As more Americans leave organized religion, a number of studies have attempted to understand why: Who are these people, and why are so many saying goodbye to the religions of their childhoods? Up to this point, though, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to ex-Mormons.
One new book that attempts to shed light on the ex-Mormon world is “Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism Among the Latter-day Saints,” by Marshall Brooks. This project started out as his dissertation in cultural anthropology, where he embedded himself in Provo to connect with ex-Mormons and try to understand their lives.