Pastors loosing their faith

[Tevko]

Hey guys, I've been doing a lot of thinking and I'm not sure what to decide about clergy members coming out as atheists. What is your opinion of someone who goes to seminary and ends up pastoring a church, declaring that they do not believe in god some number of years later?

[narnia4]

Well, almost anyone who's been at seminary can tell you that there are always plenty of people that don't belong there and are there for reasons other than a calling. Sure hindsight is 20/20, but if you look at some of the works of guys like Barker and Loftus it really doesn't look like they had a deep and mature understanding of Scripture. And frankly, a lot of the people who come out as having "lost their faith" seem, at least to me, to come from the more liberal denominations that maybe didn't hold to taking the Bible "literally"... Episcopalian, Unitarian, etc. The point is, just because someone graduated from a distinguished seminary or came from a certain background, that doesn't mean he actually believed what he was preaching or ever actually felt that he was called by God.

I think that can account for many cases, people not actually being as dedicated as they seem. As far as actually losing a real faith after being a dedicated pastor, well that's a more complicated issue that touches on another of other theological issues.

[PaulSacramento]

Well, almost anyone who's been at seminary can tell you that there are always plenty of people that don't belong there and are there for reasons other than a calling. Sure hindsight is 20/20, but if you look at some of the works of guys like Barker and Loftus it really doesn't look like they had a deep and mature understanding of Scripture. And frankly, a lot of the people who come out as having "lost their faith" seem, at least to me, to come from the more liberal denominations that maybe didn't hold to taking the Bible "literally"... Episcopalian, Unitarian, etc. The point is, just because someone graduated from a distinguished seminary or came from a certain background, that doesn't mean he actually believed what he was preaching or ever actually felt that he was called by God.

I think that can account for many cases, people not actually being as dedicated as they seem. As far as actually losing a real faith after being a dedicated pastor, well that's a more complicated issue that touches on another of other theological issues.

Perhaps, but look at Bart Ehrman, he lost his faith when he realized that the bible is NOT "inerrant" as he once believed.
Personally I think those that have a more "liberal" view are better equipped to handle some of the tough questions in regards to issues in the bible and questions about God and suffering and evil ( the big ones typically).

[Icthus]

I have to agree with Paul on this one. If you look at the three examples that have been mentioned so far (Ehrman, Loftus, and Barker), they all share a somewhat similar story. As Christians, all three were very conservative in their concept of scripture, and when they discovered problems in their rigid understanding of the Bible, their faith quickly shattered under the pressure. Unfortunately, Loftus and Barker (and to a much lesser extent, Ehrman as well) have retained much of their fundamentalist attitudes as atheists (or as an agnostic in Ehrman's case). It seems to me that a lot of people who lose their faith do so not because of evidence against the truth of Christianity but because of evidence that the concept of Christianity that they have formed is flawed. Of course, I can't speak for pastors since I'm not a seminary student, but this tends to be the way I've seen people lose their faith.

[PaulSacramento]

People like things "nice and tidy", no more so than in religion it seems, that is why there are so many "legalistic" religions.
When the real world comes crashing in, many can't take their very foundations being shaken.

[narnia4]

Well, almost anyone who's been at seminary can tell you that there are always plenty of people that don't belong there and are there for reasons other than a calling. Sure hindsight is 20/20, but if you look at some of the works of guys like Barker and Loftus it really doesn't look like they had a deep and mature understanding of Scripture. And frankly, a lot of the people who come out as having "lost their faith" seem, at least to me, to come from the more liberal denominations that maybe didn't hold to taking the Bible "literally"... Episcopalian, Unitarian, etc. The point is, just because someone graduated from a distinguished seminary or came from a certain background, that doesn't mean he actually believed what he was preaching or ever actually felt that he was called by God.

I think that can account for many cases, people not actually being as dedicated as they seem. As far as actually losing a real faith after being a dedicated pastor, well that's a more complicated issue that touches on another of other theological issues.

Perhaps, but look at Bart Ehrman, he lost his faith when he realized that the bible is NOT "inerrant" as he once believed.
Personally I think those that have a more "liberal" view are better equipped to handle some of the tough questions in regards to issues in the bible and questions about God and suffering and evil ( the big ones typically).

And for myself, imo we have to sometimes think about quality instead of quantity. Some people might be content if you can get a person to admit that there's some sort of life force out there and Jesus was a good teacher, but why again is that so much better than someone claiming not to believe in God at all?

The problem of evil and suffering, I don't doubt that someone who thinks that there are many paths to God and believes in universalism would have an easier time addressing that. But is that the truth? The question is whether you can get it right and get away from as many faulty presuppositions as possible. Its true that both more liberal and conservative branches are going to lose adherents for many different reasons, but some of the denominations I'm thinking of barely even count as churches anymore. Not that Episcopalian=bad, but there are different problems with some of these denominations.

But this gets into the issues I'm thinking about, were the reasons Ehrman gives for walking away from the faith the real reasons. How often is it an intellectual issue, an emotional issue, a spirit issue, or a combination. You have those who might claim that everyone is a theist. Then there's the issue of how many posers there actually are without the Spirit within them.

[Jac3510]

The temptation to lose your faith is no greater or lesser at any point in one's intellectual and spiritual journey. Certainly, going to seminary (even a conservative seminary) will open your eyes to problems you were not aware of before, and contrary to the claims of many well meaning Christians, many of those problems aren't easy to resolve. But at the same time you are learning about those problems, you are also learning evidence in favor of your position, it's general coherence, etc.

In the end, a loss of faith is a spiritual problem more than an intellectual one. I'm not at all saying that people (pastors or otherwise) who lose their faith were never saved to begin with. I think the Bible makes it clear that real Christians can and do lose their faith, and if you are going to argue that Ehrman was never really saved, well good luck convincing me that you are or I am. I mean, if someone as deeply conservative as Ehrman could lose his faith proving he was never saved, how much more could you or me?!? No, I'm saying that people lose their faith because whatever level of education, they end up getting things backwards. God becomes a subject of study rather than a Deity to be obeyed. God ends up being tested--prove to almighty Me that you are real, we say to Him. So the spiritual apostasy long precedes the intellectual apostasy. In the end, at bottom, it's just idolatry, in which Man comes to sit on the Throne to judge the Judge.

Again, this can happen to any of us, because all of us are tempted to judge God from time to time. I fyou would aviod apostasy, you must maintain a sense of humility before God, realizing that whatever you may know or think you know, it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. That isn't, of course, to suggest that God wants blind faith. It is, though, to suggest that once you are given sufficient reason to believe, you have a choice as to whether or not you will give assent. You will not be given an absolute answer on this side of grave.

[narnia4]

Hold on for a second though. I don't want to get into a big debate about whether a person can lose salvation or whether they were saved in the first place or in what circumstances Christian's lose faith. But how do we know Ehrman was "deeply conservative"? I certainly have a better understanding of myself and my positions and the positions I hold than I do of Ehrman before he was a "celebrity intellectual". Even from interaction online, even though that's sometimes shaky, I have much better reason to trust that Jac's or Paul's or jlay's or Rick's faith was/is genuine than we would with Ehrman. With Ehrman all we have is an agnostic defending his position and (maybe) heresay well after the fact.

That isn't to say that it wouldn't be possible to dig up cases where family knew a person to be (at least by all appearances) a devout, passionate Christian who went on to lose his faith. In fact I'm sure you could. But not all circumstances are equal, and I'd certainly object to the idea that I have as much reason to believe Ehrman was devout as I do someone I personally interacted with.

[Jac3510]

Hold on for a second though. I don't want to get into a big debate about whether a person can lose salvation or whether they were saved in the first place or in what circumstances Christian's lose faith. But how do we know Ehrman was "deeply conservative"? I certainly have a better understanding of myself and my positions and the positions I hold than I do of Ehrman before he was a "celebrity intellectual". Even from interaction online, even though that's sometimes shaky, I have much better reason to trust that Jac's or Paul's or jlay's or Rick's faith was/is genuine than we would with Ehrman. With Ehrman all we have is an agnostic defending his position and (maybe) heresay well after the fact.

That isn't to say that it wouldn't be possible to dig up cases where family knew a person to be (at least by all appearances) a devout, passionate Christian who went on to lose his faith. In fact I'm sure you could. But not all circumstances are equal, and I'd certainly object to the idea that I have as much reason to believe Ehrman was devout as I do someone I personally interacted with.

What reason do you have to doubt that he believed the Gospel?

[narnia4]

What reason do you have to doubt that he believed the Gospel?

Well there are quite a few factors in play here that makes things difficult.

Another question might be, why should I believe that he did believe the Gospel? I don't know people that know Ehrman, I've read a bit of his work and am aware of the general situation. So the only reason I have to trust that he believed the Gospel is his word, and that's problematic for a few reasons. First, he's not a neutral. He's not a raging atheist like Dawkins and is a legit scholar (and I appreciate that), but he's not neutral. He has his own agenda and goals and emotional issues. I can't know what they are, but that alone casts some doubt on his testimony.

Second, pretty much every ex-Christian I know of will try to legitimize his/her past experience and reasons for changing, making it clear they were "die-hard" and "devout" Christians. And I'll openly say that I also believe that some Christians are quick to embellish their own stories as far as how atheistic and anti-Christian they were. I myself have felt an urge to try to dramatize my conversion story since it would seem banal to almost anyone. But from my personal experience, I've seen that this often isn't the case. The people I know who have fallen away talk after the fact about how crazy they were about the church before it failed them, but usually they appeared to take things lightly when they were a part of the church, maybe became passionate for a very short time (often because of a specific issue that enthused them or a person who he/she became a follower of) before starting to grumble and stop coming for a while. Only, of course, to come back months or years later having dropped their faith after being so "devout" for so many years.

Third, Christianity can mean a thousand different things to different people and the country is filled with nominal Christians. According to Barna and a boatload of other surveys, you'll get a much higher percentage of people calling themselves Christian than you will people who actually believe what the more devout would consider the basics of Christianity. Unless I'm mistaken, the biggest group of Christians is non-practicing Catholics. People tend to call themselves Christians no matter what their beliefs may be. So someone saying he was a Christian, its unfortunately an almost meaningless label at this point. The label "atheist" has gotten more that way as well in more recent years, but its still something that most people will choose instead of having thrown on them just because of their cultural/social background.

I could go into more, but I'll stick with these three factors-

1. As an agnostic, Ehrman has his own agenda and motives in how he describes himself. Describing himself a Christian who changed his mind through honest research is a nice way to portray himself as a brutally and maybe heroically honest intellectual.

2. Hindsight isn't 20/20, people don't want to look like they were less than honest earlier in their life.

3. Someone calling himself a Christian means very little. I don't even know (meaning I don't recall) if Ehrman claimed to believe the Gospel, a person who likes to read the Bible could call himself a Christian. A person who believes the Bible is without any spelling/chronological/translation errors whatsoever could claim to be a Christian (chances are that he would), but that does only a little to show he actually believed the Gospel. Claiming to believe the Bible is inerrant would increase the probability that he believed the Gospel, nothing more.

4. I should add, we may have prior reasons for believing that a person cannot lose his faith. But because of the implications of that I really don't want to get into a debate on that point (and I should also qualify that I don't necessarily believe that a person cannot lose his faith).

What I would need to trust the veracity Ehrman's testimony is the testimony of trustworthy individuals who knew him when he claimed to be a Christian and/or some sort of writing/testimony from the time when he still claimed to be a Christian. And then of course you'd have to look into that in detail. Right now all we have is his word, and that's actually fairly insufficient.

[narnia4]

I should have mentioned this right away, but I didn't explicitly say that we should doubt that Ehrman believed the Gospel. What I actually said is-

But not all circumstances are equal, and I'd certainly object to the idea that I have as much reason to believe Ehrman was devout as I do someone I personally interacted with.

What I objected to is the implication that, were we to doubt that Ehrman believed, we could hold that same doubt for anyone, even ourselves. But this isn't the case because I have a lot more information about the beliefs of myself, my family, my friends, my church, and even the posters here then I do about the actions/attitude/belief of Ehrman. I only know him by his works and a few interviews/debates, so its really not the same situation. You could make the case that we should trust Ehrman's testimony, but I'm wondering why I should trust a stranger's testimony as much as I trust my own... that's certainly not how it usually works in the real world.

If a stranger comes up to me and says "Your shoelace is untied!" I don't take it for granted that my shoelace is untied, I check it myself. And if my eyes are telling me that my shoelace is actually tied, I'm going to trust my eyes instead of the testimony of a stranger that could have ulterior motives (like a prank). If a friend who I already have reason to trust tells me my shoelace is untied, I would be more likely to believe him, but I would still check it myself (and were I to see that my shoelace was tied, I would trust eyes over my friend's testimony).

[Jac3510]

So you think a guy who got his undergraduate degree from Wheaton enrolled and studied there the entire time is now making up the fact that he was a Christian because . . . well . . . because he now doesn't believe anymore?

Luke 8:13 - "And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away." (ESV)

Jesus says people can believe for a little while. I have no reason to doubt his statements on this matter. I find it harder to believe that someone who didn't really believe enrolled in a conservative Bible College in response to a call for ministry and then later decided he didn't believe, only to later make up stories about his former faith; than to believe that he fits the profile of people Jesus talked about in Luke 8:13. He did, for the record, claim to believe the Gospel. He discussed that in some detail in his book Misquoting Jesus, which I read rather thoroughly.

In any case, if you just want the word of someone, then I can vouch for a good friend of mine named Edmund. He believed the Gospel as strongly as you or I do. We were actually budding apologists of sorts a decade ago -- he and I would sign on to sites and debate atheists just for the fun of it. He lost his faith, unfortunately, and is now an agnostic. And he's one of several people I know and can attest to on that matter. So I have no problem with accepting the fact that people--whether they went to seminary or not--can lose their faith.

edit:

As for your post on people being devout, again, I'd suggest you read his story. A guy who feels called to ministry and spends years in formal ministerial training is probably not lying when he said he was no less devout than you or me. And, again, I personally know people who were very devout at one point and now have totally lost their faith. In short, being devout doesn't shield you from disbelief, and I bet if you were to ask some ex-Christians about it, they would take offense (rightly so) at the suggestion that the only reason they stopped believing is that they didn't really believe deeply enough. A word of caution, my friend: the moment you think you can't fall into a sin, you open yourself up to it, up to and including apostasy.

[narnia4]

So you think a guy who got his undergraduate degree from Wheaton enrolled and studied there the entire time is now making up the fact that he was a Christian because . . . well . . . because he now doesn't believe anymore?

Going to Wheaton, that's well and good. But that doesn't address what I said. Are you contending that everyone who goes to seminary is a Christian or that everyone who claims to be a Christian is one? All I know is that a person (Ehrman) claimed to be a Christian and now claims to be an agnostic. Maybe rereading some of his interviews would change my perspective, in fact I wouldn't doubt that it would (in one way or another, any time you take in new information your perspective should change). But as I've written, someone claiming to be a Christian doesn't necessarily mean a lot, even for those who go to seminary... and I'm enough of a skeptic that I'm not going to trust a claim just because its made and I've given reasons why we could doubt Ehrman's claims.

Now if I'm interacting with a former Christian, I'm not going to say "You're a liar, you never believed!" but I was approaching this from an epistemological perspective, warrant and probability. Do I need to quote myself again?


That isn't to say that it wouldn't be possible to dig up cases where family knew a person to be (at least by all appearances) a devout, passionate Christian who went on to lose his faith. In fact I'm sure you could. But not all circumstances are equal, and I'd certainly object to the idea that I have as much reason to believe Ehrman was devout as I do someone I personally interacted with.


The whole "devout" thing is a rabbit trail that doesn't really touch on the point I was making. The point I was making is that I can trust what I or those I know believe with greater certainty than what a total stranger or someone I know only from his book believes. There are dozens of possible reasons why a person could go to a seminary without believing in Christ or even believing in a god period. If you think otherwise than you haven't been reading the news the last few years (the topic this thread was actually about). Dennett did some collaborations on it, admitted atheists pastoring churches for years for different reasons (not wanting to disappoint family and friends even though they lacked belief, not wanting to part with a paycheck, etc.). That may be the rarer case, more commonly someone could know all the words and motions but still put their faith in something other than Christ. Faith in Biblical Inerrancy is one example. This might strike you as highly improbable (I don't, maybe its more probable that Ehrman is reporting his situation 100% accurately but I don't think its highly improbable that those who claim to be saved may never have been saved) and that we should just take him at his word, but that would yet again miss the ultimate point I was actually making.

In short, being devout doesn't shield you from disbelief, and I bet if you were to ask some ex-Christians about it, they would take offense (rightly so) at the suggestion that the only reason they stopped believing is that they didn't really believe deeply enough.

A word of caution, my friend: the moment you think you can't fall into a sin, you open yourself up to it, up to and including apostasy.

Soon I might be the one taking offense. I never said "the only reason they stopped believing is that they really didn't believe deeply enough", in fact I never even meant to imply it. I never said I was more or less devout than anybody and I don't appreciate the implication or the uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote. All I did was take one specific case and laid out what I know. The kicker is that the point I settled on wasn't even that Ehrman didn't believe, only that I can be more certain of the beliefs of those I know personally. Especially if I knew the person when they actually held that belief.

[B. W.]

Hey guys, I've been doing a lot of thinking and I'm not sure what to decide about clergy members coming out as atheists. What is your opinion of someone who goes to seminary and ends up pastoring a church, declaring that they do not believe in god some number of years later?

Sometimes it involves making an idol out of the human mind that does it...

Emotionalism another, suffering a great loss can do it, a crisis in faith wrought on by bad theology, even a lack of awareness of the human condition that rationalizes away sin, or perceived unfairness logic derived about God, tainted scholarship, lack of honest relationships within a church or college where one feels safe to discuss real life issues, struggles, and troubles - the list goes on

Then there is a lack of deep apologetics taught that is involved as well can cause this to happen. There are no pat answers why this happens.
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[Ivellious]

If I could just inject my two cents...I think it would be difficult to summarize the reasons for people losing their faith. If we were able to look at every case of a pastor or priest leaving their faith, I'm sure we could find numerous reasons and stories behind those decisions, so many that I don't even know if there would be any trends or common reasons. Big decisions like this are rarely simple situations. Kind of like how most of you can probably find differences in how you became Christians.

I think you need to treat every case as an individual case, instead of as one in a series of the same event.