Religious marketplace research has focused on the relative success strict religious groups have had in maintaining their members. This paper looks at why this might be by focusing on individuals who leave these groups. Defectors from fundamentalist religious groups undergo an identity transformation process through which their understanding of the world and themselves is changed. This paper det...

Fifteen volumes long, Against the Christians was written by the Roman pagan Porphyry circa 280 and was an educated man's studied attack on Christian theology. An exceedingly powerful and successful work, it and commentaries on it were condemned by the imperial church in 448 and burned. Only remnants which were contained in books that were primarily about other matters have survived until the pr...