization or followers of an organization, he often includes himself in this critique as well, the point being made only becoming stronger by that.

With little narratives like this, Werner underlines his skeptical stance. Throughout the years, it becomes clear that Werner seeks personal enlightenment and is disappointed when he does not find it in the community of which he is a part. Not willing to sacrifice this claim, he prepares to leave by finding and presenting evidence for the wrongness of said teachings to his wife. The community itself does not seem to play as big of a role as in Gudrun’s experience, even though he mentions being attracted to the more enthusiastic and modern music of the Charismatic group.

4.2. Subjective Religiosities—Changes and Consistencies

Both Gudrun and Werner can unambiguously be categorized as religious people, relying on their self-categorization in the questionnaires in which they each chose the category “more religious than spiritual” consistently (with one exception: at time 2, Gudrun opted for “equally religious and spiritual”). Thus, by just looking at this, change and/or development cannot be deduced. To determine how they categorize themselves when given more space to elaborate,

Table 1. Gudrun’s answers to Question 20: “Do you consider yourself a religious, spiritual, or faithful person?”.

Time 1	Time 2	Time 3
[I: Do you consider yourself religious, faithful, or spiritual?] (Laughs) Definitely not the last one. Erm, I’d rather not choose religious because religious people—that’s something fanatic. […] Well, that’s what I link that to. [I: Would faithful be the correct term then?] Faithful almost sounds too weak for me (laughs). [I: Okay. How would you characterize yourself then?] Convinced Christian. (Laughs) Faithful, I believe in God. I believe in the resurrection.6	[I: Do you consider yourself religious…] Yes! [Or either spiritual or faithful?] Everything. A bit of everything. [I: Or would you prefer a different self-description?] No. So, I am faithful, I am spiritual [and religious.] [I: And what does that mean for you?] Don’t know. […] How should I (laughs) answer that? I like being in this role. And if someone points the finger and says, “See, here comes the pious woman”, then I don’t care about that as well. […] But yes, in general, religious fits better. [I: That means you feel connected to Christianity.] Yes.7	Religious, yes. Well, yes, that’s very pronounced. So, the last question was—faithful? Faithful belongs to that as well, right? [I: Exactly, faithful, and also spiritual was in the question, yes.] I believe and… and this faith, that there is one God and that Jesus will face us as a person, as savior, as brother, and whatever, shepherd. This makes me religious, believing in Him. (smiles) Yes. [I: What does that mean for you?] This carries me, yes, that’s good.8

and

Table 2. Werner’s answers to Question 20: “Do you consider yourself a religious, spiritual, or faithful person?”.

Time 1	Time 2	Time 3
Faith for me means that I consider things to be true that I have so far believed only. Like a life in another world. Being sheltered, that He accepted me. That’s being faithful for me. Yes, I have to put it in a nutshell: If you ask me now, “What do you think, should you die tonight, will you go into God’s kingdom?” And my answer would be a confident “Yes”.9	Faithful. That means I feel responsible for my deeds. And that also means that I have to give account for all my doings. Has nothing to do with hell. Just give account to the Last Judgment. That can be a very, very painful matter, when you are confronted with sins-by-omission where you could have effected something good, but didn’t. Not even to mention Adolf Hitler or Stalin, who have millions of people on their conscience. They will be confronted with their deeds as well. That is faithful to me.10	I don’t like any of these terms. “Spiritual” is rather for people who are not faithful, I think. […] As a person enlightened by scientific Biblical studies, I must say: Faith, yes, but please keep in mind that it’s not orthodoxy, as it is often practiced and understood. I’m about to write a reader’s letter, which is about a [right wing party] deputy who was cited in the pious magazine “Name A”. And he cited the Tower of Babel to prove that God wanted to have differentiated people. So, and there are people who read this and say, we take it as it is. And he is faithful as well, for sure, but I differ from faithful people like that. I contradict him.11

show their (slightly abbreviated) answers to Question 20 of the FDI (“Do you consider yourself a religious, spiritual, or faithful person?”).

In the first interview quote, Gudrun denies being “spiritual” vehemently. This might be due to the fact that she associates this term with a form of new age religion or esotericism which she rejects; however, not having her formal definition in the survey (the questions “How would you define the term ‘religion’?” and “How would you define the term ‘spirituality’?” were not part of the original Deconversion study), this is rather speculative. Interestingly, being religious for her is linked to fanaticism, yet calling herself faithful seems too weak. Lacking a better label, she however fills the latter with the core principles of Christian faith and calls herself a “convinced Christian.” This assessment has changed ten years later, when she emphatically affirms being “religious” and even goes so far as stating that all terms offered are fitting for her. Even being called “pious” would not feel odd for her. At this timepoint, Gudrun gave definitions for both ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ in the questionnaire which allowed for the conclusion that she sees both as different aspects of the same phenomenon, spirituality being about the personal practice (“mental connection with God, by praying”12) and religion the superordinate structure (“unification of people who think about God and the world”13). At time 3, another five years after the second interview, she associates being religious with belief and trust in God and Jesus, an association that was not explicitly made in the other answers displayed here. The God she relies on is benevolent and leading.

The comparison of these statements outlines the development Gudrun went through over the course of 15 years: while at times 1 and 2, she was, if not struggling, at least rather preoccupied with the labels offered to her, she seems to have detached herself a bit from labels of any sort at time 3. It is noticeable how she positions herself in relation to others in the earlier interviews (e.g., those who are “religious” at time 1 or those that would point the finger and call her “pious” at time 2), while at time 3, she stays close to her own personal belief. This may lead to the conclusion that, for Gudrun, her religiosity over the years has developed to be less determined by her affiliations and more by her personal and strongly felt belief in God and Jesus. These findings are congruous with her answers regarding her image of and relationship with God and Jesus. Throughout all time points, she keeps the image of a loving, benevolent, and caring God, exemplified in this statement from her time 3 interview:

I mean, for example I always believed (smiles) in the evolution theories and, I mean, not in the six days, but […]. And this realization about the evolution and so on, that knocked me off my feet, so to say. Insofar my worldview has changed. […] And my image of God is not affected at all by all of this, because that has always been my support; I knew I was in Jesus’ hands and that I knew I was sheltered and held. […] And now, reading Eugen Biser, who says in the end: what the Church needs to recognize is that it has to abandon this punishing God and has to recognize that He is a God of infinite love. […] And that’s totally convincing for me.14

(Gudrun, FDI, time 3)

The line of argumentation she follows here is to start with an affirmation of a belief in a scientific view of the world. Having laid out this foundation, she then goes on saying that this knowledge has not changed her image of God as a benevolent and supporting God—making clear that a belief in science and in God are not mutually exclusive for her. By citing an authority, Eugen Biser, a German Catholic fundamental theologian and philosopher whose writings she and her husband had been studying intensely, she underlines her argument to embrace the image of the loving God, something she has done all of her life.

All of these different aspects taken together suggest that Gudrun’s faith, especially her beliefs in God and Jesus, has stayed rather constant over time. Even though her life is characterized by search trajectories and deconversions, this, however, did not shake the core of her belief system.

Turning now to Werner’s answers to Question 20, it becomes apparent that he takes a different stance:

At time 1, he talks about his faith in a benevolent and leading God, which together with a deep trust in an afterlife, for him is the definition of being faithful. At time 2, his definition of ‘spirituality’ in the survey suggests a broader approach (“Having a spiritual interest and cultivating it. Engaging with questions of worldview”15), whereas ‘religion’ (“Contemplating religious questions, e.g., the question of theodicy”16) seems to mean something a lot more specific. In the interview, again, he opts for ‘faithful,’ conveying a strong moral claim surpassing the clerical realm and including also remarks on historical persons, thus combining elements of his definitions in the survey. At time 3, he is rather clear in his rejection of the term ‘spiritual’ since he claims this is something reserved for non-faithful people, which is consistent with his definition in the survey (“I personally rather dislike this term. This mindset is strange to me. It rather fits humanism than a religious way of thinking.”17) It is interesting to see that, obviously, he does not only consider this term as not fitting for himself but it is marked negatively (“dislike”). Again, he seems to be most drawn to the term ‘faithful,’ albeit with the clarification that he does not want to be understood as orthodox; and again, he refers to persons of political or historical importance to clarify his stance. His own faithfulness is described as influenced, or enlightened, by scientific literature and thus a more thorough understanding of the Scripture.

The analysis of Werner’s answers reveals that he, too, has undergone a development regarding his subjective religiosity that is especially visible comparing his time 1 and 2 statements. While his time 1 answer is personal, referencing his own belief in a benevolent God (for which he uses quite similar description as his wife at time 3), his last answer takes into account societal issues as well, broadening the scope to politics. This may lead to the conclusion that the focus of his agenda has changed and he shows some missionary ambitions toward people he deems less enlightened.

5. Histories of a Joint Life in Faith—Concluding Remarks

Having looked at consecutive reconstructions of deconversion processes of Gudrun and Werner individually, it has become clear that their deconversion trajectories, as they have been introduced by Streib et al. (2009), cannot be described with one single term when followed and observed longitudinally. After their time with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they first attended, for a while, services of their regional Protestant church which can be characterized as an integrating movement, i.e., toward a more established community. Their affiliation with the Charismatic parish then again was more oppositional, at least compared to the regional church. As a last step, they took a privatizing exit, using a more scientifically oriented Bible study in the private practice. Overall, this journey resembles that of the accumulative heretic (ibid., Gudrun has, in that volume, been described as a “synthetic conventional heretic”) since they both seem to take elements from the communities they leave and implement them in their current habits. The things they take, though, differ. While for Werner, it seems, the most important thing he has learned from their time with the Charismatic parish is the personal relationship with God and Jesus, Gudrun mostly cherishes the time she got to spend with like-minded people and the communal religious practice she experienced with both the Witnesses and the Charismatic parish. Accordingly, the things they left behind are valued differently too. Werner’s main motifs for deconversion obviously are intellectual doubt and moral criticism; thus, he looks back at these times with a critical eye and not much regret. Gudrun’s stance is the opposite. There is not much criticism toward the teachings coming from her; instead, she emphasizes how much she misses the good sides that the communities offered her. Interestingly though, in his last interview, Werner admits to feeling lonely himself and to envying his wife’s praying circles of which he is not a part.

The way they approach the terms offered to them by Question 20 of the interview changed with time. The analysis suggests that the qualitative approach of letting the participants define the terms for themselves is promising in order to carve out the semantics that lie behind them where a forced-choice question in a survey might be too leading. However, given the fact that they both consider themselves religious and that religion has always played a major role in their joint life, it is not surprising that Werner and Gudrun, now devoid of, or disjoint from, an organized religious community, have jointly created and established their own rituals of praying and reading Biblical texts, as Werner describes it in his third interview:

Yes, praying, yes. By the way, we do that together, in the morning. We contemplate a text, even though we are (smiles) becoming more critical regarding… There are those selected texts, like these ‘daily texts’ booklets, that select texts and we contemplate these. Sometimes we deviate and read comments relating to them. And sometimes there are very clever comments, very clever indeed. (smiles) And that’s our topic for discussion, usually 15 min, early. We also pray together. […] [I: And what does that mean to you, these morning discussions?] Basically, that’s an inner need. Especially, what is important for us, being thankful. Like not taking it for granted that we are still, measured against our age, rather well off, […].18

(Werner, FDI, time 3)

It becomes apparent here that Werner obviously still cherishes an intellectual discussion; the way the ritual is described, he perceives it as something which is equally important to both him and his wife. In these short morning discussions, they may be coming to a common denominator regarding their religious needs, even though, as it has been analyzed in the paragraph above, they differ significantly in their subjective religiosity. Their different stances may (even though this is not made explicit here) even be part of the appeal of having these little conversations, through which they seem to have come (at least in this shared ritual) to an acceptance of the other’s diversity.

Having the opportunity of analyzing a long-term couple gives the opportunity to look at a joint life and/or a joint faith from two perspectives. However, despite the mutual influences, Werner and Gudrun’s religiosities have taken different directions. These directions may point to a typology of religious development: we have Gudrun’s religiosity which has become more privatized over the years, even though this path is not completely voluntary, and living with a stable core of faith in a surrounding that is changing, mostly against her will; obviously, theological doctrines and their intricacies have never been her main focus. Werner, on the other hand, lives his faith with a strong reference to the outside world, taking in new influences and thereby changing his own belief, which he for himself sees as a positive development toward a scientific form of faith, a conviction which also leads him to trying to convince others of his path.

Of course, the story of deconversion that is conveyed in their interviews is not one story—even though it is always the same joint life they are looking on. Rather, it can be stated that we have, over the course of the three interview timepoints, heard six stories that vary, sometimes gradually, sometimes greatly. All the stories revolve around the question of where they place themselves, individually and as a couple, within the field of religion, and how much space they grant their respective individual needs and beliefs.

6. Outlook

Many people who leave the field of organized religion continue to practice their faith in a more private setting, making them interesting subjects for research. Subjective religiosity, or the way people describe their own religiosity, changes over the lifespan. This makes the sample that the cases analyzed in this article stem from so unique and valuable: it gives insights into three points in the lifetime of our interviewees and therefore grants the opportunity to actually portray development over a longer time period, possibly also paying attention to tasks that are related to certain life phases. The qualitative approach that was taken here allows for detailed analyses of individual trajectories which point to a possible typology of paths that people may take in the course of their religious lives. Development could be observed by looking at consecutive reconstructions of autobiographies; thus, by making use of the double diachronicity (Keller et al. 2022) we obtain with this research design.

This article with its case study took an idiographic perspective, focusing on the individuals and their respective unique life story. By broadening the focus and by taking into consideration more diverse biographies, also of non-religious people, it is possible to outline other potential trajectories (see Bullik 2021). In order to be able to compare the individual with other individuals and/or with a bigger sample, the inclusion of survey data is promising (see, for example, Streib et al. 2022; Streib and Hood, forthcoming) and necessary for the understanding of the single trajectory. The mixed-methods approach in combination with the research project’s longitudinal design is rather unique and offers an abundance of material and research questions that could be addressed when trying to understand human development with a focus on how people deal with questions of ultimate concern and how these approaches change over time due to individual factors and also due to changing societies and master narratives (McLean et al. 2018). With this mixed-methods approach, as well as with a focus on the qualitative analysis and the content of the interviews, it is possible to reach the core of how people make sense of the world around them and how this changes over the lifespan—questions which may have different answers when people deconvert, but which also may have a stable core regardless of the formal affiliation.