Church Refugees

In Church Refugees, Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope draw on nearly 100 interviews, mostly with those formerly involved in paid or voluntary church leadership, to explore the sociological reasons for why people leave the church but not God. Packard and Hope characterize those in their sample as church refugees: “Refugees are people who’ve been forced from their homes—where they’d prefer to stay .... They feel they’ve been forced to leave a place they consider home because they feel a kind of spiritual persecution and it would be dangerous, spiritually, for them to remain ... .. The refugee is a reluctant leaver, packing up only as a last resort” (15). Yet unlike previous generations, Packard and Hope assert that church refugees are unlikely to return again in the future, all the while maintaining strong belief in God. Contrary to other research that points to conservative theology, moral corruption among church members, or life events as catalysts for leaving the church, this study centers on distrust of religious organizations and clergy, as well as irrelevant inward-focused churches caught up with institutional survival. The book contains several narratives from individuals who lament the judgment, bureaucracy, structure, doctrine, dogma, and moral prescription confronted in their churches. Instead, church refugees long for spaces and places to experience community, conversation, and meaningful engagement both in and outside their church.

Faith · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Sociology · Theology · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development