Abiding Atheism, Seeking Spirituality

Social scientists have come up with contrasting ideas on how to interpret the ongoing process of dechristianization in contemporary Western societies. On the one hand it has been suggested that individuals abandon religious imagination all together and become secular, whereas on the other it has been proposed that individuals merely turn to privatized forms of religious and spiritual meaning. Surprisingly however, the factors that are thought to explain the two processes are the same, namely the processes of individualization and the pluralization of the life-world. In this article I will delve into this explanatory gap, which has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Via the systematic reconstruction of the life courses of Dutch apostates I aim to reveal what mechanisms lead individuals to move away from their ascribed Christian identity and subsequently turn to either atheism or the New Age spiritualities. A notable difference between these two trajectories is that individuals who eventually turned to atheism articulate an ideological critique of their faith, a type of critique which is a direct result from the strict, orthodox way in which the faith was professed in the nuclear family. Individuals raised in orthodox milieus have little room to discuss and question their ascribed identity or delve into complementing religions, which elicits a rather cognitive, intellectual process of searching. Individuals who turned to the New Age spiritualities departed from the Christian faith because of institutional reasons. Their criticism of the role of religious authorities and hypocrisy in their near social environment induced a quest for purification that led them to non-institutionalized forms of beliefs. The paramount factor that induces an institutional critique is the liberal way in which the faith was professed in their families: they had more access to explore complementing religious meaning system, and more room to usher questions and critique.