The Clergy Project: Seeking religious leaders who no longer believe in God

On several occasions, a priest or minister has admitted to me that he (they were all men) sometimes wondered whether God existed. The first occasion was about 25 years ago, and I was surprised to hear this. I now suspect that all honest religious leaders wonder whether God really exists. I had read about The Clergy Project before, and I note that it is still going strong.

The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs. The Clergy Project launched on March 21st, 2011. Currently, the community's 200 plus members use it to network and discuss what it's like being an unbelieving leader in a religious community. The Clergy Project’s goal is to support members as they move beyond faith. Members freely discuss issues related to their transition from believer to unbeliever including: Wrestling with intellectual, ethical, philosophical and theological issues Coping with cognitive dissonance Addressing feelings of being stuck and fearing the future Looking for new careers Telling their families Sharing useful resources Living as a nonbeliever with religious spouses and family Using humor to soften the pain Finding a way out of the ministry Adjusting to life after the ministry
Richard Dawkins' site published an article on the Clergy Project. Here's an excerpt:
The Clergy Project — a private, invitation-only “safe house” community of current and former pastors, priests and rabbis who no longer hold the supernatural beliefs of their religious traditions — was started in March 2011 with 52 members. It has now grown to almost 100 “apostates.” Since the unveiling of the public informational website clergyproject.org on Oct. 7, 2011, the group expects to attract hundreds more. “We know there must be thousands of clergy out there who have secretly abandoned their faith but have nowhere to turn,” says Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher who “lost faith in faith” after 19 years of preaching the gospel. “Now they do have a place to meet, a true sanctuary, a congregation of those of us who have replaced faith and dogma with reason and human well-being.”

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Staying power of the occupy movement

Charles P. Pierce, writing at Esquire:

If the Occupy people want to march, I say let them march. If they resist conventional politics, that may be because conventional politics are worth resisting. What I do know is that, if i weren't for the people in the streets last autumn, the Obama people would be running a very different campaign and Willard Romney wouldn't look half as ridiculous as he does.

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Human time-bridges

A friend of mine, an attorney named Martin Green, was born in 1931. He has had a long successful career in St. Louis and he is still going strong, litigating complex cases. While at the courthouse today, I mentioned to Martin that a lot of things have happened during his life (and during mine--I'm 56). I mentioned that his life spans through a large swath of history. He responded with this story (this is a paraphrase):

When I was 7, back in 1938, I visited an old folks home in St. Louis, where I was introduced to "General Claypool." His claim to fame was that he served as a soldier in the Civil War. He was quite young when he was in the war, only 15. He mentioned that he carried a flag.

Therefore, today I shook the hand of a man who shook the hand of a man who fought in the civil war. Pretty cool. And now this post reminds me of my own ancient cousins and and ancestors.

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Barack Obama: Kind and Gentle Warrior

Barack Obama gets a free pass for his war mongering, even from the political left, as described by Glenn Greenwald:

Most Democrats are perfectly aware of Obama’s military aggression. They don’t support him despite that, but rather, that’s one of the things they love about him. After years of being mocked by the Right as Terrorist-coddling weaklings, Obama — strutting around touting his own strength — lets them feel strong and powerful in exactly the way that Bush and Cheney’s swaggering let conservatives prance around as tough-guy, play-acting warriors. Rather than ignore this aggression, Democratic think tanks point with beaming pride to the corpses piled up by the Democratic Commander-in-Chief to argue that he’s been such a resounding foreign policy “success,” while Democratic pundits celebrate and defend the political value of his majestic kills.

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On loving one’s enemies

I believe that Jesus was a human being, not a God. Therefore, I don't give him homage, but I do occasionally read his alleged teachings, which I evaluate one-by-one. Jesus allegedly said some things that make sense to me, but other things attributed to Jesus don't make much sense to me. When I run into a teaching of Jesus that doesn't make sense, I set it aside as something that doesn't make sense. I'm free to do this, because I'm not a Christian. If I were a Christian, however, I would think that I should follow ALL of the teachings attributed to Jesus, because if I were a Christian, I would probably believe that Jesus is God, and who would I be to disagree with God? One of the things Jesus seemed to teach quite clearly was that we should love our enemies. Robert Wright summarizes these teachings:

The “Love your enemy” injunction, as we’ve seen, appears in both Matthew and Luke. In the Matthew version, Jesus says, “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In the letter to the Romans, written more than a decade before Matthew or Luke was written, Paul says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” And if Paul doesn’t quite say to love your enemies, he does add “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” Paul also says, in that same passage, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil … never avenge yourselves.” Similarly, Jesus, just before advising people to love their enemies, says, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

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