A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola report interviews with clergy who no longer believe important parts of what their roles require them to teach. Expanded from an initial pilot study, the book explores secrecy, vocational identity, financial dependence, family and congregational expectations, routes into ministry, and the difficult choices available to closeted or former nonbelieving clergy.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
It makes visible a uniquely constrained form of belief change in which honesty can threaten livelihood, housing, marriage, community, and professional identity at once. For clergy travelers, recognition alone may reduce isolation; for others, the study complicates assumptions that ministers always believe what they say. Its Library role is bounded qualitative evidence, not an estimate of prevalence.
Good starting place if…
You are researching or living the specific pressures faced by clergy who privately doubt or no longer believe and want firsthand qualitative accounts.
Know before you begin…
The sample is small, self-selected, and nonrepresentative; it cannot show how common clergy nonbelief is or predict outcomes after disclosure. Participants' safety and employment stakes are substantial. The book should never be used to speculate about a particular minister, pressure someone to disclose, or treat every theological change as concealed atheism.