Religious disaffiliation

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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 other terms are used for this process, though each of these terms may have slightly different meanings and connotations. Researchers employ a variety of often pejorative 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. 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.