{"id":2139,"date":"2012-05-14T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T12:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/05\/coming-out-as-a-heretic.html"},"modified":"2012-05-14T12:55:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T12:55:00","slug":"coming-out-as-a-heretic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/05\/coming-out-as-a-heretic.html","title":{"rendered":"Coming Out As a Heretic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I could very much relate to the recent NPR story about a Christian minister losing her faith. Like her, I once counted myself among the \u00fcber-faithful but then \u201cfell away\u201d in my twenties. Despite marrying a clergyman and spending lots of time in theological school, I never made it back to the one true way.<\/p>\n

But there is a major difference in my story and this minister\u2019s story, which is that she has embraced the name \u201catheist,\u201d while I cannot bring myself to do so.<\/p>\n

This reluctance is not because I have anything obvious to lose. Being an atheist would not cause any new familial strife; and unlike the pastorate, my career does not demand any particular religious orthodoxy. The major issue for me is an aversion to militant secularism, akin to some people\u2019s aversion to \u201corganized religion.\u201d The new atheism, of the sort that has celebrities, conventions, media outlets, or protest marches, is not simply about doubting the existence of traditional deities. It is more often about intellectual elitism, and sometimes even outright racism toward people whom Christopher Hitchens referred to as \u201csemi-stupefied peasants in desert regions.\u201d Orthodox secularism, it seems, is about feeling superior to those poor, deluded souls who still cling to religion\u2014that weird little psycho-social appendix left over from some earlier stage in human evolution.
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I could very much relate to the recent NPR story about a Christian minister losing her faith. Like her, I once counted myself among the \u00fcber-faithful but then \u201cfell away\u201d in my twenties. Despite marrying a clergyman and spending lots of time in theological school, I never made it back to the one true way. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nComing Out As a Heretic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I could very much relate to the recent NPR story about a Christian minister losing her faith. 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