Leaving Fundamentalism behind can cause a crisis similar to divorce or death of a loved one.

In April of 1985, Wall Street lawyer Richard Yao and banker James (Jim) Luce placed a two-line classified ad in the Village Voice to announce the formation of a new group, Fundamentalists Anonymous (FA).

The pair hoped to get a few encouraging responses. Instead, they received 500 calls from around the country and within three weeks found themselves on the Phil Donahue Show.

Less than three years later, they have 46 chapters, 40,000 members and a national office in New York City, for which Yao has left his legal career to become executive director.

“There’s obviously an incredible need out there,” says Yao, whose only training in psychology was a few courses while attending Yale Divinity School.

The need, he says, comes from the “fundamentalist mindset:” a tendency to be authoritarian, intolerant and compulsive about control.

Yao claims that this mindset often causes intense fear and guilt, inability to talk about the fundamentalist experience, depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, aversion to authority and anger over the time lost while in the fold.

The cure, as Yao sees it, is support from other former fundamentalists.
FA also makes referrals to licensed psychologists for any member who
needs one, and psychologists likewise have referred many clients to FA.

Psychologist Mariene Winell of Fort Collins, Colorado, has treated about 40 former fundamentalists in her private practice, and she finds great support for Yao’s claims. “I was a zealous fundamentalist myself,” says Winell, who was reared by missionary parents in Taiwan and spent much of her youth proselytizing door-to-door.

“If you stay inside the fundamentalist system, you’re fine. But if you try to get away from it, it’s like having the ground pulied out from beneath your feet. You have to restructure your entire world.”

Other psychologists agree that while fundamentalism itself does not seem pathological, the experience of leaving it behind can cause a transition crisis similar to divorce or the death of a loved one.

“FA heiped me go back and look at my resentment,” says Gary W. Hartz, a psychologist with the Veterans Administration in Los Angeles.

“I felt bitter about the time I lost,” he says, “and ashamed about some of the things I did, like evangelizing students at Daytona Beach during spring break to give up two of the Five S’s-sex and suds—and stick to the sun, surf and sand.”

Another person who seems to have gone through many of the typical problems of erstwhile fundamentalists is former presidential candidate Gary Hart, who was reared in the Church of the Nazarene. “He did not get a chance to party or date or drink like a normal teenager,” Yao says. “In my opinion he’s trying to make up for lost time.”

Despite Yao’s claims and the popular reception FA has received, “There are not enough data to support the idea that fundamentalism in general is bad for people, based exclusively on the claims of former fundamentalists,” says Lee A. Kirkpatrick, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Denver. “Saying that personality characteristics associated with fundamentalism are ‘pathological’ is merely a value judgment.”

In fact, studies by psychiatrist Marc Galanter have found that while 36% of Unification Church dropouts had “serious emotional problems,” most new members showed a dramatic decrease in neurotic distress. Noting that all of Yao’s members are fundamentalist dropouts, Kirkpatrick says psychologists should find out if Yao’s claims are valid for current fundamentalists.

Yao admits, “I’m not an academic. All I know is it works.”

© 1988 Psychology Today. All rights reserved.

“Leaving the Fold” – Fundamentalists Anonymous in Psychology Today (1988) (republished Aug. 22, 2025)

Summary

In 1985, Wall Street lawyer Richard Yao and banker James (Jim) Luce founded Fundamentalists Anonymous (FA) after placing a classified ad, receiving 500 responses nationwide. The organization grew to 46 chapters and 40,000 members within three years. Yao claims fundamentalism creates authoritarian mindsets causing fear, guilt, and depression. Psychologists support that leaving fundamentalism can trigger transition crises similar to divorce or death, though debate exists about whether fundamentalism itself is inherently harmful to practitioners.

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