Introduction

This book focuses on individuals who, in the course of their lives, turned away from their religious communities of origin. In some case, individuals who criticized their religious communities sought to reform them from within; in other cases, they joined other religious groups or searched for alternative types of religion, among which one should include ersatz-religions. The book illustrates how secularization and religiosity are by no means mutually exclusive but are interwoven in many ways, as it appears more evidently in individual perspectives. The volume also asks to what extent the moments of transition and border-crossing are to be understood as consequences or expressions of secularization, as transformations of the religious, or as manifestations of new religiosity.