Clerics who lose their faith

[Diablo]

I used the word cleric as a collective for priests, vicars, imams, rabbis, whatever, those who preach and instruct religion.

There must be some number, maybe a substantial number, who have lost their faith, or part of it at least, and no longer believe what they're preaching. We don't have many of those posting here, I suppose, but I'd be interested to see what their stance is.

The moral position would be to quit and do something else, but after, say, a degree in theology and 20 years in a church you're not exactly going to walk into another job. OK, clerics aren't well paid - apart from US evangelists, I suppose - but still it's a safe job, so what do these people do? Carry on preaching what they now know as lies, or bite the bullet and quit?

Pragmatism versus morality.

Have you heard of The Clergy Project?

"The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former professional clergy/religious leaders who do not hold supernatural beliefs and are struggling with issues."

http://www.clergyproject.org/

I hadn't heard of that: thanks for the link. It seems to address the problems I was thinking about.

There is another issue of course, and that is how these individuals deal with the fact that they are misleading/have misled their congregation for many years. That would be a burden, I'm sure.