The experience of the irreligious conversion: analysis of the spiritual transition toward skepticism from traditional religions in young adults residing in Santiago, Chile

This study investigates the narratives and meanings that individuals sustain as to the reason for their irreligious conversion, denoting the role that social relations played during their transformative process, the situational factors, and the consequences both in their personal well-being and in their social circles. This objective entails the research intention of problematizing how (ir)religious denominations are being queried in surveys, in addition to strengthening the subdiscipline of secularism in contemporary societies. Using semi-structured interviews with young adults living in Santiago de Chile, a mixture of discourse and narrative analysis was conducted to build knowledge that would rescue the multiple meanings that the participants attribute to their (ir)religious/spiritual metamorphosis. The presence and confluence of four explanatory mechanisms converging in secular alternatives were identified—rationalization and emotionality, criticism of religious contradictions, personal development, and mundane elements for irreligious conversion. Consequently, the processes of loss and simultaneous construction of meaning, which were mobilized by the interrelation of these mechanisms for transition, were highlighted. Here, spirituality is fundamental in replacing the function of religion so that the individual can cling to reality from personalized paradigms that were configured based on their lived experience. This is materialized in the schematization of a model that explains the reasons for irreligious conversion.