<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Editor\u2019s Note: \u00a0If you didn\u2019t already know about it, you will soon see how different liberal clergy are from fundamentalist clergy. The liberals, who are not bound by biblical inerrancy, can have variant religious beliefs and interpretations and still be accepted in church life. In this series, you\u2019ll see how different liberal clergy think about and respond to this looser situation.\u00a0 The first, a semi-retied UCC campus minister who participated in the pilot study of non-believing clergy, reflects on his own changing self-image since then and his views of the future of Christianity \u2014 and Atheism.<\/em><\/p>\n EDITOR\u2019S UPDATE<\/strong>\u00a0May 20 2014 \u2013 Mark is traveling with limited internet access and has asked me to respond on his behalf to some of the comments below.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n By Mark Rutledge<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to believe<\/em><\/p>\n I grew up in the Disciples of Christ Church, a moderate Protestant denomination and became an agnostic at Oberlin College. \u00a0I think doubting is a normal part of our human developmental process, a natural aspect of being \u201cconverted\u201d to our scientific, post-enlightenment world.\u00a0 \u00a0I went to seminary as a seeker, discovered that baptism does not mean lobotomy, and decided that I could affirm a liberal Christian world view.\u00a0 Doubt and faith are two sides of the same coin according to theologian Paul Tillich.\u00a0 I was ordained as a United Church of Christ minister and discovered the field of campus ministry, which has been a happy, life-long vocation. \u00a0I\u2019ve had great freedom to create my own ministries with students and faculty, to advocate for social justice, and to continue my search for a meaningful faith. \u00a0I\u2019ve been lucky. \u00a0 I now consider myself a post-supernaturalist, non-theist, humanist who seeks to follow the original (historical) Jesus.<\/span><\/p>\n I joined The Clergy Project very shortly after my bracing experience in 2010 as one of the five original subjects in the Dennett-LaScola pilot research study, \u201cPreachers Who are Not Believers.\u201d <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Since then I\u2019ve been puzzling over two questions:<\/p>\n I stopped believing in supernatural things in college and have not resumed.\u00a0 Still, I think that once you remove supernatural elements from the Bible, Jesus, creeds, doctrines, concepts of God, and theologies, there is something left worth calling \u201cChristian.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n My image of God is not that of a supernatural being somewhere up there or out there who intervenes in this world.\u00a0 I think there is only one world\u2014this one. \u00a0The symbol \u201cGod\u201d for me refers not to a \u201cCreator,\u201d but rather to the mysterious process of serendipitous cosmic creativity within nature and human history (Gordon Kaufman).\u00a0 Tillich used the phrase \u201cGround of Being\u201d to refer to God; other theologians have talked about pantheism, pan-entheism, or the Void from which we come and to which we return.\u00a0 Some simply call it Nature. \u00a0An amusing option is apatheism \u00a0 \u2013 not caring about the existence of god.<\/p>\n I think all these terms are abstractions that do not capture the deep ultimate meanings humans have traditionally understood when using the word, \u201cGod.\u201d\u00a0 And the words certainly do not matter to many church people whose beliefs in the supernatural vary.<\/p>\n Other orthodox \u201cbeliefs\u201d which are embedded in our traditions, and to which I do not subscribe, include the substitutionary doctrine of the atonement (Jesus died for our sins); the divinity of Jesus (Jesus was God); a literal way of seeing the Bible; a literal understanding of the creeds or the hymns we sing; and so on.\u00a0 Sometimes not believing in the supernatural gets conflated with not believing in orthodox doctrines and creeds.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s helpful to keep this distinction in mind even though they may sometimes overlap.<\/span><\/p>\n Many people also fail to distinguish belief from faith.\u00a0 In my view, belief is giving intellectual assent to certain propositional statements.\u00a0 Faith is trust.\u00a0 Trust in what<\/em> is another, more important, discussion.<\/p>\n Yet I still honor the liberal Christian tradition which formed me, which is still evolving in how it sees these things, and is reinterpreting them in ways that make sense within our scientific, pluralistic, secular culture. \u00a0 I do not feel \u201ccaught\u201d in the pulpit\u2014I have always been \u201cout\u201d about what I believe and don\u2019t believe.<\/span> (People are mostly happier when they do come out!)\u00a0 I still seek to follow the wisdom of the historical Jesus\u2014a subversive and dangerous ethical way of life that endeavors to create a humane world of equality, love, and justice for all people. \u00a0Jesus called this the \u201cKingdom of God\u201d\u2013 an ancient, First Century Jewish metaphor. \u00a0In these senses I am still a \u201cbeliever.\u201d<\/p>\n I still puzzle over the meanings of our \u201cnuminous experiences\u201d that sometimes come upon us in moments we least expect\u2014experiences of awe and wonder; peak experiences; nature mysticism; transports of musical delight; a sense of the one-ness of all things; being grasped by grace and love; aesthetic or literary experiences of something \u201cmore\u201d; moments of intimacy with another person; and transcendent moments in the midst of struggles for social justice.\u00a0 These kinds of experiences seem to be widely shared by believers and non-believers alike.\u00a0 Whatever we call them, they seem to me to lie behind many of our human religious constructions, churches, and myths.\u00a0 In themselves \u201cnuminous experiences\u201d do not prove the existence of a god as their source, but I do think they point to something humanly, perhaps cosmically, significant.<\/span><\/p>\n Now what about unorthodox and\/or \u201cnon-believing\u201d clergy and the churches they lead and rely on for a meaningful vocation and a living wage?<\/p>\n Churches are in trouble, and we clergy are troubled.\u00a0 I have deep empathy for many of my colleagues who have grown beyond conventional beliefs and who are indeed trapped and in dire straits.\u00a0 Many are serving in conservative churches, still holding rigidly to older, pre-enlightenment dispensations. \u00a0I sometimes wonder if these pastors had been raised in liberal churches and were serving in liberal churches would feel belief to be so black and white, so either\/or. The alternatives are difficult\u2014leave the ministry; transfer to more liberal, \u201cbig tent\u201d churches; defect in place and try to help the church grow; change to non-parish ministries; change to secular careers; continue dissembling with as much integrity as possible; or start new liberal churches or secular humanist assemblies<\/span> which may be easier than trying to transform existing congregations. \u00a0Clergy are exploring all of these.<\/p>\n None of these options are easy, and that is why the Clergy Project is so needed, and why it is important to build networks of support among and between all who care about clergy and churches.\u00a0 The issue of non-belief is not the only, or perhaps even the primary, reason related to why churches must change or wither away, but it is one that must be addressed along with changing demographics, membership decline, cultural and sociological stressors, financial crises, the demands of pastoral care and preaching, and the overwhelming vagaries of institutional management.<\/p>\n I consider myself to be an ally to the new atheist\/secular humanist communities that are emerging.\u00a0 When Richard Dawkins visited Duke several years ago I met members of the Student Secular Alliance and started hanging out with them as a campus minister friend.\u00a0 I met Dan Dennett when he was speaking in Raleigh, recently.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve spoken to Durham-area humanist communities after my non-supernaturalist views became publicized in a local newspaper<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been interviewed for radio programs and documentary films.\u00a0 Through these relationships and connections, I have come increasingly to admire the clergy and non-clergy who openly share their doubts about traditional religions.\u00a0 I see doubt as a natural part of many people\u2019s evolving spiritual journeys.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/clergyproject\/files\/2014\/05\/beer2.jpg\" "\\"beer2\\"")
<\/a>\u00a0 My Texas brother-in-law once said to me, \u201cA {man\u2019s} gotta believe in something.\u00a0 I believe \u00a0 \u00a0I\u2019ll have another beer.\u201d\u00a0 In the current atheist versus theist debates the word \u201cnon-belief\u201d gets a lot of use.\u00a0 I\u2019m still trying to figure out just what the term means in its different contexts.<\/p>\n\n
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