From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader

[progressoid]

From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader

Late one night in early May 2011, a preacher named Jerry DeWitt was lying in bed in DeRidder, La., when his phone rang. He picked it up and heard an anguished, familiar voice. It was Natosha Davis, a friend and parishioner in a church where DeWitt had preached for more than five years. Her brother had been in a bad motorcycle accident, she said, and he might not survive.

DeWitt knew what she wanted: for him to pray for her brother. It was the kind of call he had taken many times during his 25 years in the ministry. But now he found that the words would not come. He comforted her as best he could, but he couldn’t bring himself to invoke God’s help. Sensing her disappointment, he put the phone down and found himself sobbing. He was 41 and had spent almost his entire life in or near DeRidder, a small town in the heart of the Bible Belt. All he had ever wanted was to be a comfort and a support to the people he grew up with, but now a divide stood between him and them. He could no longer hide his disbelief. He walked into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. “I remember thinking, Who on this planet has any idea what I’m going through?” DeWitt told me.

As his wife slept, he fumbled through the darkness for his laptop. After a few quick searches with the terms “pastor” and “atheist,” he discovered that a cottage industry of atheist outreach groups had grown up in the past few years. Within days, he joined an online network called the Clergy Project, created for clerics who no longer believe in God and want to communicate anonymously through a secure Web site.



more...http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/from-bible-belt-pastor-to-atheist-leader.html?pagewanted=all



Unbeliever Jerry DeWitt, converted atheist, in a church where he once preached in DeRidder, La.

[valerief]

1. I'm always amazed when people do believe in a god. nt

[Warpy]

2. I think pastors as a group have the toughest time believing

since they're the ones getting the calls for comfort when things no loving god would ever allow keep happening to the people under their care. Even if they have fully accepted the invention of Satan as the cause of evil, they realize Satan would not be able to do anything that god did not allow, which again calls god's nature into serious question.

They end up with the Riddle of Epicurus and that never turns out well for poor old god.

[valerief]

3. I just figured most pastors are atheists and they're in the job, because it's an easy gig. nt

[Warpy]

4. It's not an easy gig

Most of them don't have megachurches and don't get paid that much. In addition, they're on call 24/7/365 for any needy person who goes to that church. Their families are stressed by having to prove themselves the perfect family. I've known enough rebelling preacher's kids to know what the life is like and no thank you.

I've always considered myself lucky not to believe a word of it because there was no way I'd get sucked into that life for twue wuv.

[valerief]

6. I'm sure it's crappy being a preacher's kid, but the free housing and free car

and free other stuff is an easier gig than most Americans have.

[Warpy]

9. Um, most churches are not well off

and the free housing is often cramped and in poor repair, the free car a beat up used car someone has donated for a tax write off.

[valerief]

11. The unfree housing and cars are oftentimes the same way. nt

[Warpy]

12. Yeah, I've noticed

I've noticed that all my life.

[onager]

5. I've asked about that, having the same suspicions...

One of my relatives is the (volunteer/unpaid) bookkeeper for her Methodist church, back where I came from in South Jebusstan.

While visiting for Xmas, I got to hear her gripe about how many freebies their preacher got - salary, housing (parsonage), insurance, book allowance, etc. etc.

I said it sounded like a pretty easy gig. She immediately corrected me and said it wasn't. Along with all the other unpleasant stuff like dealing with deaths and hospital visits, there's this:

One faction or other in the church always wants to dump the incumbent Witch Doctor and get a new one. It's a political minefield and those guys almost never have any job security.

That was sort of borne out by my Mom's (Baptist) church. Few years ago they hired a hotshot young preacher who immediately announced they were becoming a "megachurch." He wanted a massive new building plan, to include a gym etc. etc.

WTF? It's a rural Baptist church in business since 1857. It doesn't have the numbers or income to Go Mega.

The preacher was dumb enough to tell some members that Going Mega would, basically, look good on his resume and help him move on to a bigger church. So in the end it was all about his career and not helping Jebus harvest new souls.

The preacher also immediately pissed off some of the First Families of that church. He fired long-time volunteers in some positions and replaced them with his buddies...all of whom collected salaries.

I think the last straw was when he announced his plans for a "foreign mission retreat" to save lost souls.

And what unXian, benighted, backward, savage corner of the globe did he intend to visit on his "mission retreat?"

London. Yep, THAT London - Big Ben, Parliament, etc. etc.

This tool must have been the G.W. Bush of Baptist preachers...

[valerief]

7. He sounds like the stereotypical preacher of today. A real jerk. nt

[JoeyT]

8. The politics are why there are so many

churches in the rural south. Here there are a lot of newish churches that have less than ten families, and the reason they go to such a small church is because they lost a power struggle. Either they backed the preacher that was ousted or they tried to oust the preacher and failed.

[awoke_in_2003]

13. No, it is not an easy gig...

I remember my grandfather being woke up at 3 am to rush to the hospital, to comfort a family who had a loved one in the hospital. I am a non-believer, but my grandfather tried to make people feel better. He did it with good motives, and was a good man.

[valerief]

14. Real jobs are much harder. AND there are bills to pay.

Plenty of us get up at 3 in the morning for system installs/crashes. And we have to drive somewhere for the fix.

[ShadowLiberal]

15. Pastors are paid very little, to the point that a lot need a spouse making 3x more to get by

My older brother is a currently unemployed pastor, and I can tell you that it being an easy gig isn't the case. A few examples from what I've heard from him.

-It's not uncommon for pastors to have a 60 hour work weeks.

-Most churches just don't have much money to pay a pastor, part of the problem is the more members you have the less those members tend to give. Most churches are always having money trouble, most church help wanted ads look something like this "need a pastor with a proven record at increasing membership and donations" (this is part of why my brother is unemployed, from being ordained recently & never having worked as a pastor before).

-If a church has a job posting for a 'part time' position, you should know that you're likely to be in danger of losing your job if you don't put in 40 hours a week of work.

-Churches frequently have internal power politics and struggles, which are often really about power struggles among the 2 to 4 oldest & biggest families in the church, and they're always trying to get the pastor on their side. I've heard of some churches from my brothers where some of those people start every consistory meeting by calling for a vote to fire the pastor, because the pastor may have sided with them 90% of the time, but that's just not good enough.

-Related to the above, some churches are such hell that they literally go through a new pastor EVERY year or two, with a third of those pastors resigning not just from their church, but from the job of being pastor altogether. Those are churches where the only pastors who can survive are do nothing pastors who just look the other way while those members often effectively destroy their own church by driving people away from it.

-My brother has found during retreats with other pastors that a big majority of the pastors have spouses who make at least 3 times as much money as they do.

-Church housing, while free, is more of a hassle then it's worth according some pastors, who have told my brother they would frequently get complaints from some church members, like "was driving by at 2 AM and noticed that the pastor was wasting electricity (and the church money) by leaving the lights on in the bedroom".

Also yes, ironic isn't it that my parents had an atheist (though they don't know it) and a pastor.

[valerief]

16. Most Americans are paid very little don't get free housing, etc. nt

[frogmarch]

10. Thanks. Good article.

Here's another snip:

DeWitt refuses to leave DeRidder, a place where religion, politics and family pride are indivisible. Six months after he was “outed” as an atheist he lost his job and his wife — both, he says, as a direct consequence. Only a handful of his 100-plus relatives from DeRidder still speak to him. When I visited him, in late June, his house was in foreclosure, and he was contemplating moving into his 2007 Chrysler PT Cruiser.

I wonder how many death threats he's received.

[lanlady]

17. Very good article, and really brings home

how lonely we atheists can have it. I still can't bring myself to say aloud in "mixed" company that I'm atheist, and a damn proud one at that. The most I can get myself to say is, "sorry, I don't have a religious bone in my body." That way I get to blame genetics.