RE: Clerics who lose their faith
August 6, 2014 at 12:08 pm
(August 3, 2014 at 2:45 pm)Diablo Wrote: 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.
I've taken a few days to try to write a thoughtful response.
I was not in the ministry a long time. I started seminary at age 36, and only lasted two years after graduation. A combination of things brought me down: so many people coming to me with stories of pain and suffering; I was finding it hard to believe in the inerrancy of the bible which is a prime doctrine of my former denomination—I was especially put off by the divine commands to commit genocide in the Old Testament, which I had never really stopped to ponder before; my own marriage was slowly disintegrating because my wife was unhappy as a pastor's wife although she had originally encouraged me to go into the ministry.
I think for most people the loss of faith is not instantaneous. I was totally depressed at the time I resigned my full time parish ministry, and I had a sense that I might never regain my whole-hearted belief, but you tell yourself that maybe you are just going through a rough patch in your life, and it will come back. It never did. I picked up a small amount of money providing Sunday services for two churches which had lost their pastor. However, often as I put on my robes in the vestry, I would pray, "God, if you exist, help me to bring a good message to these people."
I toyed with the idea of transferring to a more liberal denomination, but ultimately I knew it wouldn't work. I couldn't think of anything more horrble than earning my living by getting up every day and feigning enthusiasm about something I totally disbelieved in. When I finally acknowledged to myself that I no longer believed any of it, and I stopped attending church, I felt a great sense of relief about two things. I would no longer have to do intellectual headstands to deny the obvious truth of evolution, and I would no longer have to pretend that the bible was anything more than a collection of naive and primitive literature.
The OP mentioned the difficulty of finding another job, and I certainly experienced it. A major recession was going on and there was no job market for people with advanced degrees in English lit and theology. After two years of searching in vain for a professional job, I gave up on that. I walked onto a construction site and said to the foreman in my best proletarian tones, "I never done construction for a living, but I done a lot of home renovation for myself." He hired me and was very satisfied with my work. After a bit I left construction for a factory because I didn't like all the seasonal layoffs. I had about 20 years to retirement, and I worked variously as a janitor, driver, forklift operator, assembly worker and gasfitter. Not what I had dreamed of as a young man, but it was better than preaching what I did not believe.
I have to admit that I never met another apostate cleric in person, but I joined the Clergy Project several months ago. There is a members only forum. We have approximately 600 members, and lately it seems like we get a new member almost every day. Roughly one-quarter of the members are "actives" and the other 75% are "alumni" like me, i.e., have made their escape. We have at least one Muslim imam and two Orthodox Jewish rabbis and a Mormon missionary and several ex-Catholics, a few people from liberal denominations, but I would say the vast majority have come from fundamentalist "Bible-believing" churches. There is one extraordinary case of a woman pastor whose congregation has accepted her as being openly atheist.
Some people who have always been atheists seem to think that clerics are just in it for the money. True enough for the televangelists and pastors of mega-churches; they're pretty much all con men. However, the ministers at small local churches are mostly sincere, idealistic people who work long hours for very low pay, considering that most of them had to get 7 or 8 years of post-secondary education.
Most of the "actives" want to get out, and there is a section of the website dedicated to exit strategies. Remember, most of these people have families, and they can't just make a grand gesture of quitting without knowing where their next pay cheque is coming from. There are a few sad cases. One guy experienced his deconversion late in life. He's only got 4 or 5 years until he reaches retirement age and collects a pension. He doesn't have much choice but to soldier on even if he does feel like a hyprocrite.
Besides finding a new job there can be other problems. A big one is often marital disruption. In many cases the spouse has not deconverted and is horrified to find herself married to an apostate. Leaving the ministry often results in divorce.
As Oldm8 observed, "You don't have to believe in Walmart to work at Walmart." Your job may not be fulfilling, but you can get through the hours and go home to something better. The ministry is just about the only job where you do have to believe in it to work at it. That is what makes loss of faith so traumatic for most clergy.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
