I was born in 1941. When I was little, my single-parent mother took me to Sunday School at a fundamentalist Baptist church. She was not herself a fundamentalist nor even very knowledgeable about Christian doctrine, just thought that one should go to church and send kids to Sunday School. I was much affected by these earnest Baptists, but eventually at around 11 I quit going. My mom no longer attended church, and she didn't force me to go.
In university I guess I missed the old certainties and sense of mission. I started reading a number of apologists and theologians: C.S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Kierkegaard, and I became a relatively liberal Christian. When I was getting married at age 23, it seemed simplest to join my fiancee's church, which was a conservative branch of the Lutherans, although back then I didn't know much about the divisions among Lutherans.
My original goal was to be a university professor in English Lit, and I completed my M.A. (University of Toronto) after which I took off a few years to teach as a junior instructor, and then I did my Ph.D. course work (USC), but at that point I ran into a demographic wall. The baby boomers (5 years younger than me) had also emerged from grad school, and entry positions were few and far between. I ended up teaching English as a Second Language to French-speaking recruits in the Canadian Armed Forces. Nice kids, but after a few years the work was insanely boring.
As my handle indicates, I was a pastor briefly. I had been very involved in my local church, was an elder, was asked to preach when the pastor was away, and I decided to go to seminary at the age of 36. I had also become religiously more conservative over the years, felt that the Bible must be the ultimate authority on all religious matters.
Big mistake. I was pretty good at most pastoral duties: preaching, teaching, and counseling. However, neither I nor my wife were suited to the constrained lifestyle, up on a pedestal and every move scrutinized.
Moreover, I soon began to question what I had always believed. My denomination (Lutheran Church - Canada, in the USA Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) upheld the inerrancy of the Bible. You had to go with that if you were a pastor.
In some ways, I feel very stupid about what I had done in the past. I had no problem with biblical inerrancy when I entered seminary, and I had read the whole damn thing, probably twice over, but much of it did not register. As I express it now, I must have read the dreary bloody parts of the Old Testament with my mind on cruise control. It was no longer possible when I studied it carefully for my sermons, sometimes read the text in the original languages.
The Old Testament is a horrid book, written by barbarians for barbarians about barbarians. Lots of genocide and the treatment of women makes the Taliban look ultra-liberal. So my livelihood depended on believing what I could no longer except, and to make things worse the stresses were tearing my marriage apart.
After only two years as a minister I resigned. My marriage was to finally crumble 3 years later.
There was no work for an unemployed clergyman. Fortunately I was good with my hands (did lots of home reno) so I worked in construction for a couple of years and then switched over to factory work in the interests of avoiding a winter layoff. I was in my mid-40s when this happened and it carried me through to retirement.
Religiously, I thought of myself as a pantheist for many years because I liked to believe that there was a power behind the beauty and majesty of the universe. However, the more I studied evolution, the more apparent it became to me that we are here by haphazard chance.
For the last 4 years I have participated heavily in the Friendly Atheist Forums. I enjoyed the discussions there and made many friends. I also became one of the moderators.Sadly, however, that Forum seems to be dying off. It can go weeks without a single post, far different from what it was when I joined. I also am a member of the Central Ontario Humanist Association and attend the monthly meetings in Barrie, Ontario.
I live in the country near Barrie with my second wife and two dogs and two cats and a large number of horses as my wife is an expert equestrienne. She was the proprietor of a riding stable (lessons & board) until this year, when she sold the business to a younger woman who still operates it on our property. My wife and I help out a bit as the new owner has always been extremely helpful to us, really as close as a daughter.
In university I guess I missed the old certainties and sense of mission. I started reading a number of apologists and theologians: C.S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Kierkegaard, and I became a relatively liberal Christian. When I was getting married at age 23, it seemed simplest to join my fiancee's church, which was a conservative branch of the Lutherans, although back then I didn't know much about the divisions among Lutherans.
My original goal was to be a university professor in English Lit, and I completed my M.A. (University of Toronto) after which I took off a few years to teach as a junior instructor, and then I did my Ph.D. course work (USC), but at that point I ran into a demographic wall. The baby boomers (5 years younger than me) had also emerged from grad school, and entry positions were few and far between. I ended up teaching English as a Second Language to French-speaking recruits in the Canadian Armed Forces. Nice kids, but after a few years the work was insanely boring.
As my handle indicates, I was a pastor briefly. I had been very involved in my local church, was an elder, was asked to preach when the pastor was away, and I decided to go to seminary at the age of 36. I had also become religiously more conservative over the years, felt that the Bible must be the ultimate authority on all religious matters.
Big mistake. I was pretty good at most pastoral duties: preaching, teaching, and counseling. However, neither I nor my wife were suited to the constrained lifestyle, up on a pedestal and every move scrutinized.
Moreover, I soon began to question what I had always believed. My denomination (Lutheran Church - Canada, in the USA Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) upheld the inerrancy of the Bible. You had to go with that if you were a pastor.
In some ways, I feel very stupid about what I had done in the past. I had no problem with biblical inerrancy when I entered seminary, and I had read the whole damn thing, probably twice over, but much of it did not register. As I express it now, I must have read the dreary bloody parts of the Old Testament with my mind on cruise control. It was no longer possible when I studied it carefully for my sermons, sometimes read the text in the original languages.
The Old Testament is a horrid book, written by barbarians for barbarians about barbarians. Lots of genocide and the treatment of women makes the Taliban look ultra-liberal. So my livelihood depended on believing what I could no longer except, and to make things worse the stresses were tearing my marriage apart.
After only two years as a minister I resigned. My marriage was to finally crumble 3 years later.
There was no work for an unemployed clergyman. Fortunately I was good with my hands (did lots of home reno) so I worked in construction for a couple of years and then switched over to factory work in the interests of avoiding a winter layoff. I was in my mid-40s when this happened and it carried me through to retirement.
Religiously, I thought of myself as a pantheist for many years because I liked to believe that there was a power behind the beauty and majesty of the universe. However, the more I studied evolution, the more apparent it became to me that we are here by haphazard chance.
For the last 4 years I have participated heavily in the Friendly Atheist Forums. I enjoyed the discussions there and made many friends. I also became one of the moderators.Sadly, however, that Forum seems to be dying off. It can go weeks without a single post, far different from what it was when I joined. I also am a member of the Central Ontario Humanist Association and attend the monthly meetings in Barrie, Ontario.
I live in the country near Barrie with my second wife and two dogs and two cats and a large number of horses as my wife is an expert equestrienne. She was the proprietor of a riding stable (lessons & board) until this year, when she sold the business to a younger woman who still operates it on our property. My wife and I help out a bit as the new owner has always been extremely helpful to us, really as close as a daughter.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
