On Pastors, Faith And The Lack Thereof

One of the purposes of a seminary education is to bring the student to a crisis of faith, to a point at which all the structures of belief that were created in childhood - and childish - Sunday School classes, summer camps, teen retreats and Sunday sermons are utterly demolished.  A good seminary education is a continual onslaught upon every assumption, every article of faith, everything that the student brings to that point.

Because, you see, no one can trust a minister who has never experienced a crisis of faith.  One of the many problems facing the Christian Church is that there are so many who can become pastors or priests without ever once shaking his or her fist at heaven, yelling curses at God for the injustice of the world, for the way in which we are left alone to find our own way.

Which is why, on the one hand, this article is somewhat encouraging.  It seems that there are a number of atheist ministers at the helm of very conservative congregations.  They are products of conservative Christian churches and the closed educational systems that these churches have created.  They were taught that every word of the Bible is literally true or none of them are.

In fact, none of the rest of their beliefs matter compared to the ideas that the Bible is literally true and the 'inerrant word of God.'  Each of the rest of the five fundamentals - virgin birth, substitutionary* atonement, bodily resurrection of Christ - are dependent upon this idolized view of the Bible.  Therefore, if the world was not created in 6 literal, 24-hour periods, then Jesus never existed.  If Moses did not literally drift down the Nile river in a basket to be discovered by the Egyptian Pharaoh's daughter, then Jesus was never crucified, never resurrected, there is no God and all of Christianity - hell, all religion - is simply a delusion.

Yes, you atheists are nodding your heads, I know.

The reason these ministers have decided to abandon their belief in God is because they were taught to build their faith in exactly that way, and then they made the mistake of starting to think about it.  They got enough education to develop some critical-thinking skills, while at the same time they failed to create strong enough barriers to the experiences of their parishioners, and their belief systems completely fell apart.

Unfortunately for them, they were never presented with another way of believing.  They were never taught that Christianity is fundamentally an Eastern, not a Western, religion, and its conception of history and truth is very different than the one Westerners take for granted. 

So these men who went to college and probably seminary with the best of intentions find themselves trapped by their lack of marketable skills and the economy in a job that requires them to lie to everyone they know every single day from the moment they wake to the moment they manage to drift off to sleep.  They're lying to their wives and children, to people facing death and illness, people who are experiencing their own crises of faith.

It breaks my heart, because I know exactly how they feel.  I could go take a pastorate right now and, based on nothing more than my very solid education and training, manage to be a successful pastor.  I'm a good preacher, a good teacher.  I know how to run meetings and organize volunteers, how to work with musicians to create a good worship service.  I could do so in the most conservative of churches, even, because that's the world of my youth and I know the language so well.  I could counsel young couples looking to get married, couples facing divorce, all of it. 

But it would be almost all of it a lie.  Not quite all of it, because I still believe - in something, but I don't really know what for sure anymore.  I recently allowed myself to get goaded into leading my church's Adult Forum (Sunday School) class, and I'm still damn good at it.  But it has thrown me into a tailspin with my emotions because when I study for it I find myself back in my last office at my last church, with all the horrific feelings of despair that entails.  I'm still, to put it bluntly, completely fucked up when it comes to my faith.

But I have been able to find an expression of the Christian faith that is beautiful and inspiring.  I have found a group of people who care about the poor and spend rather significant portions of their money and time showing that.  I am able to raise my children in a faith environment that will not tell them to fear and oppose all science; rather, they are taught at home and even at church that knowledge is a wonderful thing.  They are never taught to hate and fear those who are different.  And we all are provided with a beautiful liturgy that serves as a physical touchstone in our scary world.

I managed to get out of the trap the ministers in the article are in.  It pains me that, most likely, they will either die in the trap or, when they do finally escape, they will find themselves utterly broken - no good job prospects, divorced from their wives and estranged from their children, set adrift from the faith they used to hold so closely that they wanted to serve as its guarantors in this world. 

Atheists don't bother me - at least not atheists like, to pick on a friend, Sir Charles.  I can assure you that he is as well-adjusted as can be hoped for a DC lawyer, is funny as all hell, is smart and kind.  The ones that bother me are those who, instead of abandoning a faith they find meaningless or never having any in the first place, find themselves abandoned by a faith they loved so much they devoted their lives to it.

It is said that every evil thing contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.  Christians would do well to consider what it means, then, that their Church is in the process of imploding upon itself.

 

 

 

*Here's a link that explains substitutionary atonement from a fundamentalist perspective.  You probably won't be surprised that, while I recognize it as a valid way of interpreting the ministry of Jesus, I do not consider it to be the only correct way, or, for that matter, even the most important view as present in the New Testament itself.

Comments

[minstrel hussain boy]

Martin Luther King:

God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

my kind of christian.

so are you dude.

[Molly]

The process described by the pastors in the article is exactly what happened to me-- I was raised in a fundamentalist household, and the more I read the Bible (and took Philosophy courses at the local community college), the more I realized that the book could not support the weight of everything we were placing on it. It simply wasn't possible for it to be literally true. So, I gradually went from a hard-line fundamentalist belief system, to a softer, more touchy-feely, "it's about the general message" Christianity, and eventually reached a point where I realized I didn't need any of it. I've been an atheist now for 12 years and some of my family members are terrified that I'm going to hell for it. It really is impossible to describe the extent to which such a loss of faith tears at the fabric of your life when your entire family is invested heavily in the religion.

I feel terrible for these clergymembers and I hope they're able to find their way through their crises with minimal loss of family and friends. Losing your faith is a terrifying experience when religion is so central to your life.

[kathy a.]

hi, i'm an atheist. i was raised in a mainstream protestant faith, moved away from the church when i saw its leaders behaving badly, became agnostic. and i moved right on to atheism after a professor challenged that agnosticism was just sitting on the fence, hedging one's bets. i really do not believe in the big guy in the sky.

i do believe strongly in some of the things i learned in church, along the lines of being good to one another, being responsible and caring. that's probably why i have a lot of friends who are faithful and some good friends who are even ministers. they tend to be in welcoming or affirming congregations, and one reason we are friends is that none of them has a personal mission from god to find out exactly what i believe and lead me to find their version of jesus.

by chance, another friend sent along a link to this column yesterday. it was a bad day for her, she'd lost a far-away relative, but she said she was thinking of joining up with the unitarians, if she could find a good enough name.

[kathy a.]

unbeliever though i am, i have no problem at all considering mother teresa a saint because of her works on earth. she brought sustenance and care to so many, worked tirelessly to support the very poor, the oppressed, the outcasts, and used the attention she gained to urge others to do the same for our fellow humans. and yet, she had a severe crisis of faith lasting for decades.

[Lisa Simeone]

Hmmm. I'm afraid I'm going to be the fly in the ointment here. Mother Teresa wasn't all she was cracked up to be. Her answer to AIDS patients, for example, was not to give them medicine, but to give them a cot, tell them to pray, and let them die. She was also a pal of Enver Hoxha, former dictator of Albania, and Baby Doc Duvalier of Haiti. And as I recall, her answer to the Union Carbide disaster in India, criminal negligence on a colossal scale, was to counsel its victims simply to "forgive." She received tons of money from contributors, some of them shady, and god only knows where it all went. Not to antiretrovirals, that's for sure.

[Molly]

http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/

This slate article was what took the bloom off the Mother Teresa rose for me.

[kathy a.]

i guess i walked right into that one. mea culpa.

my main point was that someone so well known for her faith actually had great doubts, for much of her career -- speaking to stephen's post.

on reflection, no, i absolutely do not agree with many of the things she advocated. and i wonder if perhaps she would have been more at peace, and done more good, if she had not been wrestling with the dogma of her church at the same time she was wrestling with how best to help those in need.

the reason i still think she was extraordinary is that she did -- in her flawed way -- speak up and try to work for the poor, sick, and outcasts. how many public figures do? she did much more than a photo op at a soup kitchen.

one man i knew met mother teresa when she visited death row. she went from cell to cell, talking to the men -- something their own lawyers were not allowed to do -- and blessed them all and said kind words. in a hopeless place, that kindness made them feel human. it was something that man remembered and treasured for the rest of his life.

so -- humans are fallible. humans all do things that we wish weren't so screwed up. but i admire humans who do things to help and encourage other humans.

[Stephen]

Mother Teresa was a rather simple-minded - and, importantly, single-minded - woman who became a mascot to various people looking to show how righteous they were.

By the time she became internationally famous, she was already a somewhat elderly woman who had lived a very sheltered life. Certainly she should have exercised better judgment, but it's also clear that she was manipulated by politicians and church officials - not just Roman Catholic - the world over.

I doubt she had much idea, for example, of what Baby Doc was really like. Nor did she have the resources to find out, considering when, where and the way she lived.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Stephen Suh,

An interesting expression of your point of view. I hesitate to offer much of a statement because I am not quite sure of what your actual point of view is, you seem to imply that you are some sort of christian. Please disabuse or inform me as you see fit. Perhaps I just lack historical context as I have only been reading this blog for a year or so.

My own point of view is quite simple, I was born an atheist and nothing that has happened in the past 61 years has changed my point of view. Yes, for the first few years of my life I was dragged into churches and read to from the bible by grandmothers. I never believed a word of it. I think it was because the timing was wrong. My indoctrination began one or two years after I had become disabused of the innocence of childhood. Perhaps I was lucky. Perhaps I was precocious.

I cannot say I have any empathy for these individuals cited in your reference who are in such a struggle with their delusions. It is a sad thing, but then, there are so many delusions available to clasp onto. Nor do I wonder much at their reluctance to be bold. To disavow. After all, isn't belief in the supernatural a kind of acquiesence? Surely it is, recognition of the greater power and all that, as if, and in fact, the common claim not to have jurisdiction over one's own course.

I make no excuses for my life or actions. And that in essence is the difference between those who claim they believe in some myth or story, and those who accept that nature and life are indifferent to fairness.

[Stephen]

I cannot say I have any empathy for these individuals cited in your reference who are in such a struggle with their delusions.

I sympathize with them because they feel trapped and because, IMO, they have been betrayed by their faith.

you seem to imply that you are some sort of christian.

Yes, that sounds about right.

[Sir Charles]

Stephen,

Thanks for the kind words. I'd like to think that I understand the impulse to religiousity and that in the best people it stems from a desire for justice, meaning, and consolation, none of which are to be taken lightly.

I was actually brought up Catholic and was somewhat religious as a little kid -- something about being in what was in many respects a very reactionary (albeit schizophrenic church) faith in a time of turmoil -- during the Vietnam War, which the priests at my church enthusiastically supported -- drove me from the Church. By the time I was in my teens, I was a pretty firm non-believer.

But I think like many people in my category, I was definitely influenced by the better parts of Catholicism, the social justice strand in particular. Such people are all over the labor movement -- no longer religious, but shaped nonetheless by religion, in a positive way I think.

I actually do feel bad for the people you describe -- living a lie, and a profound one at that -- cannot be easy.

[oddjob]

I actually do feel bad for the people you describe -- living a lie, and a profound one at that -- cannot be easy.

It isn't.

Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
- Gospel of Thomas, v. 70 (as translated in Elaine Pagels' "The Gnostic Gospels")

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Stephen,

Thank you for the response.

I don't know if it is appropriate or not to try to investigate this further but I have to admit I am intrgued by your statement - "betrayed by their faith".

I have no intention of speculating. But we have agreed at least preliminarily that I am an atheist and you are a christian (whatever that exactly means) and so I would ask you, what do you mean by the statement cited above?

I want to say this as well, I have the utmost respect for your expressions and points of view as many of your previous posts have greatly impressed me. So please, do not think that I am baiting you into some acrimonious shouting match. I would just like to hear what you have to say about betrayal by faith.

[Stephen]

American fundamentalist Christianity requires its adherents to reject just about all scientific knowledge gained in the last half millennium. When confronted with a homosexual who, after spending years begging God to change them, has finally accepted himself or herself, fundamentalist Christians are required to tell the person that spent more time in prayer than they ever would, "sorry, you just didn't have enough faith/try hard enough/love Jesus enough." It requires them to invent complicated, logically incoherent justifications for the contradictions found in the Bible. It reduces the Bible to a rather tedious and far-fetched list of historical events, emptying it of all possible meaning and truth.

Whatever their faults, I believe the pastors in the linked article felt they were called by God to preach the Gospel and care for their fellow human beings. But when they came in contact with the mess of the real world, they found that their faith could only answer with irrelevancies, platitudes and judgment.

I'm not sure this helps, but it might be enough to be going on with for now

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Well, it is insightful. You surely have a solid root into reality.

I think the progression from newly born infant to so-called adult, which ranges over anything from less than ten to more than 60 years is analogous to your pastors finally coming into contact with reality.

Frankly, I don't see how, as living beings with intelligence, any of us can develop and grow and live over years and years without realizing that the concept of good and evil, and the whole construct of heirarchical myths designed to explain that false dichotomy, is just a distraction. Alone, perhaps, such a distraction would not be particularly offensive or problematic. However, coupled with the subsequent, not necessarily sequitur complications that are expressed as immutable laws ordaining such atrocities as stoning, burning, amputation and so on, one can only wonder how anyone could rationalize such a philosophy.

Having said that I do not mean it as the last word, and I would invite you to state your views in counterpoint but I think it would be best to leave this topic.

That is to say that I am more interested in your ideas and opinions of trenchant matters you have expressed here many times, than supernatural debates. Thank you for stating your position with clarity. I think we can have much constructive discussion, I hope so at least.

Regards,

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

SC - I don't mean particularly to disagree with you but by the way you state it, you somewhat imply that religion has a claim to morality that you might not have discovered by reason alone. I know that is a bit of a stretch and if my speculation is wrong, then there is nothing more to discuss. However, I seem to have arrived at many of the same attitudes and ideas in a moral context that you have, for example the dignity and significance of labor. But I did so not by adhereing to any religious precepts but simply evaluating the obvious conditions I can see day to day.

Let me put it this way. I see religion very much in the same light as I see health insurance companies. Basically they sell something they don't have at a high price to people who don't realize they are being swindled.

I intended to be a bit provacative here, but I hope I have not gone overboard.

[Sir Charles]

KN,

I don't think religion is necessary in any way to have arrived at a moral view and a sense of right and wrong. More that it is a way to give voice to a sense of morality that at least some of us have felt from a very young age.

As another type of example, when I first heard the thesis to John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" I felt like it captured in an elegant, abstract way more or less how I felt about the world. (Alas, I found the book to be pretty tough sledding and never finished it.)

[Frank Wilhoit]

It is unproductive to discuss today's "Christianity" within a theological frame. There is no point in contrasting one kind of religion with another or with no religion at all. Christianity is no longer a religion. It is a racket with a religious facade. It has found the formula for transmuting sadism into votes and it's not looking back.