“I'm hurt,” “Stay away,” “I do not belong”: Understanding Church Hurt, Unforgiveness, and Religious Disaffiliation

Church hurt may be defined as a negative social interaction or doctrinal difference that takes place between co-religious individuals or within religious communities, leading to interpersonal religious and spiritual struggle. This type of religious and spiritual struggle is theorized to affect the belonging dimension of religiosity. This study sought to explore the relationship between church hurt experiences, unforgiveness motivations, and affiliation to religion. Measures of church hurt, unforgiveness, and disaffiliation were administered to samples recruited from a small, midwestern, Christian college (N = 33); a large, southern, secular university (N = 118); and a small, northeastern, Christian Catholic group (N = 12). Results showed that those who were disaffiliated from Christianity had higher church hurt and unforgiveness experiences than their affiliated counterparts. Mediation analysis revealed that church hurt was associated with disaffiliation, and this association was mediated by higher avoidance but not higher revenge or lower benevolence. To summarize, a consequence of being hurt at church is the motivation to create distance between oneself and the transgressor, in this case, the religious individual or community, and this is also associated with disaffiliation. Importantly, avoidance is the motive that in part explains the association between church hurt and disaffiliation. Hurt individuals leave churches because they wish to avoid the community, not because they desire revenge or have lost a benevolent attitude toward the group. These results confirm the predictions of theoretical models on disaffiliation.