Feelings of Guilt among Non-believing Clergy Part One

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rationaldoubt/2017/05/feelings-guilt-among-non-believing-clergy-part-one/?ref_widget=gr_trending&ref_blog=grails&ref_post=nonreligious



Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series on non-believing clergy guilt, inspired by a question put to blog contributor Bruce Gerenscer who had listed the many Christian organizations he had formed during his years as a fundamentalist minister.

Feelings of Guilt among Non-believing Clergy – Part One
May 29, 2017 by Linda LaScola

Today’s blogger, Clergy Project Board Member Mason Lane, worked with me to put a list of questions together and then graciously answered the ones that applied to his experience!

By Mason Lane

What are some of the things you regret, if any, about staying a member of the clergy after you no longer believed?
N/A –I’d left the city where I preached and moved to Phoenix where I had my freethought epiphany, so I never had the experience of trying to preach while not being a believer, which I’m sure I never could have done. If I was a liberal I could have tolerated it for a short while, but not as a fundie Evangelical Pentecostal.

What are some of the things you learned once you left the clergy?
How it felt to be on the outside of the cult/community (very good!) and how all the things I’d been taught, and taught to others about atheist, were absurd propaganda. How silly, childish, and creepy believers are when they talk about their irrational beliefs.

What advantages to yourself or to society do you see in staying in (or getting out of) the clergy?
Having a real life to think for myself, explore, learn, live and have Sundays, Wednesday, special revival times etc. etc. free.

[gtar100]

1. What was that crack about liberals? Was that a joke?

If not, he doesn't know shit about the meaning of liberal, which is typical of one with a conservative, fundamentalist upbringing.

[Mariana]

4. Looking at the context, I'm pretty sure he meant to say

something like "if I was in a more liberal church, I could have tolerated it for a short while, but not as a fundie Evangelical Pentecostal.".

[Cartoonist]

2. That stuck out for me too

Guess he's still a conservative asshole.

[Voltaire2]

6. no I think it is pretty clear he was referring to liberal christian churches while he was a preacher

in a fundamentalist church, not to his political beliefs.

[Bretton Garcia]

3. He could have said....

That liberal Christians are more accepting of atheists?

But he also wanted to suggest that even liberal Christians are still partly Christian. And therefore flawed. Possibly he hints, hypocritical?

So he rejects both conservative but also liberal ... Christianity?

[guillaumeb]

5. "Tis a gift to be simple,

but not always.