Flourishing After Leaving Religion: Navigating Life’s Transitions with Daryl Van Tongeren

Psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren joins Interintellect founder Anna Gát to discuss finding meaning and purpose after leaving religion.

Join Daryl Van Tongeren, author of How to Flourish After Leaving Religion, to explore the emotional and social processes involved in religious change and get science-based guidance for building a new life without traditional religious frameworks. Drawing from cutting-edge psychological research, Van Tongeren’s work examines how people can find new meaning, process grief, and navigate challenging interpersonal relationships after leaving their faith. This SuperSalon offers a compassionate space for those experiencing religious change to understand and embrace their journey.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Psychological impacts of leaving religion.
• Finding new sources of meaning and purpose.
• Coping with grief and loss related to religious change.
• Managing relationships with those who do not understand or support the change.

About the author:

Daryl Van Tongeren, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology at Hope College. A social psychologist, he has published over 200 scholarly articles and chapters on meaning in life, religion, virtues, and well-being, and his work has been supported by numerous grants from the John Templeton Foundation. He was named a 2016 Rising Star from the Association for Psychological Science, won the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award for APA’s Division 36 (Psychology of Religion and Spirituality) in 2022, and won the Early Career Contributions Award from the International Society for the Science of Existential Psychology.