In and out of the city: Generational disaffiliation among evangelicals in the age of mobility and religious choice

Abstract

The intergenerational transmission effect reveals an important trend behind the current growth of ‘nones’ in Canada, the fastest-growing religious identity in North America. On the other hand, ‘dones’, who distinguish themselves from ‘nones’ in terms of non-religion, reveal another important facet of this trend. These are people who have distanced themselves from their religious affiliation. This article highlights issues of generational succession and religious transmission in the disaffiliation process. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 12 formerly self-identifying evangelicals aged 25 to 36 in Quebec, it argues that evangelical disaffiliations are also influenced by the religious choices of one’s parents. Like their children, parents’ conversion often involved disaffiliation from the religion of their upbringing, which in Quebec is mostly Roman Catholic. In the contemporary context, high geographical mobility also plays an important role in the disaffiliation of these young evangelicals, creating the conditions for a gradual erosion of social ties. At the same time, the emergence of new urban churches, combined with a sense of generational unity, has created a space for transition outside the traditional evangelical milieu. Taken together, these factors suggest that, even in evangelicalism, a religious movement that resisted decline until very recently, certain features of modern religious transmission are implicated in the disaffiliation process.

Introduction

The question of religious transmission is at the heart of religious studies and is reflected in a growing body of literature on the rise of the non-religious among younger generations in the western world. Wilkins-Laflamme (2020: 140) has pointed out an important trend: as a generational pattern, non-religious parents show much stronger intergenerational retention than any other religious group. These non-religious individuals can be divided into two broad categories: the ‘nones’ – people who have never belonged to or been socialized into a religion – and the ‘dones’ – those who have disaffiliated from a religion or form of spirituality (McLaughlin et al., 2022; Van Tongeren et al., 2021). This article focuses mainly on the latter category and aims to explore the process of disaffiliation among young evangelicals in the province of Quebec. More specifically, my participants are young disaffiliates who were raised by a first generation of converted evangelicals.

The article is divided into four parts. The first aims to conceptualize religious exit through three theoretical lenses: evangelical disaffiliation, deconversion and generational transmission. In doing so, recent research is reviewed related to these conceptual elements and establishing my methodology. Second, the generational question is addressed from an anthropological perspective of generational succession to describe the centrality of the transmission of religious choice. Third, the generational question is approached in its sociological and historical sense – for example, the question of a generational unity of young evangelicals with diverse religious orientations, leading some to disaffiliation. Finally, it is proposed that high geographical mobility, coupled with the emergence of new churches in urban areas, is a factor in the erosion of religious networks.

At the heart of this article is the question of generational succession and the issues of religious transmission involved in the process of disaffiliation. It is hypothesized that religious choice, promoted by a specific model of conversion, is located in the post-war generational shift, and that evangelical disaffiliation is embedded in the same logic. The increased geographical mobility of young members, a sense of generational unity and the emergence of new urban evangelical churches seem to play an important role in the disaffiliation of my participants, reinforcing their personal determination to make more meaningful choices.

Disaffiliation, deconversion and religious (non-)transmission

An initial conceptual overview

If conversion has long attracted the attention of religious studies scholars, interest in religious disaffiliation is much more recent. The terms used around this topic are diverse: defection, deconversion, exit from religion, apostasy, and so on. Deconversion and disaffiliation, as more recent terms, are considered to be much more neutral. It should be noted that this type of terminology is specifically related to the phenomenon of leaving a particular group and does not include non-religious socialized individuals. It also explores the methods and ethics of research with former members of a religious minority.

Studies on deconversion fall into a few large and relatively recent streams – namely, the 1970s, the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, and a more recent phase (Streib, 2014). The first phase includes mostly longitudinal quantitative studies; the second consists of studies around new religious movements; and the most recent group of studies looks at the larger background of the religious environment, including established religions (Streib, 2014: 4). Streib’s (2014) work represents one of the most recent contributions from an empirical and theoretical standpoint.

A search for the term ‘deconversion’ in ‘electronic databases results in a relatively small number of books, articles, or dissertations’ (Streib and Keller, 2004: 181). I found that an increasing number of studies have used this term since the 2010s. The Canadian literature on this subject is increasingly abundant, in line with the rise of the non-religious. In Quebec, and particularly in the evangelical milieu, research on deconversion and disaffiliation is scarce, often consisting of quantitative studies in the most recent works and a few qualitative works addressing the question of religious transmission. By comparison, Catholicism has been the subject of more research in this area (Gorski, 2018; Grand’Maison, 1992; Grand’Maison et al., 1995; Meunier and Wilkins-Laflamme, 2011; Nault and Meunier, 2017; Séguin, 2013; Sirois, 2023).

With the exception of Jamieson (1998) in New Zealand, who studied Pentecostal and Charismatic adherents who lived their faith outside of the Church, evangelical disaffiliation and deconversion have only recently been studied. Jamieson was one of the first to combine the concept of ‘disaffiliation’ with the concept of ‘faith development’ developed by Fowler (Fowler, 1981; Fowler et al., 2004). In Gachet (2013), the disaffiliation of evangelicals in Switzerland is examined using theories of militant disengagement and those related to religious disaffiliation. As we shall see below, his work contributes greatly to my own understanding in the present article.

Enstedt’s (2020) Handbook of Leaving Religion brings together a number of studies on exits from major religions. Francis (2020) presents a case study on the evangelical milieu, considering post-evangelicals who experienced a deconversion within the Oregon Extension School. This deconversion followed two Butlerian axes – namely, the abandonment of evangelical practices and the development of ‘performative strategies by which one signifies to self and others that a new identity has been assumed’ (Francis, 2020: 164).¹ Another case study focuses on the Finnish Pentecostal movement and examines the trajectories of former members who grew up in Pentecostal families. Mantsinen (2020) divides the defectors into four types: ‘survivors, strugglers, alienated, and withdrawers’ (182). The creation of these four types is based primarily on two axiological criteria – namely, the intensity of their experience and the number of Pentecostals in their families. In examining the output process, Mantsinen also seeks to consider the outcomes (181). I note here the relevance of one of his conclusions to my own study – namely, that families of converts and those socialized in the Pentecostal movement produce different levels of intensity of exit from this religion.

Davis et al.’s (2023) The Great Dechurching is based on a quantitative study and makes a significant contribution to the current discussion of evangelical disaffiliation in the USA. Numerous surveys suggest that American Christianity is haemorrhaging members at an unprecedented rate. The disaffiliates studied in Davis et al.’s book are viewed through the lens of church disengagement. The book considers three major questions: the reasons for disengagement; the direction and attitude of the disaffiliated; and the role of the Church in their departure. Depending on the type of disaffiliation, periods linked to life changes, including geographical mobility, seemed to play an important role in religious disengagement. We will return to this later.

Two studies focus on American deconverts from traditional evangelical churches joining emerging churches, ² stressing the importance of the original environment (Bielo, 2012; Harrold, 2006) and the role of deconversion discourse as a religious practice and an attempt to recover a lost authenticity (Bielo, 2012: 273). Fazzino (2014) analyses the deconversion narratives of American ex-evangelicals. He emphasizes the unexpectedly high cost of such an exit from the religious milieu, which nevertheless proved to be liberating (Fazzino, 2014: 262).

In Canada, Macdonald and Clarke (2017), as well as Bibby (2011), have quantitatively studied the phenomenon of the abandonment of the Christian religion (the disaffiliated), including evangelicals and the growing number of non-religious, and the implications of this disaffiliation for the future of religions in Canada. Thiessen and Wilkins-Laflamme have considered the growth of the non-religious phenomenon in a way that inevitably touches on the Christian disaffiliation behind this trend (Thiessen and Wilkins-Laflamme, 2017, 2020; Wilkins-Laflamme, 2022a, 2022b).

In terms of generational issues, two major pan-Canadian reports built on mixed methods and a psychosociological approach have been produced on the topic of religious transmission and Christian faith development among youth. Hemorrhaging Faith (Penner et al., 2011) focuses on the journeys of youth and addresses the reasons for disaffiliation among them. Four typological types emerge from their results: ‘engagers’, ‘fence sitters’, ‘wanderers’ and ‘rejecters’ (Penner et al., 2011: 38). Meanwhile, Renegotiating Faith (Hiemstra et al., 2018) studies 18–28-year-olds in the emerging adulthood phase to examine issues of identity formation and disaffiliation. Important religious transitions and reorientations occur as they grow up and leave home, as I will discuss later.

Through 11 semi-structured interviews with Mennonites who left their community in Quebec, Lougheed (2015) identifies four reasons behind their deconversion. First, there was dissatisfaction with ecclesial forms; second, conflicts within their churches catalysed their departure; third, churches were accused of intruding in their way of life; and finally, their rejection of a belief in God and the Church played a major role in their disaffiliation (Lougheed, 2015: 103). Some of those who left the church returned after a few years. It is worth noting the wording around ‘deconversion’. As some members are returning, it might have been preferable to speak of ‘disengagement’ or ‘disaffiliation’ rather than ‘deconversion’. The terms have the advantage of situating the process of withdrawal in interaction with the religious milieu. Mélanie Gagné (2016) analyses her own deconversion from a psychosocial perspective using a phenomenological methodology. Her process of spiritual self-formation is understood as a process of religious deconversion and personal empowerment from the evangelical milieu. Neither of these two articles deals with the question of religious transmission and religious socialization.

Following qualitative interviews with a dozen former evangelicals, Benjamin Gagné (2021, 2023) adopts a socio-anthropological and qualitative approach to this disaffiliation phenomenon, and highlights the role of two key dimensions in the disaffiliation process of young evangelicals socialized in this milieu. On the one hand, in the light of an ‘all-or-nothing’ social logic, conversion according to a rupture-type model creates difficulties, or even an impossibility of adherence, at the level of religious transmission. At the same time, in this social logic, the ideal of sexual purity and marriage acts as a mechanism for identification and belonging. When young evangelicals break with this particular element of evangelical representation, they disengage and leave the fold.

The current article aims to contribute to the recent empirical and theoretical developments by analysing religious exit through three theoretical frameworks: the proper evangelical model of disaffiliation proposed by Gachet (2013); the theoretical framework of deconversion proposed by Streib et al. (2009); and the perspective of religious (non-)transmission on a generational scale (Attias-Donfut, 1991; Galland, 2017; Mannheim, 2011). Another important strength of the present research is its methodological combination – notably, the use of the ethno-sociological approach of the life story and the semi-structured interview. With regard to the generational question, life stories enabled me to target this chronological dimension. They shed light on the role (or lack thereof) of key actors over the duration of religious socialization and the disaffiliation process, such as (but not restricted to) parents and grandparents. The concepts of disaffiliation and deconversion allow for the inclusion of a number of useful concepts to analyse the same multifaceted phenomenon. The use of these two concepts has the advantage of providing a more neutral approach (Bullivant and Lee, 2016), placing beliefs, religious experience, social logic and institutions at the heart of the religious exit (Gagné, 2023: 261).

Three angles on religious disaffiliation

The deconversion approach, theorized by Streib (2014, 2022; Streib et al., 2009; Streib and Keller, 2004), has the advantage of bringing into dialogue the important concept of conversion, which is at the heart of evangelical identity. Streib’s (2014: 1) theoretical model is based on three features: ‘a criterion for definition, a typology of deconversion trajectories, and a model of the religious field that is the context’. Five characteristics may help to define deconversion: ‘1) Loss of specific religious experiences; 2) Intellectual doubt, denial, or disagreement with specific beliefs; 3) Moral criticism; 4) Emotional suffering; 5) Disaffiliation from the community’ (Streib et al., 2009: 22). This theoretical framework also takes into account the entire process – the trajectories of deconversion – including the religious (or non-religious) backgrounds of the origin and those of the destination. Thus, as will be developed below, the first generation of evangelical conversion in Quebec can be understood in terms of Catholic deconversion. The non-religious conversion (agnostics, atheists, non-religious spirituals) or the transition to non-evangelical Christianity of the second generation can be interpreted in terms of evangelical deconversion.

The second component of my theoretical framework is derived from Gachet’s (2013) work, which provides a fundamental contribution to the analysis of withdrawal from evangelical symbolic representations in the disaffiliation process, especially the ‘all-or-nothing’ representation. Specifically, Gachet conceptualizes disaffiliation in terms of three exit routes. Disaffiliation allows the individual to ‘stop participating in his or her group by interrupting his or her participation in worship gatherings or commitments (disengagement) and/or no longer adhering to its system of representation (apostasy) and/or no longer identifying with the group (disidentification)’ (179). Thus, in her study of disaffiliation, Gachet focuses on four dimensions: the ‘behavioural’, ‘social’, ‘affective’ and ‘cognitive’ (62). What Streib et al. (2009) calls ‘disaffiliation’ is understood by Gachet as ‘disengagement’.

The third component is the concept of cultural and religious (non-)transmission (Attias-Donfut, 1991; Galland, 2017; Mannheim, 2011), which helps us to understand how disaffiliation can be the product of generational succession. In this regard, I follow the thinking proposed by Harrold (2006: 87), according to which ‘the deconversions of Boomers are, in a sense, more dramatic because they have undergone a more radical transformation than “post-Christendom” generations – a paradigm shift, of sorts, between modernity and postmodernity’. ³ I am interested in how ‘the transmission of values, ways of thinking and ways of being’ (Galland, 2017: 114) have developed and changed among former evangelical generations. From my reading of the biographies and interviews, the importance of religious choice as an innovation for the first generation and a legacy for the second generation is essential to an understanding of the process of disaffiliation among young evangelicals.

Recruiting ex-evangelicals

My empirical data consists of 23 interviews with former young evangelicals, aged between 18 and 37, in Quebec. Twelve respondents were selected (six women and six men). In this evangelical sample, seven were born in a Baptist family, one had a Free Evangelical background, one had a Reformed Baptist background, one was from a Pentecostal church, one was from a brethren group and one had a multi-denominational background. In fact, ten of the interviewees were members of a Baptist church before they disengaged from their religion.

The approach was qualitative and inductive (Horowitz and Gerson, 2002; Paillé and Mucchielli, 2016), rooted primarily in the social sciences of religion but concerned with the theology at work in the deployment of religious representations. Each participant was interviewed twice: the first interview followed the ethno-sociological approach of the life story and the second was a semi-structured interview (Bertaux and De Singly, 2010; Desmarais, 2021). The first interview lasted approximately one and a half hours and was supplemented by a second semi-structured interview of approximately the same length (Brinkmann and Kvale, 2018; Savoie-Zajc, 2021). The latter interview followed the themes that emerged from the first interview and aimed to explore three broad issues related to the evangelical milieu, generational issues and issues related to disaffiliation. Most of the interviews were conducted via Zoom due to the health crisis caused by COVID-19.

The recruitment of the participants was carried out in two ways: by a public invitation on my Facebook page and an email to about 50 churches and evangelical organizations. One association of churches and one church relayed my call for research, two churches declined, and the rest did not respond. The analysis of the data was mainly based on a chronological reconstruction of the path of each of the participants, and also integrated the elements collected in the semi-directive interview. The interviews were coded inductively (Jackson and Bazeley, 2019) – in-vivo coding – in order to capture the participants’ perspectives, identify significant themes and analyse emic expressions regarding disaffiliation.

There are many limitations to this research. First, due to the small number of participants and the qualitative approach, the analysis presented does not exhaustively cover the phenomenon of disaffiliation among Quebec evangelicals. Second, more than half of the participants came from Baptist backgrounds. As a result, the understanding of disaffiliation among Pentecostals is partial, and certain issues related to this evangelical subgroup are not exhaustively represented. On the other hand, any analysis of the first generation relies on indirect data – for example, what the disaffiliated said about their parents and grandparents. The latter two groups were not interviewed directly. The analysis is therefore based on the work of Peach (2001) and the articulated recollections of the participants.

Generations: passing on religion in disaffiliated families

For the purposes of this article, the concept of the ‘first evangelical generation’ is understood as converts during a revival, who inherited and left the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec during the 1960s and 1970s; the second generation is their children, who were raised and socialized in the evangelical milieu during the 1980s and 1990s. Here, the concept of ‘generation’ is primarily an operational one. Moreover, in this section, it is specifically understood as a link: ‘Le principe de constitution de la génération est lié ici à la filiation: les géniteurs et les enfants issus de ces géniteurs appartiennent à des générations différentes. L’âge réel est assujetti à l’âge généalogique’ (Galland, 2017: 112). First, I look at the generation of converts, referred to here as the ‘first generation’. Then, I look at the question of generational succession and what it means in terms of continuity and discontinuity for these two post-war generations.

The first generation: Catholic deconverts who became evangelicals

Although the Franco-Catholic identity was still dominant and the object of a founding social recognition, the Catholic Church saw its authority crumble in post-war Quebec (Lalonde, 2002: 287). In the wake of Quebec’s modernization, we saw the birth of the nation state and observed the transformation that the ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council provoked within the Catholic Church (265). It was in the 1970s that ‘churches linked to evangelical currents experienced a surprising growth’ (13). Parallel to the Jesus movement in English Canada and the southern USA, ‘unmarried students in their 20s made up the majority of converts in Quebec (Lougheed, 2011: 198–199).

Peach (2001) offers a unique perspective on this first generation of evangelical converts in Quebec. In his PhD thesis, he uses a biographical approach to analyse the evangelical conversion stories of 12 young adults of French Canadian origin from Quebec, drawing on Wallace’s (1956, 2003) theory of revitalization. Some important elements emerge from his analysis. First, they were all young adults who had been raised and socialized in a Roman Catholic family environment. This Catholic religious identity was, then, a normative constituent for their own idendity as young francophones (Zuidema, 2011: 11). In their youth, they had ‘généralement accepté passivement les enseignements qu’ils ont reçus au travers d’une pratique religieuse souvent obligée, sans trop les remettre en question.’ (Peach, 2001: 116). By the time they reached adulthood, somewhere in their twenties, many of the young people had abandoned their parents’ Catholicism and converted to evangelicalism. An analysis of their life stories reveals several similarities in their conversion process. Prior to their conversion, they had gone through a period of personal and relational turmoil, which led them to make several unsuccessful attempts to rebuild their lives. They had been under the guidance and direction of an evangelical with whom they had had a relationship for some time. At the time of their conversion, their moral values and theology underwent a sudden and rapid transformation. Afterwards, still in the midst of the upheaval of this reorganization, they experienced severe opposition from those close to them, unless those people had also been converted. Finally, they were reassured and guided towards a new equilibrium (Peach, 2001: 126).

Peach (2001) also notes the characteristics of the relatively standardized pastoral accompaniment of these young evangelical converts, which he calls the ‘dominant model’ (244) of conversion. This model, which many included in their conversion stories, emphasizes ‘the sudden and radical experience that changes all aspects of the new believer’s life[, manifested in] a change of allegiance and, above all, a conscious and comprehensive decision to accept Jesus as one’s personal Saviour and Lord’ (245). This culminating experience of the Christian life thus guaranteed them eternal salvation (245). Strengthened by their new faith, they had the responsibility of proclaiming the gospel and convincing others to convert. The idea of radical religious choice and persuasion was in direct opposition to the traditional Catholic religious model of their childhood. Finally, to understand the important role of religious transmission, Peach appeals to what Wallace calls the perpetuation of change: ‘[Il] appelle ce processus “l’institutionnalisation” de la pratique du nouveau code dans l’ensemble de la société et surtout dans l’organisation du mouvement’ (161). For Peach, this perpetuation of religious change becomes, in a sense, the evaluative factor of conversion success. It represents the process of routinization of conversion as charisma (Wallace, 1956, in Peach, 2001: 162). If the conversion is completed following all the preceding stages, perpetuation and a completed transmission naturally follow. On the other hand, his keen insight allows him to foresee the difficulties of transmission in the dominant model promoted in pastoral accompaniment (251). As an example, even among this first generation, some of his participants left their congregation.

My own research, through the study of the next generation, supports this conclusion. In short, this religious change represents a moment of important religious innovation in relation to the religion of their own parents. These young people were moving away from a cultural Catholicism (Lemieux, 1990) to join a religion that emphasizes choice based on rationality. There is a clear sense of what Willaime describes as the modern phenomenon of a

theology of experience, that is, theological systems that are rooted in religious experience (e.g., conversion, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, healing) and that offer themselves as a rationalization of that experience. As such, these currents use a modern criterion of truth, the proof of experience. (Willaime, 1992: 54)

The model of pastoral accompaniment, with its strong emphasis on the radicalness of individual change as an experience and decision, raised potential transmission difficulties for young people socialized in the evangelical milieu, as the next section will show.

The second generation: the evangelical deconverts

As mentioned earlier, this article interprets the question of disaffiliation within the framework of generational succession. Although it could be conceived in terms of the handover of material goods (Galland, 2017: 112), ‘[aujourd’hui, c’est surtout] la transmission des valeurs, des façons de penser, des façons d’être, qui constitue l’essentiel des “héritages”’ (Galland, 2017: 114). One of my conclusions is that the evangelical disaffiliation of the second generation is thus part of the pattern of their own parents’ disaffiliation. In the families of the respondents, I had access to the affiliation or disaffiliation status of 38 individuals, including their siblings. Although this information must be treated with caution, I have arrived at an approximate disaffiliation rate of six in ten of this second generation, while for their parents I have arrived at an estimated total. Some of the siblings now affiliated with the movement had temporarily left and then returned. ⁴

Disaffiliates and grandparents

Several respondents reported experiencing very little religious transmission from their grandparents, either through their absence or through religious conflicts. Six of them reported family conflicts and tensions over religious issues. There was antagonism on both their parents’ and grandparents’ sides. From the perspective of the Roman Catholic grandparents, their children’s conversion was understood as joining a sectarian group. On the part of the converts, the antagonism drew on the historical anti-Roman Catholic sentiments of Canada’s Franco-Protestant Christian milieu. Some even argued that the only acceptable form of Christianity was evangelicalism, and that Catholics were to some extent non-Christians: ‘[My parents] became Christians, like, “We, we are the Christians”. It’s because there’s a little quirk with Christians: we’re Christians, not you. It’s Christianity. It’s a little problem. From then on it [created conflicts] with their families’ (Hector, age 31).

The one exception among the participants was one of the participants’ maternal grandparents, who converted to evangelicalism and were the only ones who played a significant religious role. As the conversion took place in the 1970s, the rupture can also be linked to some of the values of the counterculture. During this period, especially in Quebec, there was a political, social and cultural convergence that was directly intertwined with the attraction that some French Canadians felt towards evangelicalism. ⁵

The transmission of a generational innovation: the religious (non-)choice

Through the filial ties, it is possible to identify two stages. First, there is not only a discontinuity in the transmission of the Catholic heritage between the grandparents’ generation and the parents’ generation, but also a continuity in the practice of a Christian religion. Evangelical churches have the peculiarity of accommodating the ‘modern “affluence” and “self-realization ethos” while remaining traditional in certain theological and moral ways’ (Reimer, 2015: 54). In the second stage, evangelical circles promote the individual journey through the symbolic representation of conversion. Socialization and familial transmission

s’intègrent au processus global d’insertion sociale, comment s’effectue ce travail d’identification inconsciente au groupe d’appartenance, à ses normes et à ses valeurs ; comment se met en œuvre cette socialisation diffuse acquise à partir d’expériences de ce qui est permis et interdit, objet de désir et de crainte. (Galland, 2017 : 114)

This aspect has been explored in Gagné’s (2023) work on evangelical disaffiliation, with both the specific model of conversion and the ideal of sexual purity and marriage playing an important role in shaping this back and forth between socialization, the transmission of tradition and the ‘original creation of the present’ (Attias-Donfut, 1996: 20). First, the conversion model promoted by the first generation engenders several dissonances, referred to as ‘non-choice’. ⁶ They are encouraged to make a reasoned choice, to which they must conform if they want to belong to the community (Gagné, 2023 : 265). On the other hand, the promotion of a radical experience of conversion-related change is often inaccessible to them. This possibility of making an individual decision, coupled with the impossibility of living this experience, produces a paradox between choice and non-choice. Based on a sociological reading of the four functions of conversion in the evangelical milieu (Stolz et al., 2013: 56), their disaffiliation is illuminated:

Dans l’imaginaire religieux des interrogés de la deuxième génération, ce modèle de conversion radicale tourmente la grande majorité d’entre eux puisqu’ils sont incapables de s’appuyer sur celui-ci pour consolider leur identité évangélique. Et si elle leur est totalement inaccessible, certains d’entre eux abandonnent l’idée d’appartenir à cette communauté, brouillant les frontières avec l’extérieur. Ce modèle de conversion échoue dans sa stratégie de fermeture, cessant de facto d’ériger leur pérennité dans l’Église évangélique. (Gagné, 2023 : 267)

The paradox of choice and non-choice takes on a new dimension as it becomes part of an all-or-nothing social logic. The question of an ideal of sexual purity and marriage appears to be a central factor in religious disengagement. Their socialization and the learning/rewarding process associated with aging and role allocation (Galland, 2017: 104), essentializing the masculine and feminine genders, leads them to question their evangelical symbolic representations of sexuality. Their commitment to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ sustains the preservation of sexual purity, which in turn demonstrates the true state of their faith: ‘Face à ce va-et-vient incessant entre préservation et démonstration, il devient évident pour ces jeunes adultes qu’ils doivent quitter le milieu, et pour plusieurs, leur foi en raison de cette logique du “tout ou rien”’ (Gagné, 2023: 271–272). As they are now adult, they choose to leave their religion and take on another path for their sexual and conjugal relationships.

Between the evangelical parents and the disaffiliated, while there is a break in Christian identity for three-quarters of the participants, individual religious choice is a key element of generational continuity. As Gagné puts it, speaking of Gauthier’s and Perreault’s work: ‘les jeunes [désaffiliés] ne sont pas tant des déshérités du catholicisme [ou même de l’évangélisme] que des héritiers des baby-boomers’ (Gauthier and Perreault, 2013, in Gagné, 2023: 276). Like their parents, they exalt change and choice in a context of dialogue with tradition and religious innovation. They contribute to the prevailing distrust of the religious establishment (Lefebvre, 2008: 248), including evangelical churches. Their non-religion or non-evangelical Christianity thus appears in adulthood as a chosen way of believing and living as they seek to pass this legacy on to their own children. Among the non-religious interviewees who are now parents, it manifests itself in the importance given to the acceptance of differences, especially in terms of sexual values, accompanied by a certain distrust of religious traditions. For the disaffiliates who have retained a Christian identity, the spirit of community support and the heritage of biblical texts seem to be essential elements to be transmitted without imposing choices.

‘Something happened’: new urban churches and a new generation

In this section, the word ‘generation’ is used in a sociological sense to designate ‘un groupe de personnes à peu près du même âge s’identifiant principalement par leurs expériences historiques partagées, dont elles ont tiré une vision commune du monde’ (Attias-Donfut, 1991: 59), and bear a unique way of remembering. Three participants shared their strong impression that many of their religious peers were also involved in a similar process of questioning and disaffiliating. At the micro-social level, eight of the twelve participants experienced their disaffiliation between 2011 and 2016. At the meso-social level, nine were attending new urban churches in Montreal and Sherbrooke that were planted between 2010 and 2014. These churches explicitly demonstrate their willingness to adapt to the culture while retaining their (traditional) evangelical edge. In so doing, they attract a large number of young adults, mostly from evangelical backgrounds (Desjardins, 2018), and emphasize their social responsibility to varying degrees. From a macro-social point of view, and without overstating the case, it can be said that they are children of their time. In fact, some of them took part in the 2012 Maple Spring student protests. ⁷

A generational unit ‘in the same boat’

Three of the participants gave the first indications of such a period of change, recounting their lives between 2012 and 2016. By reconstructing the chronologies, it was possible to place this period between 2011 and 2016. Although they did not all specify a precise period, six of them spoke of a group phenomenon. As they put it, there were ‘many in the same boat’ regarding questioning. They spoke of a ‘generational movement’ ⁸ in a ‘coincidence of moments’, while others referred to the ‘large number of people and friends of their own age’ who were caught up in these interrogations and disaffiliation. ‘In Montreal, it was also a period when it seemed everyone was going through a bit of a crisis, the [laughs] . . . crisis of Christian existentialism’ (Sophie, age 34).

On another level, when asked about their family relationships following their disaffiliation, some mentioned generational differences and the lack of understanding they experienced from their parents. The disaffiliated explained this by their experience of religious socialization: as converted parents, they could not know what it was like to ‘grow up in this’. Some of them discussed this among themselves, and one of the participants proposed a configuration of religious repositioning: ‘some were completely believers, others were in the in between of having faith without churches, and there were some who had simply left everything’ (Alexis, age 26). These last two groups no longer felt linked to the traditional church, ‘to the evangelical machine of the province of Quebec’ (Mike, age 36).

Even in his new urban church, one of the participants evoked a kind of discouragement at seeing ‘all these people like him [who have faith], but that no longer go to church’ (Alexis, age 26). Indeed, as we have seen with the participants in this study, it is those young people who are very involved in their churches who end up leaving them. While some of the respondents said that they had been hurt by conflicts in this environment, two reacted strongly to the idea of having been hurt. They said that they had not been hurt, but it was their choice to live differently that led them to see incompatibility between their way of life and that advocated by evangelicals.

New urban churches and social claims

At the meso-social level of the local congregation, nine of the participants had been involved in the new urban churches that emerged between 2010 and 2014 in Montreal and Sherbrooke. While some of these churches place more emphasis on the issue of social engagement than others, they put forward a form of evangelism known as ‘organic’. The term ‘organic’ was used by Fannie (age 32) to explain the more natural context of friendships in ordinary life situations with non-evangelical people, with the desire to eventually evangelize them. Opposed to this type of evangelism is ‘proximity evangelization’, which takes place outside of the ordinary activities of life. Described as environments that are more conducive to informal encounters between young evangelicals around intellectual, cultural and social themes, these churches attempt a form of adaptation to the contemporary times. Sunday service times are changed, meetings are held over a beer or coffee, and outsiders are invited to join in.

According to Desjardins (2018: 104), many young people who had been socialized in evangelical churches ‘ont avoué s’être détournés quelque peu de la foi chrétienne durant l’adolescence ou au début de l’âge adulte. Pour certains d’entre eux, c’est en assistant à l’Église du Plateau Mont-Royal qu’ils ont réintégré le mouvement évangélique.’ By demonstrating a certain openness to the surrounding culture, some questioning can be temporarily alleviated. This church, like many other new urban churches, does not seek to eliminate ‘tout trace de l’héritage chrétien, mais plutôt de retrouver le sens initial, de favoriser la simplicité au divertissement et d’honorer l’héritage reformé tout en s’assurant que les pratiques empruntées peuvent être vécues de façon authentique par les participants’ (Desjardins, 2018: 105).

However, the church leaders did not escape harsh judgement from the disaffiliated, who nevertheless criticized them. The answers given to their essential questions revived bitter old memories. Expressions such as ‘rehashed’, ‘reheated arguments’ and ‘the same old evangelical story’ were used to describe the answers that were attempted to be given to their questions in pastoral care. Others, like Mike (age 36), denounced the tendency towards community withdrawal, in the manner of the old evangelical churches. In trying to join one of these churches and proposing ways to get involved in contributing to society during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was discouraged from doing so and received a negative response as to the importance of helping society in the crisis, with the church leaders claiming the need to reorient themselves and invest their energy in their religious community.

Our participant Fannie, a member of a non-denominational Christian church, explained her change in terms of both continuity and distance. Studying for a Master’s degree, she explicitly listed her ‘evangelical convictions’. It was through her participation in this emerging church that she re-evaluated this list and her belonging in the evangelical milieu; she could engage with it without identifying with it. This case shows us once again the transitory nature of the ‘non-denominational church’ communities that three of the participants frequented. For some, this particular space enabled them to maintain links with their evangelical heritage, while others saw it as a community of rupture.

They thus bear witness to a time of upheaval, of changes within their generation of Christians, which affected much of the Evangelical Church. The sense that they shared these issues with many others who had not left the Church, and that they participated in the life of emerging urban communities, is indeed verifiable when we compare the chronology behind their accounts. The period when they left the Church and the period when these communities began to form overlap, giving a more unified picture of the phenomenon of disaffiliation in Quebec. These people described how something had happened that went beyond their particular situation, and the solutions offered by these new communities do not seem to have had any effect on their long-term reconsideration. In fact, the solutions searched for were less in the answers verbalized by their pastors than in the church reconfiguration offered by these pastors. It is not for nothing that we try to manage the disaffiliation of intermediate communities by also reintegrating non-evangelical groups, which serve as gateways to society.

Par conséquent, bien plus que ‘combler’ un vide en occupant son temps différemment qu’en allant à l’Église, la personne qui quitte un environnement de type évangélique va se rattacher aux structures qui s’offrent parallèlement à l’Église. Elle va également devoir passer du temps à apprendre à vivre dans des contextes qui peuvent lui être plus ou moins inconnus, ou tout du moins qui ne lui étaient pas familiers (en termes de temps passé ou d’apprentissage des codes). (Gachet, 2013: 142)

This is also the case for non-denominational churches that emphasize participation in social issues, but it could also apply to the new urban churches in general, as demonstrated by the Maple Spring student protests. The reintegration of disaffiliated members into the wider society has been achieved through these transitional communities. If this disaffiliation appears here as both a question of religious inheritance of generational lineage and the product of a specific micro- and meso-social generational change, it is also the product of larger social changes. These young people of the 1980s and 1990s had taken their place in ‘late’ or ‘advanced’ modernity, which accelerated geographical mobility.

Moving and disengaging

In this section of the article, it is important first to note the high level of religious participation of these young people in their evangelical childhood environments. More than three-quarters reported a very high level of religious involvement in both family life and church activities. From their teenage years, they took on roles in their religious community, caring for children at church or Christian camps, playing in the church band or serving in youth groups, for example. Some of them started to become involved in the community even as children, and all of them went to church with their parents at least once a week, but often two or three times. In early adulthood, one element emerges from the stories: the importance of relocation in their religious commitment and in the process of disaffiliation. In fact, relocation occurs several times in the lives of 11 of the 12 disaffiliates. Half of them moved three or more times before their mid twenties, and five moved at least once. This geographical mobility is mostly part of the larger picture of modern life (for example, cegep, university, work), although they occasionally moved for specific religious (for example, missionary, pastoral, religious tension) reasons.

Geographical mobility and network dislocation

In the case of six interviewees, a change of school or university led to a move. However, the reasons for a move were sometimes linked to the religious context, as in the case of two of the participants: one went to study far away from her parents’ home to escape religious pressure, while the other left to avoid aggravating religious tensions within his family. Such moves have several effects on the religious lives of disaffiliated people.

First, a move does not always coincide with religious disengagement, even if some questioning of evangelical representations has already begun. On the contrary, when a person moves in with an evangelical family member or friends, it provides an opportunity to increase their involvement. Through a network of Christians, some will join newly established urban churches, sometimes taking on leadership roles. At first, the new way of ‘doing church’ advocated by these churches enchanted the newcomers. However, rather than defusing their doubts, these churches nurtured them, partly because of a lack of pastoral accompaniment and sometimes because of a perceived lack of transformation:

So finally . . . I remained in Montreal for three years. With time, we saw a tangent in the church: that it was becoming more and more like this Baptist association. That’s what I didn’t want. I had been in there before, and every time I was, like, no way [laughing]! (Alexis, age 26)

A second effect is the erosion of the evangelical network with each move, especially when the geographical distance is significant. Thus, the participants’ last move became an opportunity to disengage from the evangelical network. Nevertheless, many of them tried again to join another church, albeit cautiously. Refusing a new, deeper commitment to these churches, they ended up voluntarily ceasing to forge new links with evangelicals in their new area, and developed connections with people beyond the community. This is what Maxime (age 37) expressed when he decided to leave the evangelical fold: ‘The community and the things people said to comfort me didn’t make sense, didn’t have any impact. It was like empty language. They could have said anything to me, but it didn’t have any impact’.

Disengagement and social dislocation

The effect of regional and residential displacement on religious commitment has been the subject of debate among researchers. On the one hand, some have noted that a relative lack of loyalty sets in (Hoge et al., 1994 in Bibby, 1997: 291), even when the move is over a short distance, generally leading people to change or abandon their religious affiliation. On the other, in Canada, Bibby (1997: 302) has noted the importance of the mover’s original religious group, especially among Catholics and conservative Protestants, which tends to favour intergenerational retention while showing a partial loss linked to geographical mobility. The other aspect is the question of the age of people who move, ‘especially when it comes to younger people’ (Bibby, 1997: 302). In this respect and more recently, in the Swiss context, Stolz et al. propose that, among evangelicals, moving had a net positive effect on the vitality of the evangelical milieu compared to what happened in other Protestant groups:

Le caractère interdénominationnel de l’évangélisme, la place centrale de l’Église dans la vie religieuse et sociale ainsi que l’expansion, depuis quelques décennies, d’un marché de ‘biens religieux’ au sein même de l’évangélisme sont quelques éléments qui permettent d’expliquer cette ‘circulation des Saints. (Stolz et al., 2013: 211)

Davis et al.’s (2023) recent work identifies the important role of mobility in religious disengagement (dechurching), particularly for two types of disaffiliates. The first type can be included in the ‘casual dechurching’ category (24), which mainly comprises dechurched cultural Christians and dechurched mainline evangelicals. They

stopped attending church without initially intending to do so. Some moved to a new city with the intention of finding a church but never took that next step into a faith community. Many young professionals prioritized personal networks around their careers and, as a result, found themselves disconnected from a local church. (24)

The second major category – the ‘dechurched casualties’ (24) – chose to leave the church explicitly because of a long list of recriminations against their religious community. For example, among ex-evangelicals, who appear to be the group most determined never to return to church, moving was the second most common reason for stopping church attendance (75). This interesting quantitative approach seems to conceal an important process, whereby these ex-evangelicals would be led never to return to church. In fact, most of the participants in my study would qualify in a sense today as the ‘ex-evangelical’ type, since they did not want to return to a Christian church. This raises the following interesting question: At what point in their disaffiliation process did relocation correspond to final disengagement?

All but one of the participants attempted to join in with the life of a new church. It was in this context that the recent urban churches offering more competitive religious goods had the advantage over the evangelical environments of their childhood. Some married and moved to another city, choosing a new church. Leaving their childhood church as young adults, they joined a new church and become more deeply involved. From the point of view of religious transmission, they reproduced what they had received from their parents’ generation, even after their emancipation. On the other hand, cohabitation among evangelicals plays an important role in high religious commitment and retention. Herein lies the importance of Gachet’s (2013) definition, for if at this point in their life their religious commitment was particularly high (and thus there was no disengagement), the questioning of evangelical representations was temporarily suspended – but without being resolved. However, as they accumulated these residential moves, their evangelical network gradually dislocated in the same sense as Bibby (1997: 303) indicates when he addresses the question of social dislocation. In Renegotiating Faith, a Canadian study, Hiemstra et al. (2018: 24) support this point, explaining that it is a ‘“continuous process” that’s different from the more discreet “quick cut” we’ve tended to associate with moving’.

In their late twenties, as they moved, they found themselves almost religiously isolated. They experienced ‘lapses’, which, voluntarily or not, exposed them ‘to alternative organizations, to develop social networks outside of their religion of origin . . . [possibly] evidenc[ing] a period of dissociation from parental control’ (Sherkat, 1991: 185). While their evangelical network and its resources provided temporary relief for their many questions, they were later led to look at what was happening outside their evangelical network. Their moves led to religious disengagement, the creation of a new network of non-evangelical relationships and, ultimately, complete disaffiliation from their evangelical faith. The coincidence of their moves, particularly regional movements in and out of the city, and a shared sense of crisis with other young evangelicals like themselves led many to believe that this movement was generational.

Conclusion

The analysis of the disaffiliation trajectory of a dozen young evangelicals has enabled me to refine my theoretical framework. Three approaches – the deconversion approach proposed by Streib et al. (2009), the evangelical disaffiliation approach described by Gachet (2013) and generational analysis – have enabled me to examine the progressive disengagement of these young people. The life-story approach is particularly enlightening, as it enabled me to anchor the process in its diachronic dimension by identifying the before-and-after relationships that shaped this disaffiliation process, and by indicating the role of key actors such as relatives and new religious communities. This comparative approach has also enabled me to anchor it in its chronology by identifying the important years between 2011 and 2016, a period that also corresponds to a moment of social change. Indeed, these disaffiliations are part of a changing generational unit of young evangelicals, who are redefining their religious orientations.

This article highlights the importance of three elements linked to disaffiliation. The analysis offers an exemplary qualitative look at how members of fervent evangelical groups can join the rapidly growing group of ‘nones’ and ‘dones’, which is increasingly intriguing researchers (Smith and Cooperman, 2024; Smith et al., 2024). This is a consolidation of post-war trends, as the personal decision to join a religion has become increasingly important, to the detriment of heritage or cultural religion. These findings enrich our understanding of these ‘post-Christian non-religious’ or post-evangelical non-religious. The question of modern religious choice through conversion, the very object of generational transmission from their own parents, leads those young ex-evangelicals to disaffirm (Gachet, 2013) and to question the absence or loss of religious experience (Streib et al., 2009), which is central to evangelical identity and belonging (Stolz et al., 2013). In fact, religious change appears as an object of generational transmission. Combined with urbanity, high geographical mobility is a key feature of modern globalization and contributes to both the engagement and disengagement (Gachet, 2013) of disaffiliated young people. Combined with relocation and social dislocation, the religious commitment and adherence to representations of the participants were irreparably shaken, even with the arrival of new urban churches, leading to disengagement at the community level. While these young evangelicals questioned evangelical representations, they could no longer find meaningful networks that could answer the questions that concerned them. In other words, and within Gachet’s (2013) analytical framework, religious change in an urban environment implies a change in adherence or disadherence to traditional religious representations, both at the individual (disaffiliated) and group (new churches) levels. In the midst of a period of self-questioning, these churches temporarily alleviated this self-questioning. While undermining an all-or-nothing evangelical logic, these churches no longer seemed to offer enough substantive support for these young, drifting evangelicals to fully renew their membership. In so doing, they contributed to their disaffection with the traditional evangelical system inherited from their primary socialization.

This article serves as a case study for the question: Is urbanity responsible for secularization? Superdiverse contexts, such as cities (Monnot, 2020; Vertovec, 2007), play a pre-eminent role in the reconfiguration of religious traditions, as is seen here in the disaffiliation process of young evangelicals. The emergence of new urban churches and disaffiliation appears as both religious revitalization at the group level and a secularization effect on more individual trajectories.