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Saturday, March 20, 2010

Non-believing Clergy

Daniel Dennett recently finished his study on clergymen who have become non-believers while still being the pastor of a church. I read the paper yesterday and it was quite eye-opening to read about their mindset and how they justify their continuation of pastoral duties while not believing the words they preach. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might want to read it (which I recommend you do) so I won't talk about the details of the paper. The de-conversion process for all of the 5 clergymen interviewed was a gradual process that traced itself back to when they started to learn more about their faith, and for most of them started when they went to seminary. I suspect it is the same for most people who leave their faiths. Not many people wake up one day and say to themselves, "Ok, I don't believe this anymore".


The Study is available on the Washington post's website HERE

4 comments:

  1. why does faiths have an apostrophe? i'm actually really interested in your reasoning regarding this grammatical point.

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  2. typo, I didn't proof read it. It's not like I wrote a word which is similar in spelling and completely different in meaning and usage, like fairy instead of faith. The your/you're/their/there/they're phenomenon is exactly like the same, using the wrong word that is similar in spelling but completely different in meaning and usage.

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  3. Oh, and I fixed the typo now for anyone who is trying to find it now.

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  4. This kind of thing really doesn't surprise me. It takes a lot of guts to admit your faith was wrong and find a new career after spending lots of years and money in seminary and as a clergy member. In the real world, a Masters of Divinity doesn't get you very far. And I think they all know that.

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