Bah, humbug. Will we someday get an entry that discusses Episcopalians who do believe, and why?

Yes, I am Episcopalian and I have absolute faith. God has been with me during some hair raising times. He has saved my life and guides me daily.

(Editor's note: Thanks for the comment, Judith. We need your full name next time.)

Tillich has some interesting things to say about faith and doubt. Early in volume one of Systematic theology Tillich writes, "Every theologian is committed and alienated; he [sic] is always in faith and in doubt...sometimes one side prevails, sometimes the other.
...it depends on his being ultimately concerned with the Christian message even if he is sometimes inclined to attack and reject it." A field modified version of this applies to pastors I think. Many of us read Tillich as divinity students. What is most challenging is living into what Tillich describes over a period of years in the field as a pastor. The problem is not too much critical analysis, but too little trust in following the hunches and leads it teases you with, and coming out the other end, living in this creative tension between doubt and faith. Without an impatience and a critical edge with regard to tradition and the church, pastors can indeed end up losing faith, or alternatively settling for a church that Urban T. Holmes described somewhere as the "tea house on Elm Street". But hey, I'll stop now, my age is showing.

I tend to agree with Rod Dreher's quote here. Without a relationship with God, there's no way a priest or pastor can begin to handle the realities of ministry with a community of people moving through life, crisis, and spiritual growth.

Maybe there was a time we presided over the community tea house, social club, or functioned as a "poor man's therapist," but those times are largely gone in most places now -- they are provided much more efficiently by other institutions and agencies.

Most of us simply don't get paid enough, otherwise, to justify the hours, the 24/7 stress, and frankly, the constant gnawing reality that we often -- in contemporary American society, at least -- sit, along with the communities we are pledged to steward, at or close to the bottom of everyone else's priority list.

Without God and the hope of the Gospel providing reason to serve, it would be a misery.

What's a non-believing pastor to do? Get out as quickly as possible, for everyone's sake.

I think it depends on what is meant by "non-believing." Doubt in tension with faith is healthy, provides for the the possibility of compassion and solidarity with people who suffer profoundly. How can one bury a child, walk with the parents and grand-parents, and not confront doubt? But, to crib from Tillich again, its despair that is the antagonist of faith. When despair sets in, as it does when pastors become over whelmed and burn out, then of course we have a crisis situation. Problem is, a failure to confront doubt, to be panicked by it, to be unwillingly to learn from it,to reject the critical questions it poses, can actually propel one down the road to burn out. I wonder how many pastors who become "unbelieving" are describing a purely cognitive conclusion that they have reached? I'm thinking its at least a mixture of world view and existential reckoning.

I agree that doubt is not at all the enemy. Sometimes it's the job of the pastor to openly and honestly face doubt with the community she serves!

Rod, I think you're correct, and so was Tillich (though my seminary training didn't expose me to as much Tillich as I think my predecessors might have had.). Despair is indeed an enemy, and non-belief is not simply a cognitive issue.

Here's one way I find helpful...

The believing pastor needs the three abiding Pauline virtues at work in his life at all times: faith (as in fidelity in relationship, not just two-dimensional or uncritical intellectual assent); hope (this is in God's hands, even if it's looking pretty bleak to me right now); and the greatest of the three, of course, love (for God and God's people).

John Wesley was not at all sure about his own faith. He suggested essentially that one "fake it till they make it." He looked for assurance of his own salvation throughout his life, but never really got it. I don't even think he particularly hid his struggle.

Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" deals with a priest whose faith has been destroyed and his struggle with whether or not to find it again.

Jesus himself said that if one could not believe in him they could believe in the works that he did. Thus how he incarnated God's presence within his life was itself a guide to how to believe. A person can be an agent for that by living the works even if "belief" seems only a dim possibility.

Clergy live in the same stress milieu as warriors, fire fighters, police, EMT's, and trauma related medical professionals are are likely paid about the equivalent. The others have the advantage of aiding people without necessarily having to engage them. Clergy are engaged in the breadth of their people's lives, living with them through their traumas.

I would submit that the willingness to live in that milieu is belief at its profoundest level, by walking the walk even if one cannot always think the thought.

So we may well need to refine our sense of what constitutes "belief", attaching it to behavior and not thought.

I read the belief net "tract" and stopped at following:"If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is at best a noble lie, and not worth giving one's life for."
Apart from Paul what is basis for this sweeping statement. I will not have Mr. Dreher define who follows Jesus.
Jesus and his call through his life rose in our hearts. Did he rise bodily? I don't know but suspect not.
And Dreher denigrates many who have given their lives for noble causes and may not even believe in any god.

No-one who doesn't have faith in God is likely to become a priest, but the issue affecting many of them is that faith changes over time, and that it is easily possible to find yourself completely out of synch with those you are ministering to.

At first, it is relatively easy to say "well, I believe in the resurrection, just not as literally as I used to", but it can become harder and harder over the years.

For anyone, an ever changing faith journey is a huge challenge. For a priest, it is also potentially a professional nightmare.

Learning more through EfM and Div School saved my faith and did not destroy it -- it got me to the essentials - all the details I could not believe were blown away and I found it was okay to have doubts -they are part of faith. I think people appreciate knowing it is okay to doubt - as in Jesus words of abandonment at the end. When one has an individualistic faith - I think it is more likely one will have a crisis - when in a community of faith - we bear one another through those moments to a deeper place (or so I hope)

Brian said: "Apart from Paul what is basis for this sweeping statement. I will not have Mr. Dreher define who follows Jesus."

I'm not trying to be a fundamentalist, but if the Bible affirms it, Tradition taught it, and people can reason through it isn't that enough? What makes Christianity special for me, and unique, is the belief in Jesus dying and rising again. Is it a full bodily resurrection, or something else? I am not sure either. The Bible isn't clear on this (I mean Jesus disappears and appears, walks through walls, and other strange stuff after his resurrection).

But, I guess if he didn't die and rise again then we are still "dead in our sins" is a pretty bold statement that makes me think twice.

Eric Sinkula

When in a community of faith - we bear one another through those moments to a deeper place.

Ann, thanks for bearing the reminder of this critical dimension to pastoral ministry. I think we as priests/pastors can get easily caught in the trap of considering ourselves the super-Christian!

I can't count the number of times the people I serve have helped pick me up and dust me off so I can move into a deeper faith.

You're so right on. It's what the community holds that matters so more than what I hold as an individual.

I will second Rev. Helmer's last comment Ann.

I copied my comment a second time cause I forgot (as usual) to add my full name.

Eric Sinkula