How to Use apostasy in a Sentence

apostasy

noun
  • In most of these, apostasy is the only way to get out of paying.
    The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Only a heretic could so do, and they can be burned for apostasy.
    Evan Waite, The New Yorker, 19 May 2020
  • The pull between faith and apostasy has interlaced his movie roles.
    Richard Brod, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2021
  • Most will probably leave the Catholic Church and end up in situations of apostasy and schism.
    Fr. Goran Jovicic, National Review, 13 June 2021
  • For somebody reared on 007, this was tantamount to apostasy.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 14 July 2023
  • One of Mr. Franklin’s apostasies from old-school central Texas barbecue technique is wrapping meat midway through smoking to keep it from drying out.
    Pete Wells, New York Times, 14 Mar. 2017
  • For most true believers, though, the latter option—choosing apostasy, which is a kind of self-exile,—is not really an option at all.
    Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2021
  • Roosevelt never held Smith’s apostasy against him, and FDR’s wartime leadership reconciled the two men.
    Edward Kosner, WSJ, 25 Sep. 2018
  • The cost for her political apostasy has become ever more clear in recent days.
    Stephen Collinson, CNN, 5 May 2021
  • In practice, though, Oman says, very few cases of apostasy over the years have included progressive dissent.
    The Salt Lake Tribune, 12 June 2021
  • After all, enormous numbers of people in the Muslim world believe in the death penalty for, among other things, blasphemy or apostasy.
    David French, National Review, 21 Aug. 2017
  • Even though Flake no longer has to worry about appeasing hard-right Arizonans in future primaries, his voting record in no way reflects his Trump apostasy.
    Benjamin Hart, Daily Intelligencer, 15 Jan. 2018
  • To reverse engineer that, allowing the movement to shape the policy -- and choose the priorities -- is an apostasy.
    Gregory Krieg, CNN, 14 Sep. 2017
  • Even more striking, support for the death penalty for apostasy does not depend on one’s formal education.
    Madiha Afzal, Washington Post, 7 Apr. 2018
  • One, Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet, curator and artist, was convicted on apostasy charges in 2015 and sentenced by a Saudi court to death by beheading.
    Kareem Fahim, Washington Post, 10 Jan. 2018
  • There's been numerous waves of apostasy breaking over environmentalism in the last decade or so.
    Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 6 Apr. 2012
  • Hamula had been serving as a member of The First Quorum of the Seventy, one of church’s highest order of priests, and his release is not because of apostasy, or abandonment of religious beliefs, the church says.
    CNN, 19 Aug. 2021
  • By contrast, Fox’s opinion side, with the exception of occasional apostasy, largely earns high marks.
    Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 24 Nov. 2020
  • In Franzen’s fiction, families are their own form of religion, with options for salvation and purification, and just as many for apostasy.
    New York Times, 27 Sep. 2021
  • The Karachi political activist, who brazenly tweets under the handle @Jew_Pakistani, is trying to change that even though under Pakistani law, apostasy is punishable by death.
    Larry Luxner, sun-sentinel.com, 5 Nov. 2019
  • A treacherous President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude.
    Frederick Douglass, The Atlantic, 16 Aug. 2017
  • But the former congressman’s unorthodox plan has drawn the ire of several party stalwarts who think McAdams’ apostasy is worthy of punishment.
    Bryan Schott, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 Apr. 2022
  • The central argument of Moore’s campaign is that removing the sovereignty of a Christian God from the functions of government is an act of apostasy, an affront to the biblical savior as well as the Constitution.
    Michael Scherer, Washington Post, 21 Sep. 2017
  • The reality is that most Egyptians have barbaric attitudes on a whole host of questions (e.g., ~80 percent of Egyptians favor the death penalty for apostasy from Islam).
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 29 Dec. 2011
  • As our research shows, charges of apostasy are a powerful tool for delineating group membership and assigning rights.
    Ian M. Hartshorn and Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Washington Post, 11 Apr. 2018
  • And as with any religion, this opens up a host of dramatic situations — of apostasy and betrayal, doubt and disillusion.
    Washington Post, 11 Mar. 2022
  • Such apostasy doesn't sit well with many greens, who largely retain an anti-nuclear and anti-GMO philosophy.
    Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 3 Jan. 2013
  • To that end, Ho and Oldham chide Willett for his apparent apostasy from the one true method of constitutional interpretation.
    Matt Ford, The New Republic, 22 Aug. 2019
  • A takfiri is a Muslim who accuses another of apostasy — rhetoric not uncommon among certain Saudi imams when training their ire on Iran's Shiites.
    Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 22 May 2017
  • Apostasy or no apostasy, Bret Stephens has made no progress today in convincing anyone otherwise.
    Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 5 Oct. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'apostasy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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