While his insight is needed and refreshing, the prose was cumbersome at times. It is still one of the needed discussion points for the church at-large and many pastors and lay leaders need to read his research and use it for vision planning and community outreach. Additionally, the healing portion of the book, Section 3, is a great starting point for churches in crisis and working out of those moments to a community under grace. One of the best metaphors and needed commentaries came in relating the idea of vaccinations to the idea of a mature faith.
"In order to protect believers from the most common challenges that lead to a crisis of faith, they need to be inoculated against such challenges . This is done by ensuring that believers are initially exposed to challenges in a safe environment by knowledgeable Christians. Given that the most common and effective objections to the Christian faith revolve around the Bible, it is these issues that deserve our attention. Believers should be exposed to Old Testament “terror texts,” the problems raised by historical criticism, and various textual discrepancies of the Bible by other believers before they are acquainted with them by unbelievers. By doing so, many potential problems can be avoided."
If these are not the words you want to hear in church at thisoment then keep looking for a different read. But if you want to do some heavy lifting of healing the relationship your church has with the community then start here.

This was reviewed as part of the ARC program for Netgalley.

The Anatomy of Deconversion is a book that deals with a very important current issue that many Christians are facing and trying to understand. John Marriott takes his readers through different conversations with people who have left the Christian faith and dives into the reasons why people become disillusioned by the Christian faith or the church in which they are a part.

I found the conversations interesting, but I did find the book a bit much to slog through. To be honest I could have done with a more simplistic book that summed up the reasons why people leave the church in the first section (maybe a chapter of reasons and a chapter of different experiences) and a second section on what we need to do as Christians. I felt like the book had some great points but it dragged on and was repetitive at times. It also felt as though I was reading a thesis versus reading an accessible book for the layman to understand what is going on to the people in their lives that are falling away from the faith.

The meat of the book was good. I just felt like it dragged on and had many parts that I could have cut out to get to the point more rapidly. I don't think I would recommend this book to many people who are in need of understanding this issue, because I do not feel as though the book would help them to understand what they are looking to know. A more simplistic version of his great information might be more beneficial for the majority of people.

Fascinating research, much of which confirms what I've found in various Barna Group studies (You Lost Me, UnChristian, etc.) and in discussions with friends about the uses (and limits) of apologetics in considering spiritual doubts. Definitely recommended!

If there is one issue plaguing the Christian church in the west in general, and America specifically, it is that of once professing Christians abandoning their faith at alarming rates and doing so quite publicly. In essence, this ever growing population of people is deconverting from their former faith and are now the largest segment of religious people known as nones.

What makes this book stand apart from others writings is in the author’s approach to analyzing reconversion from the Christian faith. Here, the author is taking a sociological approach concerning persons who once professed faith in the Biblical traditions yet now have renounced their faith completely as opposed to deconstructing their faith where persons engage in a form of Christianity but from a far different perspective than Christians historically. Essentially, if fundamentalist Christians are at one end of the spectrum of faith and deconstructionists are at the other, then those who have deconverted are no longer on the continuum of faith at all.

To the author, he is not merely studying stories of deconversion. Rather, he is analyzing the lived experiences of persons who he coins as unbelievers who essentially never had a true moment of repentance and seeking to understand what brought them to the realization of their own unbelief. Succinctly, the author analyzes the stories of sociological Christians; or those who failed to convert initially while believing that they had. Again, this is perhaps a slightly different analysis than is offered from others who write on this topic which is ever growing in the west.

What further separates the author’s work from others is that he approaches this complex issue in very well-defined terms and is something more akin to that of a sociological researcher than a pastor yet still maintains a compassionate voice throughout. Furthermore, the author states his claims in easily read ways which perhaps open this book, and the subject itself, up to a greater preponderance of the population. Most notably, the author writes and tells stories in such a way where those whom he studied are left with their humanity which may not always be the case in books on the same subject matter.

John Marriott thoroughly investigates the trend of the faithful leaving the flock. Data driven research with is geared towards finding the reasons that previously adherent Christians denounce faith in their religion and even in the existence of a God. He is looking at those individuals who transition from believer to agnostic to atheist.

This trend is disturbing in actuality to the hierarchy and leadership of the group. What his first hand research shows, is that to the "deconvereted" the experience is release and relief.

At the end of the book he does offer some guidance on how the churched can sympathize with the deconverted.

This book seems primarily written for the academic community.

I would like to now read Mariott's other book, A Recipe for Disaster, which may be more oriented toward the less academic reader.

The dechurched and “dones” are not bitter, prodigal sons or daughters who chose to take all the beautiful things they learned, along with their rich inheritance of the Christian faith, only to squander it in some big debauched and satanic soirée. Instead, the well of their hearts has been poisoned by various elements of current Christian principles, practices, policies, and attitudes. In “The Anatomy of Deconversion,” John Marriott, an astute sociologist with deep pastoral sensibilities does an incredible job of detailing why folks are distancing themselves from the church and explores helpful ways for the allies of the dechurched to increase their compassion and connect with them on an empathic level. I highly recommend John’s work!