When Faith Fades & Pastors Stop Believing

There seems to be a growing number of, or at least a growing amount of attention toward, clergy who have stepped away from their belief in God. Some of those have already stepped away from their role within the church as well. But there are others who continue to minister to their congregations, week in and week out, whose faith no longer makes sense to them. Some continue to pray prayers and preach from sacred text they simply no longer believe.

For his book, Ex-Pastors: Why Men Leave the Parish Ministry, Dr. Gerald J. Jud surveyed a group of pastors who stepped away from ministry. One of the responses he received was from a man who not only left the ministry but left his faith as well:

“I left when my prayers were meaningless literary productions, when hymns only evoked a comfortable nostalgia, when my sermons could not say what I felt, when the Bible became literature, when missions and social actions became philanthropy and civil rights, when Jesus became a man, and when God died on my lips.”

Through the years, there have been countless pastors who have stepped away from their faith, while many of those same pastors have given most of their lives to serving the church and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, this isn’t a new reality.

If it were not the case, Dr. Jud wouldn’t have published his book almost 45 years ago and, today, there wouldn’t be 582 members of the Clergy Project – an established community of “active and former professional clergy/religious leaders who do not hold supernatural beliefs” – who gather via forums and conventions to talk about such topics, sharing their personal stories of life from belief to disbelief.

I know first hand the amount of reasons why pastors leave the ministry and I’m sure there are an equal amount of reasons, if not more, why some of these pastors not only walk away from the apparent call of God on their lives but from faith entirely.

In his article, Why Pastors Stop Believing, Frederick Schmidt, author of The Dave Test: A Raw Look at Real Life in Hard Times, offered some of his thoughts on the subject:

“People enter ordained life for a variety of reasons. Some simply want to ‘help other people.’ Some enter seminary looking for answers to their own questions, never quite get an answer, but don’t know what else to do. Whatever thin veneer of faith some people bring with them into the ministry, life erodes it fairly quickly.”

Schmidt also suggests that “some clergy who stop believing never did believe” and that “some fail to believe at all or struggle to continue believing thanks to churches themselves.” He says that “some struggle to integrate what they have learned in seminary” and that “others stop believing for a deeper reason.”

Again, there may be uncountable answers to the question, Why do clergy stop believing? and it’s probably something many will continue to explore until the end of man. But, for those who are presently living this out in their lives, walking away from their faith has come at a high price. And making that leap, or “coming out” as some would say, may not be as easy a task as one might think.

One of the members of the Clergy Project, Jason Eden – who is also the author of That’s Me In the Corner: Coming Out as an Atheist on Facebook, put it this way: “…the cost of saying “the emperor has no clothes” comes at a steep price. Full-time clergy or religious business leaders, who have come to the realization that their faith is a sham, risk financial hardship for their families if they come clean to their followers or customers. Religious people in the community will almost certainly talk about “that poor family with the atheist mom/dad” and put them on various prayer lists. If most of your friendships, family relationships, and even your marriage are based on this common set of beliefs, you risk losing it all.”

I suppose, if I’m being honest, my heart breaks a bit for these individuals – for you, if you’re going through this very thing. And I understand, from my exit of pastoral ministry, the pain of being hurt by those you’ve given your entire life to and by friends, many of whom you’d suspect would support you in those challenging times, who question your decision and your faith.

But even though my heart breaks, I have a hard time relating specifically to those who have stepped away from their faith. Maybe it’s because, unlike those who Frederick Schmidt says have stepped away because they never truly believed in the first place, I was firmly grounded in my belief in Jesus Christ before I made the decision to pursue full-time pastoral ministry.

And maybe it’s because, although life in the church had proven most challenging, I made the purposeful decision to keep Jesus the center of my focus. It’s always been my belief that, despite all that might happen in this life, God truly cares for me. That’s been the only thing that has kept my faith, and my ministry, alive.