Faith to Faithless, a service of Humanists UK, provides direct support to these individuals; and this talk will aim to help you better understand the issue. Sometimes leaving a religious group can result in homelessness, isolation, extreme exclusion from community and family, mental health issues, and violence or threats to life (sometimes referred to as honour based violence). And not to mention the social and emotional difficulties people face when they decide the religion of their family is not for them.

 

Terri O’Sullivan will talk about the varying forms of abuse that an ex-religious person may have experienced while in their former religious community, and what they may have experienced as a result of leaving it.

 

Terri is the Apostate Services Development Coordinator for the Faith to Faithless service at Humanists UK, which supports people who have left high-control religious groups. There she manages peer support services, social events, speaker events, connections with therapists, social media, and she manages and develops the apostasy awareness training courses. She has been a staff member for Humanists UK since 2022. 

 

She was raised as a Jehovah's Witness which she left at the age of 21, resulting in her becoming homeless for a short while. Terri went on to set up a support group for former Jehovah's Witnesses in 2007 called XJW Friends, and joined the leadership team of Faith to Faithless in 2015. She completed her degree in social psychology at the University of Kent and conducted research into the long-term effects of ostracism from a religious community. She continued this line of research at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in her master's degree and studied the relationship between religious fundamentalism and ostracism.

 

Event programme:

19:30 Introduction

19:40 Terri's Talk

20:30 Break Drinks

20:40 Q&A

 

The bar is usually only run by one person so please come early to get a drink.

 

This event is free, but we welcome any donations, which help with the running of the group.