Clergy Come Out as Atheists

Clergy Come Out as Atheists | Religion Dispatches

Atheist Clergy:  the clergy project gets a bit more press:

I really do sympathize with Teresa MacBain. The Tallahassee, Florida United Methodist Church pastor has just recently come out. No, she’s not a lesbian. This is how she explained it to NPR recently:

“I’m currently an active pastor and I’m also an atheist,” she says. “I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday—when Sunday’s right around the corner—I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that’s totally false.”

MacBain recently attended the American Atheist’s convention in Maryland, where she came out as an Atheist pastor and has found a home in a new coalition helping such disbelieving clergy called “The Clergy Project: “a safe haven for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs.”

To be fair, this thinking infects the more liberal seminaries as well. Once, in a classroom full of future clergypersons, I found myself excited by the new and eye-opening things we had been learning about Christian history and theology.

• “So,” I asked my classmates. “When you get into the pulpit, will you be teaching your congregation all the great things we’ve learned here?”
  There was a collective gasp. The stared at me and crinkled their noses like I had just let out a huge, smelly fart.
  “No!” one gasped as she held a hand to her chest, clutching her cross-shaped necklace.
  “Why not?” I asked, before it dawned on me that these clergy—future United Methodist clergy like MacBain—had jobs to protect, careers to build—and teaching your flock to ask questions was certainly not part of the job.
  I seriously thought my classmates would jump me in the parking lot after that exchange, which brings up another problem caused by Christians: they tend to shun you when you start questioning. They tend to want to have nothing to do with you when you reach conclusions about your faith that clash with orthodoxy.
  
  That happened to MacBain.
  

  People shunned her. Job interviews were canceled. The Humanists of Florida Association offered to pay her salary for a year, but there’s no guarantee. Only two of MacBain’s friends called her and took her to lunch. Meanwhile, her family was a refuge, even if they didn’t all agree with her new views.