There is strong evidence that most people who become religious believers or apostates are behaving quite consistently with what socialization theory would predict. That is, most apostates come from homes where religion was only weakly emphasized and parental modeling of religion was not strong. And most religious believers come from homes where religion was relatively strongly emphasized and modeling was readily available. There are exceptions to the rule, although they are rare. For example, Bibby reported that just 2% of Canadian weekly church attenders in 1991 were going to church "seldom or never" as youngsters.²⁷⁵ And Brinkerhoff and Mackie could find just 10 of 631 Canadian and U.S. college students (1.6%) who identified with a religious denomination after reporting that they grew up with no religion.²⁷⁶

This is consistent with research by Hunsberger and Altemeyer, who investigated "amazing believers" and "amazing apostates" -- people who seem to contradict socialization predictions.²⁷⁷ The researchers established strict criteria in an attempt to capture the exceptions to the socialization rule. "Amazing believers" scored in the top quarter of Fullerton and Hunsberger's 24-item Christian Orthodoxy scale,²⁷⁸ but in the lower quarter of a 16-item Religious Emphasis scale, which tapped the extent to which religion had been emphasized in the childhood home; these findings suggested that they had come from relatively nonreligious backgrounds but now held orthodox Christian beliefs. "Amazing apostates" scored in the bottom quarter of the orthodoxy scale and the top quarter of the emphasis scale, implying that they had come from highly religious backgrounds but no longer believed the basic tenets of their home religion.

Hunsberger and Altemeyer then interviewed all of the "amazing apostates" and "amazing believers" they could find at their respective universities, after screening several thousand students across two separate academic years. Since there were only a few amazing believers, they concentrated on the results of the interviews with 42 amazing apostates. The interviews confirmed that these 42 people had generally rejected family religious teachings, in spite of strong socialization pressures to accept religious beliefs. They were unique people whose "search for truth" had led them to question many things, especially religious teachings, often from an early age. Many of these people reported initial guilt and fear about dropping their religious beliefs, consistent with the findings of Etexbarria,²⁷⁹ but in retrospect they believed that the benefits of leaving their religion far outweighed any costs involved. Also, they held very tolerant, nonauthoritarian attitudes toward others, in contrast to the more authoritarian views apparent among their highly religious counterparts.²⁸⁰

Why did these people reject religious teachings when the majority of their peers were accepting their religious backgrounds? The interviewees' own explanations typically revolved around their need to ask questions and get responses, and their unwillingness to accept "pat answers" that they felt did not really answer their questions. Most of these people had gone through some conflict over their beliefs, and had spent considerable time and effort weighing different arguments for and against religious beliefs. In the end, they decided that the religious arguments and evidence simply did not make sense to them, and they very deliberately chose a nonreligious path in their lives. Clearly, these apostates were "amazing" on that they seemed to reverse socialization influences through an intellectual search for truth in their own lives.

But as rare as these amazing apostates are, they are still more than twice as common as "amazing believers." And the few amazing believers studied by Hunsberger and Altemeyer rarely took the same considered route to their newfound religiousness. Rather, they were more likely to have had some religious training early in their lives (in spite of a general lack of religiousness in the home), or to have "found religion" in an attempt to deal with crises in their lives. For example, some were attempting to escape from a dependence on drugs, alcohol, or sex; others were grappling with illness or tragedy (e.g., one woman had had four close relatives and friends die tragically in approximately a 12-month period).

This investigation of amazing apostates and believers must be regarded as preliminary in the light of the small sample, but the initial findings are fairly clear and intriguing. A small percentage of the population does seem to "go against the flow" and reject religion in spite of strong childhood religious emphasis and training, and (fewer) others become strongly religious in spite of having nonreligious backgrounds. These exceptional cases do not necessarily fly in the face of socialization theory. Hunsberger and Altemeyer speculate that their amazing apostates may simply be acting on an important religious teaching from early in their lives: "Believe the truth." However, they have pursued the truth in a critical, questioning way that has led them away from their home religious teachings. Further research is needed to assess this interpretation. In the end, as rare as these amazing apostates are, such "exceptions to the rule" can potentially help our general understanding of the religious socialization process; thus, they deserve our attention.