Leaving religion as a letting go ritual: exploring the trajectories of meaning making in narratives about apostasy1

Abstract

The present paper elaborates on the meaning-making processes of leaving the Roman Catholic Church in Poland as indicated in the material coming from interviews and posts published on the Facebook group “Apostazja 2020”. Analysing biographical narratives concerning the experience of apostasy, we are inquiring whether it betrays traces of a rite of passage. Briefly, we present apostasy as social and religious phenomena, but we draw particular attention to the state of Catholic religiosity in Poland. We are seeking an answer to the question whether the act of apostasy is a transformative experience, a liminal moment which affects a person’s sense of identity and opens a new phase in life.