When Clergy Lose Their Faith: What Now

For myself, as an "out" non-theist Episcopalian, I have not wanted to leave the church. The religious life remains very important to me. Could we not help these clergy to think more broadly? If my theist priests can effectively minister to me as a non-theist, could it not also go the other way? I cannot but imagine that there are other lay and clergy like myself who are "religious but not spiritual. Unless we can have something close to that attitude, I do not think that "help" would be any more successful than programs to "help" people change sexual orientation.

But RIP I think he passed away last year. Email Facebook Twitter Google. Jeffrey, You define the very difference between non -theism, and the ex-Methodist pastor's anti -theism. You not only remain in TEC, but you would like to see it grow with or without theism. God bless TEC, and all who like God ;- choose to pitch their tents within it!

May 13, 8: May 11, 8: Apps Fba6d1b8c33f May 9, 7: So that's happening with her, as well. The younger ones, I just try to coach them through by not be too overbearing with my opinion one way or the other. Yeah, and I just admire your courage so much. I was not a member of the clergy, and I can only imagine the pressure and the backlash, and it's been hard for me just as a regular person with my friends and family. I can imagine being in a high-profile position and having to make that open choice.

I just wanted to say one thing about Tom. Tom is pretty typical, actually. The number of people - the fastest growing religion in America is none, no religion: Now, that's doubled between like and Now something like 15 percent of Americans categorize themselves as none. And so what I think - he's very common, he's very common, and it's a phenomenon that's only growing because young people also are increasingly unaffiliated with religion. So we're just going to see this grow and grow. Hey, I just wanted to comment on my personal story.

I happened to be a - I was a youth minister for several years, and I was a very devout Southern Baptist. And what happened to me was actually rather ironic, because my devotion to the religion was actually what led to my disbelief in the religion. So our focus on doing Evangelical work, what it did was it forced me to look to other people's religions and the flaws in their religion so that I could, you know, attack their religion, show them what was wrong with their religion, convince them that Christianity was the right way.

Well, that led me to look at my own religion and say, well, how are other people going to question my religion?

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When I started looking into objections, problems of Christianity, that's when I started to see the flaws and the holes in it. And eventually, you know, I would talk to pastors and preachers, and a lot of times the answer is, well, you just have to have faith.

And eventually those answers didn't hold up for me anymore. If there was any moment, it was more just accepting it. I think I was kind of on a path. It sounds like your speaker there, kind of had the same thing where there's a path, where there's a moment where you just have to accept it and say OK, I don't believe anymore.

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I considered myself kind of a Christian agnostic for a while. So I would still go through the rituals and the practices, but deep down, I knew that my beliefs were quickly fading away. I do miss it sometimes.

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I feel like - I do miss parts of it. I do miss, like, you know, the worship, the longing for, you know, this deeper connection with something. But if I had to give it - if I had to go back to it, if I had to give up where I am now, I wouldn't do it. I feel like I'm in a place now of truth, and actually I think I'm happier and have more peace now that I am where I am now. I miss the music. I shared that with Barbara in our interview. And the caller said the same thing.

Jeff said the same thing, that there's just such a sense of fulfillment and an emotional response and the emotional release that is involved in a worship service, and I miss that. I miss the people that were in my church and in churches that I've pastored.

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Those relationships, for the most part, are gone, and that's a huge thing to know that you've lost. Jerry DeWitt shares the experience of losing faith. He started in the ministry when he was just Ultimately, he held the position of senior pastor at two Louisiana churches. Now he's known as the first graduate of The Clergy Project, which we mentioned earlier, the organization that assists ministers who have lost their faith.

Good to have you with us today. Yeah, there actually was. It came for me - I began to realize that there was no way that I could live a satisfying life without ministering to someone. I had been in the ministry for 25 years, growing up in the Pentecostal Church, and as I tried to take on just a secular lifestyle, I realized that being a minister is who I am.

And so I had made connections through the Clergy Project and had a connection with an organization called Recovering from Religion.

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And I said that's the people I'm going to minister to now, fellow clergy who don't believe, people who are trying to move out of their religious experience. I'm going to minister to them, and that's going to require a public commitment. And I'd just be interested in hearing them talk about that because, well, I think for Jerry, it's more visceral, and for Teresa, maybe not so much. Could you talk about that? For me, you have to understand the background that I'm coming from is a Pentecostal background, a charismatic background.

So everything about us was emotional, it was tangible, and it was all wrapped up in knowing and feeling the presence of God. And so that's just basically the quest that I was initiated into from birth. So it wasn't just intellectual. Obviously, studying the Bible, studying science, being more exposed to reason, that moved me away from the traditions that I had been raised in, but it did not separate from me my natural tendency to want to, you know, have an emotional experience.

So there are definitely parts of me that miss that spiritual journey.

Clergy who lose their faith

I will say I am learning how to replace them. You know, when Barbara interviewed me, she asked me - one of the last questions she asked was: What do you miss most about church and about ministry? And my response was the one I gave just a moment ago. Was the music, the people. And she found it very interesting and even commented: You didn't mention God.

And it's a - it almost feels like I'm ashamed to say it, and I think that's probably just because, you know, it's been six weeks since all this has happened, and I'm still in this process. I'm still in this journey. But it wasn't my first thought. It was the thought of people. And I understand Jerry's position. I've preached in Pentecostal churches before, and, yeah, it's definitely a horse of a different color, but There was a caller who couldn't stay with us, but did want to ask the question earlier: What was your relationship with God like before you lost your faith?

Oh, I feel like I had a very strong relationship. Many comments have been made that I really never knew God, and that's the only reason I could have lost my faith. But as Barbara shared, at six years old, I felt like I was called to be in the ministry in some way. I was - I carried around this little red Gideon's New Testament in elementary school and tried - read it at every moment I could get, tried to convert children, even at that young age.

If there wasn't somebody who had a love for God and a relationship with God, then I don't know who had one. You know, I was really - God was my life. Oh, I was just going to say, Neal, that the same people who taught me that the sky was blue and taught me that the stove top was hot are - that's the same environment that I learned that these emotional experiences were the presence of God.

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And so I felt, from an early age, that I had a relationship with God, though I did not get saved until I was 17, and that was at Jimmy Swaggart's church. I heard an audible voice. I spoke in other tongues. I did all of the things that people do claiming that they have a relationship. So I truly believed that I had a relationship. And I felt like it was very solid, probably one of the reasons that there seems to be a missing element that I'm now filling the gaps in. And Susan's on the line with us from San Francisco. Well, I was - hi. Yes, I'm a daughter of a minister, and I've been struggling with my religion for my entire life.

And it wasn't until I went to South Africa two years ago, and I all of a sudden realized that I do not believe in God. And I thought it would be hard to accept that. I thought I would be - it would be difficult to deal with that. And I went to church recently with some friends of mine and felt a tremendous relief. I could sing the songs.

I could read from scripture, and yet not through the guilt or the pain that I've been feeling my entire life, and discovering, ironically, that I think I can be the best minister's daughter by not believing in God. My dear father has passed away. I would probably not have shared this with him. My mother was very adventurous and more liberal-minded, but I don't think I would have told my father that I didn't believe in God. And it's funny, when I tell friends, I always say, oh, yes, you do. You just don't know it. Yes, I'm being more honest. And I think it's important to be good without feeling like you have to be good because of some religion.

It's just people should be good. Teresa MacBain, you told us in the piece that Barbara reported that, in fact, your family - your husband's still a believer, but very supportive. What about the rest of your family? I feel like I'm very lucky in regard to my family. My husband is a believer, and he is very supportive. We disagree on many things, obviously, but we've been married 25 years and his statement - which means so much to me - is that our relationship wasn't based upon the fact that we think the same.

There are many other things that we don't think the same on besides our faith. My father, my sisters, my brother, they have been supportive. My father still - he's a retired minister, but his faith is just the same as it was when I was a kid. Some other family in the extended circles - a little bit different response, but overall, I think it's fairly positive. And those who are kind of got me at arm's length, I'm just going to give them some time to try to get used to it.

I'm somewhat fortunate in the same way. My wife, we affectionately refer to her as an apatheist. She's pretty apathetic about the subject, and was even when I was in the ministry. Now, she definitely regrets that I have, as it where, another public ministry. And my son, he's my hero. He'll be 20 in a couple months, and we pretty much raised him secular at home. We were afraid of the influence of religion inside our home, or at least the pressure of being a pastor's son.

And so we raised him secular in home, and he came out as a nonbeliever well before I did. So he's the hero of the family. Everyone else is religious to one degree or the other. There has been a huge loss of my connections to my extended family. And I live in a small town so, you know, I know when they're not honking back going down the highway. Here's an email we have from Annette: Your story on moving out of religion resonates with me. I was born and raised a Mormon in Utah. Leaving meant reassessing everything, not just theology.

Do I believe this really, or just because I've always believed it? Fighting my own voice, though, has given me peace of mind.

All of our members came to us after they had already decided they are no longer believers. Our members come from a variety of backgrounds, denominations and religions. These secular leaders, together with the first 52 members, founded the project. When we launched our public site, clergyproject. I attended a Roman Catholic seminary with the goal of becoming a chaplain and obtaining a PhD in Theology.

It was during my studies that I began to question my belief in god. By the time I graduated I had let go of god and all the theistic concepts that go along with it. Were there specific influences that played a part in your transition from believer to non-believer? First, Biblical Scholarship and the cumulating knowledge of the origins of the Torah and the Christian Bible demanded that I conclude that religious texts are nothing more than human works of fiction. Second, my study of liberation theology and philosophy expanded my concept of god to include feminist, pluralistic and humanist perspectives.

Third, the simple fact that after careful discernment I realized that the church, its actions and its teachings did not reflect my values of equality, human rights, and social responsibility. Is your personal journey one that holds similarities to those of the other members of your site? In some ways, yes. My experience speaking with other members of the Clergy Project TCP is that they too asked questions and were dissatisfied with the responses they received. It might not be all that surprising that in most instances, when members of TCP began to scrutinize their religious traditions, they also began adopting more liberal social mores.

Each step in the process became a rung in the ladder to rejecting theism and supernaturalism. Well, it is in my experience, an egalitarian community. I think this is due, at least in part, to the disillusionment that our members felt with their respective religions and their patriarchal roots. I and other members of the Clergy Project recognize that sexual politics is deeply intertwined with religious traditions.

The pervasive dominance by which religion dictates the functioning of human sexuality is at best creepy and at worst abusive. Looking back on it now I can see this experience played a crucial role in my eventual abandonment of religion and in my commitment to humanist values. When I was a teenager, there was a major sex abuse scandal in my diocese, unfortunately the bishop at the time thought he should come out swinging in defence of his priests.

Shortly after this public relations fiasco, the bishop thought it would be a good idea to make some inroads with the youth in the diocese and he stopped by for a visit at the youth camp I was attending. When he got up to address our group, one of girls interrupted him to ask him why he would say such horrible things about the victims of these predatory priests.

Well, our group of about 60 teenage girls were horrified at the hate he was spewing so we walked out on him. Needless to say, the bishop was more than a bit flustered and he left shortly afterwards. He was recently defrocked and is now notorious for his conviction of possessing and importing images of child pornography.

The simple fact is, that the continued hypocrisy and unrelenting demand for submission based on the presupposed apostolic tradition only furthered my distance from the church. Despite knowing it was what I wanted, leaving the church for the unknown isolation of non-belief did not come without its challenges. Not only was I giving up my community and dealing with painful conflicts within my family, but also I had to somehow take my seminary and theological training and make it work in the real world!

I have heard other members of the clergy project compare losing their faith with a divorce. In many ways I would say it is indeed similar; however divorce has become a commonplace event and the shame and shunning that one once had to endure has all but evaporated.