Ministers Who Lose Their Faith

The largest religious denomination in the U.S. is Roman Cathoilc, assuming you disaggregate the Protestants. The second largest denomination is former Catholics. For those Catholics leaving their religious home is no small deal. But NPR focuses on soul searching of even larger worldly consequence. Suppose you are a minister and after a long bout with doubt, you realize that you have lost your faith, that you no longer believe in God. Along the way who do you talk to? What happens when you reveal your loss of faith? For a moving account of one such minister and the difficulty in determining how many such ministers there are, see http://www.npr.org/2012/05/07/152197685/when-religious-leaders-lose-their-faith.

Comments

[JK O'Connor]

Thanks for sharing the link, this is something that's always fascinated me.

[Jimbino]

Ministers who lose their faith should do what Mother Teresa did: get exorcised, inflict pain on the sick and dying, get the Nobel Peace Prize, get canonized and perform ante post-mortem miracles to secure beatification.