"Religious disaffiliation is the act of leaving a faith, or a religious group or community. It is in many respects the reverse of religious conversion. Several ...
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other terms are used for this process, though each of these terms may have slightly different meanings and connotations.
Researchers employ a variety of terms to describe disaffiliation, including defection, apostasy and disengagement. This is in contrast to excommunication, which is disaffiliation from a religious organization imposed punitively on a member, rather than willfully undertaken by the member.
If religious affiliation was a big part of a leaver´s social life and identity, then leaving can be a wrenching experience, and some religious groups aggravate the process with hostile reactions and shunning.:91 Some people who were not particularly religious see leaving as not ‘all that big a deal’ and entailing ‘few personal consequences’, especially if they are younger people in secularized countries." - (en.wikipedia.org 16.05.2021)