I am a great admirer of the eloquent yet simple advice you give on Friendly Atheist. I have been “out” as an atheist for about one year now. I work in a Divinity Faculty, where I am surrounded by liberal, thoughtful, sophisticated religious believers, and recently I have been having thoughts about becoming an ordained minister in the Anglican Church. I feel that this job would give me personal fulfillment and allow me to do what I really want to do in my life, which is to, well, ‘minister’ to people’s needs, to be there for them in the hard times and help them celebrate the good times. I believe that religion does not have to be about beliefs, but actions, that it can be a force for good rather than hatred, and that “God” can be useful as a symbol which can provide many different meanings and frameworks for different people. I also believe that I would perhaps be more use to the furthering of reason and tolerance if I were within ‘the system’, promoting religious moderation than simply being an outsider.
My question is: should I pursue this career path, whilst remaining an atheist (or a ‘theological non-realist’ to give it a ‘theologically acceptable’ term)?
I would greatly appreciate your advice on this issue, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best wishes,
Conflicted
Dear Conflicted,
You’ve expressed two goals that you would like to accomplish in your life. One is to “attend to the wants and needs of others, to give aid or service,” which is one of the definitions of the verb “to minister.” Most people would agree that that is a very noble and admirable desire.
Your other goal is to bring about positive change in the church, making it more responsive to a wider range of people’s needs, and to improve its influence on society; to in a way, humanize it. Many people would approve of that as well.
However, your proposed method poses some ethical and pragmatic difficulties.
It isn’t clear from your letter, but I’m going to assume that if you were to apply to the ministry, you would do so openly as an atheist, just as you are now at your workplace. I’m assuming this because I think you know you wouldn’t be able to cover up your lack of belief for very long.
There are clerics who become free of their faith while they are ministering to their flocks. Many leave the clergy, some famously, because they cannot abide the conflict of promoting and reassuring beliefs in others that they no longer hold for themselves. They see it as hypocrisy, and it is too painful for them. An unknown number of these people continue on in their ministry as secret apostates, keeping up a deception for either selfish or noble reasons. Perhaps they just want to keep their jobs, or perhaps they want to keep on helping others somehow, “ministering” in that decent and generous meaning of the verb to which you aspire.
Being secretive about your atheism would pose ethical problems, and being open about your atheism would pose pragmatic problems.
Concealing it would require lying. That by itself is an ethical breach that should not be acceptable to a person who wants to be a professional helper in any capacity. Hiding it would most likely also cause injury to others. Since people look to their ministers for ethical guidance and moral modeling as well as spiritual solace, a closet atheist minister would be running a serious risk of implanting terrible cynicism, bitterness and deep hurt in those who trust in him, once the truth eventually comes out.
Because eventually, it always does.
Being open about your atheism might stop you right at the front door of the Anglican seminary or divinity school. From what I can find in a quick online search, the initial process of “discernment” involves intense and intimate examinations by your own personal priest, a discernment committee, a commission on ministry, a Bishop, and perhaps even a mental health professional. These people will assess the suitability of your intentions, personal history, values, attitudes, ideas, goals,
and your beliefs.
If you don’t believe in their god, they may see you as missing an essential prerequisite. Your openhearted desire to help others and your open-minded desire to bring more breadth, reason and tolerance to the church from the inside may not be enough for them to trust you with either their doctrine or their flock.
Even if you somehow get past all those barriers and become a minister, the hardest questions will come from the people whom you are trying to help. They will look you in the eyes and say, “My little girl died today. Please tell me that she’s going to heaven.” Will you respond with reason, or with the comforting myth they so desperately want to hear you confirm?
Conflicted, I don’t want to extinguish your wonderful longing to be of service to others, to “be there for them in the hard times and help them celebrate the good times” as you so movingly put it, by only listing reasons why your idea may not work.
Perhaps your experience in the divinity faculty and your knowledge of the Anglican Church is extensive, and you know how you could overcome those pragmatic hurdles. I’m certainly no expert on that.
Perhaps you can find ways to reconcile a person’s desire for a reassuring bedtime story with your rational mind’s demands to tell them the truth as you see it. I don’t pretend to be that wise, but I don’t assume that no one else is.
Perhaps also, your broad vision of God and religion, and how you could influence the church from the inside toward embracing more reason, tolerance and moderation is somehow attainable. When people propose lofty aspirations, I never use the word “impossible” because thousands of people have personally amazed me.
However, I can point out that you have other options, other venues for helping people on a personal level. For instance, you sound like you’d make an excellent counselor. That is a broad and varied field, and you don’t necessarily have to specialize too narrowly into one kind of need to fulfill. It has a challenging and interesting process to qualify, just as would the ministry. My years as a counselor were immensely fulfilling. I made a positive difference, and I even saved a few lives. I still get great pleasure from the little bit of service I can offer with this column.
But if the path of the psy does not appeal to you, there are many other ways that you could find satisfaction as well as sustenance by making the world around you a little better than it was before. That is the whole point of life for people like you and me; that we somehow, even in small ways, make a positive difference in others’ lives.
Use your imagination. Your generous spirit can be of great value in so many unexpected ways. Find them all!
Richard
You may send your questions for Richard to . All questions will eventually be answered, but not all can be published. There is a large number of requests; please be patient.
Bill wrote a long letter that I have edited for space reasons. My paraphrasing is indicated by parentheses. For privacy, I have given him a different name.
Dear Richard,
I’m in a bit of a bind, and I have come to the conclusion that I need to seek out advice from people who lack the religious prejudices that I’ve been indoctrinated with. I appreciate any thoughts you have regarding the following situation.
I’ve been gradually losing my faith over the last couple of years. I was raised in and still attend services at what I would call a hyperconservative church in Tennessee. While I do not believe, I continue to attend out of respect for my wife’s devotion. When we got married, we were both sincere believers, and she still is. As my faith has eroded, I’ve begun to be more vocal in publicly disagreeing with the elders, who are considered the authoritative leaders on all things, at church services. During the past few months, there has been a class studying Genesis through Deuteronomy. I have never studied these books from the perspective of skepticism before.
For example, Deuteronomy 22:13-21 discusses Israelite laws addressing a daughter’s virginity. (These verses relate how if a young husband accuses his young bride of not being a virgin, it must be investigated by her father and the city elders. If she is found to be a virgin, the husband must be fined, whipped and must remain married to her for life, but if she is found to not be a virgin, she must be killed by stoning.)
The teacher and elders said we should teach our daughters to not have sex before marriage because god hates it and he demanded death for it in the past. They said that a few deaths for fornication would solve a lot of our problems with premarital sex in this country.
After hearing the tirade continue for about 5 minutes, I asked the teacher if he would kill his daughter if she sat down with him and told him she had premarital sex. His exact words were “I sure would like to kill her if that happened.” I responded that no sane parent in this day and time would kill their child, and in fact, no one in the room would do it. A parent may be upset, angry, frustrated, or feel any number of emotions, but they would not kill their own just because of a supposed biblical fatwa in the Old Testament. Furthermore, how is it just that the man only gets a fine and a beating if he is wrong, but the woman gets stoned? Should we adopt the ancient Near Eastern practice of viewing women as property?
Needless to say, my comments didn’t go over well with the teacher. He informed me that human logic doesn’t apply, and God said it, he believes it, and that settles it. This is really the church’s way of saying “You called me out, I have no answer, and therefore, I conclude that you are a douchebag.” This is just a sample of what I argue against on a weekly basis.
Is it ethical for me to continue to attend this church and publicly disagree with the leaders on these sorts of issues? Should I just come out and walk away, or should I continue to try and inject some critical thinking into the indoctrination/teaching process? I guess what I’m really asking is whether or not it is appropriate to take the fight against religious fundamentalism into the sacred sepulcher and challenge cherished beliefs in the pews instead of the public sphere. I imagine that you’re very busy, and I appreciate the time and thought you put into responding to emails like this. Thanks for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Bill
Dear Bill,
This would be a simpler problem if your wife was not involved. Without her on the scene, the only ethical problem would arise when someone in the church asked you point blank if you believe in God. Then you’d have to weigh the ethics of honesty vs. your desire to make things better.
Aside from the honesty issue, absent your wife, the rest would be a matter of weighing cost versus benefit. In other words, will you really be able to change others’ beliefs or social attitudes from the inside as a church member, and what will it cost you?
The teacher was courteous enough to tell you what you’re up against. He said “that human logic doesn’t apply, and God said it, he believes it, and that settles it.” Will your rational arguments, enhanced by your passionate outrage be enough to break through pious mulishness like that? Will your logic at least plant seeds that might sprout in a few of the more fertile minds, or will it bounce off like a BB off a battleship? I don’t know. Maybe you’re really good at it.
Remember what it is like inside the fortified mind-set from which you freed yourself. Faith, often a euphemism for unquestioning credence, is taught to be a moral virtue. Doubt and skepticism are taught to be moral vices. Merely questioning the Bible is seen as rude at best, and heresy at worst. Education is looked upon with suspicion. Science is often called the work of the devil. Here, ignorance is not merely the passive lack of knowledge. Here, it is active, robust, aggressively self-defending and self-replicating. Here, ignorance is alive.
Also remember that you’re up against men who make money by convincing people to abdicate their ability to think for themselves. Your church isn’t just a social and book discussion club. It’s a business that sells dogged intellectual conformity. Threaten the leaders’ livelihood, and it won’t be long before you’re told to quite literally get the hell out.
Because they are founded on absolute claims lacking evidence, most churches tend to be very intolerant of dissent, disagreement and dispute. They’re brittle. Dissenters don’t usually get to stay inside and work to change things for very long. More often they’re pushed out and they start their own church with their own angle on things, trying to take some of the like-minded congregation with them. This is why there are thousands of sub-sects. They multiply by dividing, like amoebas.
Bill, if it were just you alone, I’d say hey, if you like fighting single-handedly against a gang of armor-plated automatons, then go for it! I admire your valor and your pluck. Sometimes David vs. Goliath stories turn out well. Maybe you’ll turn the whole thing around, or maybe you’ll at least get them to soften their stances on certain social issues. I’d also suggest that you wear a helmet in church, and don’t walk down any dark streets.
But you’re not alone.
I cannot be sure from your letter whether or not your wife knows of your loss of faith, and what that would mean between the two of you. That is a first priority issue that would affect your other decisions.
Your wife is still a devoted believer and member of the church and a sincere believer. You said that you continue to attend out of respect for her devotion. So her feelings are important to you. It might be that nothing unpleasant will happen, but churches have well-earned reputations for penalizing people for their association with others who are seen as troublemakers, especially family members. Your actions could seriously affect her relationships with others in the congregation, and your actions could seriously affect her relationship with you.
This is your primary ethical dilemma: You must weigh your desire to do battle against what you see as a harmful influence in your community, versus the risk of collateral damage that may be suffered by your loved one. Whatever hits you take as a result of your struggle are part your choice, but someone else taking hits from that is another matter entirely.
I suggest that you talk this over thoroughly with your wife. You should at least hear what her concerns would be. To deliberate this carefully you need more information, and since you clearly think that women should be treated as persons instead of property, then she should have some input into your decision.
I see three different questions that you should consider:
If you stay in the church, will you be able to make any change from the inside to their beliefs or social attitudes, and what will be the effect on your wife?
If you leave the church with a public declaration of your atheism, will you be able to make any change from the outside to their beliefs or social attitudes, and what will be the effect on your wife?
If you leave the church quietly, just stop coming, will you be able to make any change from the outside to their beliefs or social attitudes, and what will be the effect on your wife?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. I can only urge you to be very judicious in your decision. The consequences could range from good, to unremarkable, to very painful.
Richard
You may send your questions for Richard to . All questions will eventually be answered, but not all can be published. There is a large number of requests; please be patient.
My girlfriend recently asked me to come to church with her. She’s from Korea, and she doesn’t speak first-rate English, so she doesn’t know how to phrase things sometimes. She’s a very open person and she’s not interested in converting me or anything like that. She knows I’m an atheist, but she asked if I could come with her to church as just another place to go. I tried explaining to her how asking me to come to church is a very offensive question because it doesn’t respect my beliefs. Is there a better way I could explain to her why it is offensive to ask me to come to a church to attend a preaching session?
Thanks!
Brad
Dear Brad,
“I really don’t like it“ doesn’t seem like too complex an idea. That can be communicated even with pantomime, like the face you’d make when biting into food that should have been thrown out a long time ago. Your girlfriend sounds like a nice person and she’s probably not dense, so I wondered if there was some other issue going on here.
Just to see if your girlfriend being a Korean might have relevance to this, I consulted a good friend of mine, who is a member of an elite group of experts known as the Ask Richard International Research Team. She was born in Korea and has experienced being a member of more than one Korean Christian church in the U.S. She offered these insights that might help you understand what your girlfriend may be going through. She said:
“Of course, I could be wrong about this particular woman, and we should be careful not to make generalizations about nationalities too broadly. But I’ve never met a Korean who attends church regularly and asks someone else to go to church, but has no intention of trying to convert them. Although there are many Koreans in the U.S. whose spouses and partners are not as religious, the church-going Koreans are always, ALWAYS praying about them.”
“They do religion very well. It’s mixed up with the old Confucian teachings and the Christian thought, which means they are extremely affected by the pressure of duty and indebtedness. There are many Koreans who are Buddhists or even atheists, but even the atheist Koreans have the cultural Confucian upbringing. The mindset is very patriarchal and respectful of the elders and the ancestors. When you add Christianity on top of that and the belief that Jesus gave his life for yours, the sense of obligation to spread the word is very powerful. I attended a Korean church a while back, and they used to pressure the churchgoers to bring others there. ‘Just get them here, and we’ll do the rest.’ was the idea.”
My friend continued…
“It is possible that she may just want him to share in her life for another reason. If it is a specifically Korean church, rather than one with a general population, it could be as simple as wanting to introduce him to the food, since eating Korean meals after church is very common. Some people come to church just for the food, but if his girlfriend attends any church regularly, as in being a member of the church, I think chances are that she’s hoping that she can somehow change his mind about Christ.”
“If he does end up visiting her church, he would have to make himself very clear to her that he has no intention of changing his beliefs, although that will probably fall upon deaf ears. Whether Korean or American, so many Christians think, ‘If only you had the chance to hear the gospel message in the right way…’”
“Korean church people don’t push Americans too hard, just the other Koreans. They wouldn’t pressure him as much as his girlfriend to keep him coming. If he shows up once, that pressure on her will get worse. In fact, it may already be happening.”
“Since her English is not first rate, it’s likely that she goes to a Korean language church. They may have an English translation, but it’s not likely to be a good translation. It will sound like Greek to him.”
So Brad, if my friend’s experiences are relevant, this may indicate that this is not about a language barrier making it hard to explain yourself to your girlfriend. It could be that she understands you well enough, but she intends to get you there one way or another. To her, it may be much more than “just another place to go.”
Regardless of any underlying issue, it’s time to get the message across. Rather than further trying to explain why this is not your cup of tea, or why her persistently asking you is offensive, a simple, gentle and repeated “No, thank you, I’m not going” will probably cut through any barrier, whether it’s about language, culture or intention. “No thank you, I’m not going” repeated without anger or impatience, said warmly with no variation in the words. Tell her that you have no objection to her going all she wants, but “No thank you, I’m not going.” Forget explanations about why. That just keeps the subject open for discussion.
Do some research and suggest some specific things that you and she can share and enjoy about her background, such as Korean restaurants, cultural expositions and art exhibitions. She may be very pleased that you put forth the effort to explore her unique culture with her. But if you go within a thousand feet of that church, be prepared for whatever insistence, cajoling, wheedling, enticement and urging you’ve already experienced, to amplify.
Richard
You may send your questions for Richard to . All questions will eventually be answered, but not all can be published. There is a large number of requests; please be patient.
In Italy, the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) are planning their second annual Debaptism this Sunday.
Last year, over a thousand people filled out the forms declaring their intent to no longer be listed on the Catholic Church rolls. UAAR is hoping for even more this year.
“The debaptism phenomenon is in constant growth — explains Raffaele Carcano, national secretary of the UAAR — and is attracting the growing attention of public and press, in particular foreign press…”
According to Carcano, there are approximately 4,500 downloads of the “official debaptism” form per month and over 15,000 have actually filled it out and mailed it in.
It’s *so* much easier when you can just send in a form like that.
Is anyone still listed on their former church’s “list”?
A Catholic priest in Poland was doing the Holy Communion ritual recently. He accidentally dropped the cracker. So he put it in holy water (to “cleanse” it). The object turned red… and it turned out it’s not a cracker at all.
It’s a piece of human heart.
All of sudden, some Italians are proclaiming it’s a miracle! Not just a miracle, either. They think it’s the heart of Jesus.
… The matter should be approached very carefully,” says priest Andrzej Debski. “So, for now let us talk of it as a paranormal phenomenon,” he added.
“This is a matter requiring restraint. And most of all an explanation. But I ask everyone to pray that this phenomenon was truly a miracle,” says Father Stanislaw Gniedziejko, pastor of the parish of St. Anthony in Sokolka in northeast Poland where the incident occurred.
Church authorities are now investigating whether the phenomenon will indeed turn out to be a Eucharistic miracle like the one that happened in Lanciano in Italy in the 8th century when a holy wafer turned to flesh and wine turned into blood.
According to reader Wojtek, they sent a letter to the “Prosecution Office” and, according to Polish law, “the prosecutor must now start an investigation or give a very good reason not to do so.”
What questions are they demanding the prosecution office answer? What would they like to know?
1) Did the Prosecutor’s Office initiate an investigation to determine the origin of the debris?
2) Did the Public Prosecutor’s Office question all those in contact with these remains?
3) Do we know the identity of the man whose remains were found? (”It seems unlikely that these fragments belong to the myocardium of the Jewish prophet, crucified two thousand years ago, [so] it is possible that they belong[ed] to a living person until recently.”)
4) If these are human remains, stolen from a medical facility, disease could be spread. Ditto if these are animal remains, consumed by parishioners. Has the wafer been analyzed for disease?
5) We have found no information that anyone has investigated this activity. We demand to know whether any of these institutions have committed a crime for not doing so.
They conclude their letter by writing (paraphrased):
We live in the 21st century and we understand the mechanisms governing the world. We have not yet observed any mechanism whose origins could be attributed to supernatural beings. At the same time, we have long known that the Earth revolves around the sun, women do not become pregnant without the participation of male sperm, and the wafer is baked with rice flour. Regardless of the myths of the religious authorities, we must build on the achievements of empirical science and prosecute the crimes listed in the criminal laws, regardless of religious affiliation for those involved. We demand an immediate answer to the question, which we will also publish.
Wojtek adds:
The [skeptics'] letter got a lot of attention in our media. The media’s spin was mostly, “A miracle has happened, so the rationalists don’t like it and they try to fight against it.” Nevertheless virtually all of Poland has heard our point of view. The Polish Rationalist Association has been really doing a great job lately (actually, they always have been, but they became very active and vocal recently).
Good for them for being the voice of reason.
Meanwhile, everyone else needs to get the hell out of that creepy church. And not just for the usual reasons.
Just once, It would be incredible to hear a pastor or televangelist say, “You know, we’re ok for now. No need to give to us today. Give it to a good charity instead!”
The United Coalition of Reason is one of the groups responsible for putting up atheist billboards and bus ads across the country. It’s not really a group in and of itself. It’s main purpose is to promote local atheist groups in the area.
They want atheists to know there are other like-minded people out there and groups for them to join. Which group? It doesn’t matter. Whether you’re a Secular Jew or a Humanist or a capital-a Atheist is besides the point. But since we all don’t believe in God, we need to help each other out.
More importantly, if someone is looking for a group to join, maybe your group isn’t the best one for them. But maybe you can direct them to another group in the area.
This is something the Secular Coalition for America has done as well. Some donors may be unable to give money to SCA because it’s a 501(c)(4) lobbying group… but our staff directs those people to any of the 501(c)(3) member organizations.
It’s not a competition if we’re focused on the overall idea of getting people to support any non-theistic organization. When one group does well, we all benefit.
With that in mind, I’m surprised Christian churches don’t direct people to other churches more often. They seem so set on getting people to join their church that they lose sight of their ultimate goal of “winning people to Christ.”
We understand that there’s no “one size fits all” church for everyone, so here’s a list of other churches in the city we’d encourage you to check out as you look for a church home. These are Gospel-centered churches that we love and support:
And look at this reaction from one Christian blogger:
Wow. That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen on a church website — a local church providing new folks with a list of other local churches to consider. (I’m not saying Park is the first or only church to do this — that really doesn’t matter — I’ve just never seen it before.) By telling me about other churches in the area, Park actually tells me a lot about itself as an organization.
The shock at seeing that is what I’m surprised about. You figure churches would’ve been doing this a long time ago.
Again, this isn’t about Christianity or which churches they’re promoting. It’s the very idea of supporting other people who share the big ideas with you even though they might differ in the details.
Why aren’t more churches doing this?
In the meantime, while they lag behind in supporting each other, atheists better take advantage of this interest in our ideas and support anyone who wants to donate or join a non-theistic group, even if it’s not the one we give to or belong to.
One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.
The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders.
…
It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.
Carolyn Waterstradt, 42, a graduate student who lives in the Midwest, said she was coerced into a sexual relationship with a married minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for 18 months. He had been her pastor for a decade, she said, and told her the relationship was ordained by God.
I’m shocked. Who knew sex scandals in the church involved women?! (*cue rim shot*)
But to take this more seriously…
I wonder how many of the women who are taken advantage of leave their churches after something like this happens.
How many pastors are seriously punished?
What constitutes a “sexual advance” here? Based on the comments in the article, the Baylor study never defines this and it is all subjective data… I wonder if there is anything included in the category that is just misinterpreted as an advance.
What goes through the pastors’ minds when they take advantage of these women? The article says they say the relationship is “ordained by God”… do they really believe that? Or do they just use that line to prey on the women? Either way, it’s disturbing as hell.
Is a clergy/congregation relationship any different from a boss/employee one?
Secular Student Alliance Member Todd Stiefel has agreed to match all donations to us by 12/21/2009 up to a total of $50,000. Double the value of your support and help us get the whole match by donating now.
. All questions will eventually be answered, but not all can be published. There is a large number of requests; please be patient.
