Linking Social Structure and the Exit Process in Religious Organizations: Defectors, Whistle-Blowers, and Apostates

Abstract

Among the processes most thoroughly analyzed by social scientists studying religion have been conversion/affiliation and, more recently, deconversion/disaffiliation (Snow and Machalek 1984; Bromley 1991). Recent theory and research on these processes have been stimulated by a variety of developments, such as the historic, absolute decline in mainline church membership coupled with an unanticipated surge in conservative church membership, a mass exodus from traditional religious orders, the rapid growth and subsequent decline of controversial new religious movements, and widespread experimentation with a diverse array of New Age and quasi-religious groups. The primary focus of research has been on the nature of individual transformation and the process by which it occurs, which has concentrated theory and research at a microsocial level. Indeed, in assessing recent theory and research on conversion, Machalek and Snow (1993: 69) observe that it is somewhat ironic that sociologists have shown little reluctance to subordinate social contextual variables to individual variables in their efforts to explain the causes of conversion and call for a shift in analytic focus to the role of temporal, organizational and macrosocial factors. The same observation can be made about deconversion/disaffiliation. In fairness, there is a long history in sociology of analyzing role types that emerge in specific social contexts (Klapp 1954), and there have been some attempts to create types of conversion/affiliation (Lofland and Skonovd 1981) and deconversion/disaffiliation (Richardson et al. 1986) in a manner that potentially would link role and organization structure. The exit typology developed here and applied to religious organizations constitutes an effort to connect that social process and its accompanying interpretive narrative to organizational context. I argue that the process of exit and the way that it is interpreted is significantly determined by the power and social l