Pastors Who No Longer Believe

[qos]

My conservative friend included me in an email referencing this blog entry about this academic paper examining five Protestant pastors who now identify as non-believersMy comments to my friend

Comments

[gailmom]

I also left the church. But I'm happy to say it was not because I felt I could not belong if I questioned.

My father told me, when I was in elementary school and came home confused about how genesis and the science textbook could both be truth, (after he explained how there was no discrepancy there) that any religion, any institution, any person, much less any God, who could not stand up to questions, did not deserve my loyalty or respect. God, he said, was much too strong for my questions to topple him, and anyone who told me differently was clearly not as sure in their own faith as I wanted to be.

One of those moments I treasure, since not often did Dad really excel at parenting me. :P

I'm sad to hear of your grief regarding this issue, but I feel privileged to be given a further glimpse into you. Thank you.

[qos]

I actually left the church when I had an existential crisis that left me an atheist for a while. . . but part of what led up to that was my perception that the church did not allow the kinds of questions that troubled me.

The irony is that my father was a former pastor who left because of his questions, and yet I didn't realize that he was a reverent agnostic, not a Christian. I don't know if that would have kept me in the church, but it sure would have reduced my angst when I realized that I no longer believed in anything and was sure I would break my parents' heart as a result.

I don't think of it as a grief that I carry. As you know, I have a very rich spiritual life now -- one that includes all kinds of things that simply can not fit within any institutional Christianity I am aware of. In fact: I can't stay within the boundaries of any set tradition anymore. The best I can do is find a path that works for me and do my work within it as best I can.

[unicorndelamer]

I, too, wish that questions and doubts were more readily welcomed in various Christian congregation settings. It frustrates me when I hear, "It's not our place to question." After all, shortly before his crucifixion, even Jesus spent hours in prayer to God, questioning what was to come and searching for the answer of whether or not this was right! Not to mention the other stories in the Bible of God asking tough things of his believers and their prayers and struggles with what was being asked of them. I think the most important thing to note is that God did not strike any of these individuals down in anger because they dared to question his word. Instead, I imagine that he quietly, respectfully, listened to their questions.

[heron61]

Well said indeed. One of the many problems with religion in the US is how brittle many people's faith is. I sometimes wonder how many of the more obnoxious zealots actually have strong faith and how many either wish or pretend they do, but wish to seem like they do (perhaps also to themselves).

[qos]

I've come to believe that ambiguity terrifies a very large percentage of humanity -- especially around the basic assumptions of life. For those whose assumptions are based on their religious beliefs (and religious belief involves answering -- or at least addressing -- those fundamental issues), questioning religious beliefs means questioning their entire understanding of life and their place in the world, and they are unwilling and/or unable to grapple with those issues.

Or at least that's my hypothesis.

[poliphilo]

Story of my life.

There used to be- probably still is- an organisation called Sea of Faith, which provided support and encouragement to unbelieving clergy in Britain. I attended one of their conferences back in the late 80s.

[oakmouse]

The thing that struck me is that all five of the people interviewed (and a number of others I've known personally) felt that because they could not subscribe to all tenets of Christian doctrine, or because they could not subscribe to belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god, they therefore could not believe in any religion or deity at all.

There are so many more options than just those two! What happened to these people that they can only see Christianity or atheism, and not any of the other possibilities? What makes them different from those people who, when faced with a crisis of faith, have been able to see and accept other possibilities? It makes me very curious.

[wlotus]

What happened to these people that they can only see Christianity or atheism, and not any of the other possibilities?

One of the things I heard ad nauseam while in the evangelical Christian movement was, "God/The Bible/Christianity is not a buffet, where you can pick and choose what to accept or believe. It is either all or nothing." Those people probably internalized that message. I internalized it, too, and I challenge it every day that I choose (with more than a little bit of angst, some days) to find wisdom in various philosophies and religious traditions.

[oakmouse]

Thank you, I appreciate your response.

I've wondered if perhaps that's it. I got that message too, growing up Catholic, but I somehow didn't internalize it. It just never made sense to me that there was only one God, that all other deities were demons or something, and that Christianity had a corner on the truth. It didn't and doesn't compute. When I was a kid I used to wonder what piece of my brain was missing, because it made sense to so many other people. :-/ But when I encounter a situation like this one, I still ponder what it is that causes people, including some prominent theologians, to see Christianity or monotheism and atheism and nothing else in the religious world.

*goes away to think some more*

[qos]

because they could not subscribe to belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god, they therefore could not believe in any religion or deity at all.

Indeed! And it's not just pastors who are in this situation. A lot of my spiritual direction practice is aimed at ordinary people who were given a single religious paradigm growing up and taught to believe that it was that way or no way at all -- and they continued to accept that paradigm even after they rejected the religious beliefs.

I think that the different ways people react to loss of their beginning faith depends on why they left it behind. If they encountered a variety of spiritual options being presented by people they trusted and respected then they would -- I suspect -- be more open to pluralism. If they grew up with monotheistic/dualistic/binary thinking and simply "lost their faith" they don't have a different paradigm to embrace.

Or so my own thinking goes. . . .