Books About Leaving, Questioning, or Changing Your Faith

Karen Armstrong left a Catholic convent as a young woman and found that the questions she had brought there followed her outside. Her account stays with the years when she had to find work and a place in ordinary life. Read it for the time it can take to recognize what a former commitment still has to teach you.

Amber Scorah moved to Shanghai as a Jehovah's Witness, intending to share a faith she had inherited. Her memoir follows the friendships and work that made her imagine a life outside it. The passages about losing a ready-made community give the story a weight that a description of changing one's mind alone would miss.

Shulem Deen begins to question the beliefs he has lived by in a Skver Hasidic community. His account of what follows gives his children and the routines of family life as much attention as his private doubts. It is a difficult read if the question you came with is how much of a former life can be carried forward.

Deborah Feldman grew up in a Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn. Her memoir gives her growing love of books and her eventual departure a specific setting, including the obligations of an early marriage. Read it for what access to another language and other stories can make possible when the available future feels narrow.

Megan Phelps-Roper writes about growing up in the Westboro Baptist Church and seeing her convictions put under pressure in extended conversations with people she met on Twitter. The exchanges are worth reading for the patience they demand. The decision to leave still has consequences that no conversation can settle for her.

William Lobdell covered religion as a reporter after becoming a Christian himself. His work brought him into contact with accounts of abuse and the ways church leaders responded. Read him for the strain of asking questions in a professional role that become increasingly difficult to keep outside your own life.

Tim Guest remembers the Rajneesh communities his mother joined and the different rules, clothes, and ideas about family that made up his childhood. The child's view gives the memoir its force. It is a good choice if you want to read about questioning something familiar before you have words for its claims.

C. S. Lewis distinguishes the fleeting desire he calls Joy from the conclusions he eventually reaches about God. His account follows childhood reading and adult conversation back to the questions those experiences raised. Choose it for a conversion memoir in which intellectual argument and a feeling the author struggles to name take turns leading.

Sara Miles walked into an Episcopal church, took Communion, and found herself rethinking what food and faith could ask of her. What makes this memoir worth staying with is the food pantry she went on to start. It shows how a moment of conviction looks once it becomes a responsibility shared with people you will see again next week.

Dorothy Day traces her movement toward Catholicism alongside the political commitments and relationships that preceded it. Her account of building the Catholic Worker movement with Peter Maurin gives the change a public and practical afterlife. Read it for how an altered faith can rearrange work that already matters to you.

Stephen Batchelor recounts training as a monk and coming to question ideas he had accepted in Buddhist traditions. His own history runs alongside an attempt to understand the historical Buddha. That combination is worth reading if you want to see how someone continues to value a practice after revising the beliefs that once gave it shape.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel reflects on what it means to practice Zen in a body and a life shaped by race, sexuality, and gender. Her account makes vulnerability part of the work, with personal experience giving her claims their weight. Choose it when the question is how to change your relation to a practice you intend to keep.

G. Willow Wilson writes about converting to Islam and making a life in Egypt, where she meets the man she will marry. Her account of a relationship and life in Cairo gives ordinary decisions room next to spiritual ones. Read it for the difference between assenting to a belief and learning how it fits into a shared life.

Ali A. Rizvi uses his upbringing in Muslim communities and his move toward atheism to ask what people mean when they claim a Muslim identity. The personal passages make his wider argument about belief and culture easier to understand. Choose this when you want a book that makes the writer's argument part of the experience.

Joanna Brooks writes about a Mormon childhood and the effort to retain a place in a tradition whose public positions she sometimes challenges. The memoir draws strength from the parts of that upbringing she still loves. It is a useful choice if you want a story where disagreement and attachment have to share a life.

Justin Lee writes about realizing he was gay while taking his evangelical Christian faith seriously. The story of how he reconsidered what he had been taught takes place in conversations with people who matter to him. Read it for a change in conviction that still leaves the author involved in the community he is questioning.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes leaving work as an Episcopal parish priest and trying to understand which parts of a religious vocation remain when the job ends. Her attention to the rhythms of church and country life makes the change feel practical. Choose this for a memoir about finding space for faith after giving up one way of serving it.

Sarah Hurwitz returns to Jewish learning as an adult and discovers practices she barely knew as a child. Her observations about picking up texts and trying out unfamiliar forms of observance make the discovery feel gradual. Read it for a return to an inherited tradition that can begin with curiosity.

Rachel Held Evans builds her account of leaving and looking for a church around seven sacraments. Each gives her a way to ask what she still wants from shared worship. This is a good choice if descriptions of disagreement leave you curious about what somebody misses and hopes to recover.

Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal collect accounts of people who leave churches and reckon with what that separation changes. The essays vary in background and in the loyalties the writers carry away with them. Choose the collection when you want several accounts to sit beside one another without requiring agreement about what comes next.

Malcolm X, working with Alex Haley, recounts a pilgrimage to Mecca that changed how he understood who could belong to the same religious community. Read that part alongside his earlier account of joining the Nation of Islam. The distance between those episodes gives the book an unusually clear view of a conviction changing twice within one life.