TELLING folk they are miserable sinners who must repent or face hellfire is turning US evangelical preachers into a breed of emotional wrecks – and half would leave the ministry tomorrow.
Jonathan Falwell
Addressing a “Refuel” conference designed to lift the spirits of American evangelists in Virginia this week, Jonathan Falwell – son of the obese homo-hater Jerry Falwell of Tinky Winky fame who died from over-eating in 2007 – laid some grim statistics before his audience, saying:
Something is wrong in ministry
According to the Christian Post, Falwell lamented the fact that 1,500 pastors walk away from ministry every month because of moral failure, burnout, conflict, discouragement or depression. He was also shocked to find that 80 percent of seminary and Bible school graduates will leave the ministry within their first five years.
Another article paints an even grimmer picture, based on a survey of 1,050 evangelical preachers.
- 89 percent considered leaving the ministry at one time.
- 57 percent said they would leave if they had a better place to go—including secular work.
- 77 percent felt they did not have a good marriage.
- 75 percent felt they were unqualified and/or poorly trained by their seminaries to lead and manage the church or to counsel others. This left them disheartened in their ability to pastor.
- 71 percent stated they were burned out, and they battle depression beyond fatigue on a weekly and even a daily basis.
- 38 percent said they were divorced or currently in a divorce process.
- 30 percent either has an ongoing affair or a one-time sexual encounter with a parishioner.
The same article also gives the following research distilled from Barna, Focus on the Family, and Fuller Seminary.
- 1500 pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
- 50 percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.
- 50 percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
- 80 percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
- 70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
- 40 percent of pastors polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
Commenting on these statistics, former Baptist fundie Ken Pulliam – “saved” at the age of 18 but thankfully now sane – said he wasn’t gloating over the statistics:
I truly feel sorry for anyone who is depressed or who feels locked into an occupation that they don’t enjoy. Life is too short to go through it like that. I post this because, in my opinion, it confirms my conclusion that evangelical Christianity is not true. It seems to me that if it were true, there would be a marked difference between Christians, especially Christian leaders, and the rest of society. If anything, it seems that evangelical pastors are in a worse condition than the average non-believer.
Pulliam taught at International Baptist College in Tempe, Arizona, for nine years.
After a few years of accumulating doubts, my Christian faith evaporated sometime during the course of 1996. I am no longer a believer. If I had to pigeonhole myself, I would say I am an agnostic atheist.
Hat tip: Marcus
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 21st, 2010 at 8:13 am
So where is their god who gives them strength to go about ‘his’ work and redeem all us secular sinners? Perhaps he’s got a bit stressed as well and gone off to do something useful.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:27 am
I have no sympathy for these parasites.
If you’re going to make a career out of filling other people with fear, self-loathing and self-righteousness, expect consequences. Whatever remnants of sanity and decency that survive in your system will inevitably start to torment you.
May 21st, 2010 at 11:25 am
But it’s not only the ministers and church leaders. If you are told that the christian life is full of “joy unspeakable and full of glory”, and that Jesus is a sympathetic high priest (Heb.4) who has himself trodden this pathway, and will always give believers enough strength to excel whatever pressures come their way, then it is a terrible blow to find, as I did, that you are going under, and most decidedly NOT in a position to “count it all joy” when difficulties overwhelm you (James 1), nor to “give thanks always for all things” (Eph. 5:20), knowing that “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom.8:28)! This, sadly, is the position of millions of Christians who imbibe all this “holiness” teaching, and as any fault must lie within them, and their failure to “keep close to the Lord”, it is no wonder that so many suffer from mental disorders – compounded, of course, by the fact that to go to an “unsaved” GP and ask for “tablets” to cope with trials that God Himself has sent along in His infinite wisdom would be considered an almost unforgivable sin!!
May 21st, 2010 at 11:31 am
Read some of this, if you can bear it, from a favourite site of mine!
http://www.raptureready.com/soap/taylor1.html
May 21st, 2010 at 11:41 am
Read 1 Cor. 10: 1-13 as well. Here, believers are warned not to follow the example of the Israelites in the Wilderness, who did nothing but moan about their circumstances (well, who wouldn’t be glad to live in a tent in a barren desert for years after experiencing the pleasures of life in Egypt?), and thus were destroyed by JHWH! The passage ends with this verse: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” Millions of Christians, including, I feel sure, these pastors, have absolute faith that this is true, even though their experience says otherwise!!
May 21st, 2010 at 12:14 pm
These statistics point to some deductions:
1. The claims for happiness, ecstacy and the wonders of knowing Jesus must be coming either from hypocrites or very few christians;
2. The strain of believing the incredible has to put enormous strain on anyone with half a brain. They have to attempt to square this circle every day. Of course, they are going to buckle.
3. The internet has changed their defended and protected closed world. They can no longer avoid the secularists, they do often read them. As one fundie said to me, “That Dawkins seems everywhere I open a newspaper or turn on the TV.” If only that were true but it reflects the impact and not the frequency.
4. They are on the beach and the tide has gone out. With no attempt, particularly from fundies, to bring their bible, their ideas, their morals, honesty and modern views into the modern era they are lost. Sunk in the stygian darkness of a past where they grope and blunder. George Eliot drew a portrait of these sad souls in her description of the clegyman Causubon in Middle March. He was forever bullshitting about his great work unaware, as he couldn’t read German, that the German theologians had already made him and it anachronisms.
5. I am a contented atheist, long married to the same woman, and with no need to embrace these dreadful requirements of the christian or any other faith. I have no problems changing my opinions in the face of new facts and, welcome that, unlike fundies.
May 21st, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Living up to the silly expectations of an invisible zombie probably sucks all life and joy out of us mortals. I know I could never do this. As a species, we’re not up to this at all, so go Atheism!!!! Live your life without being an ass-hole 24/7 and you’ll be okay!
May 21st, 2010 at 12:42 pm
I wonder if theological univervities instruct their students that 80% of them will be leaving their job within five years. I wonder if any practical, useful, secular university curriculum (small engine repair, medicine, art, etc.) would survive with similar failure rates. But I do not wonder for long.
Hard to say if religion causes to their misery or their misery is formalized as religion. But easy to say to cut out religion is to end the cycle. What would you replace it with? What do you replace when you remove a thorn?
May 21st, 2010 at 3:19 pm
I wonder what percentage of those who don’t have these difficulties are sociopaths?
May 21st, 2010 at 3:38 pm
@ Urmensch
All of them naturally. How else could they spend their entire lives going around telling people who don’t share their beliefs that they are terrible, unsaved sinners?
I used to know a lad a school who would punch anyone who didn’t agree with him and he went on to be a nasty piece of crap and spent time with Her Majesty. He would actually have made a terrific vicar/priest/evangelical spouter, a real Father Jack figure.
May 21st, 2010 at 3:52 pm
You would have thought that god, being a compassionate chap with the power to grant anybody anything and all that, would make sure that his representatives here on earth were the happiest of the happy.
Maybe he’s forgotten them. Or maybe he’s busy doing something else. Or maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t actually exist.
May 21st, 2010 at 5:00 pm
What about the criteria for admission to their colleges? To what extent is intellectual ability, emotional maturity and personal insight over ridden by “belief, conviction and what they say is their faith in their fantasy fairy.” They seem to stick doctorates – “non clinical and non PH.d.” – on their favoured ranters with abandon.
What a sick system. And to think that these deeply emotionally maladjusted, ill read and ignorant clergy are there “guiding” their even more ignorant – but each with a vote – flocks.
May 21st, 2010 at 5:10 pm
@barriejohn. I decided to have a look at the RAPTURE you kindly provided. Difficult to imagine anything, outside fundieland, more weird. I noticed, in particular, this,
“Do you know this Jesus? Are you expecting His soon return? Have you made that the most important part of your life? Have you asked Him to come into your heart and cleanse you from all unrighteousness?”
His “soon return” has been awaited for 2000 years and in the early days someone (Origen, I think) cut his balls off to stop his lusts as he thought he would be in heaven soon.
The entire piece has, of course, that dumbfuck dopey tone that lets you know you are in la la land with a vengeance.
May 21st, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I think that the presence of the internet makes it more and more difficult to maintain a belief system that is mostly based upon falsehoods. Not only the preacher himself but every one around him is being exposed, in varying degrees, to more information and contrary arguments. Even before the internet the more cultish branches of religion had to go to great lengths to prevent followers from learning about opinions that contradicted their own. A religion would have to be extremely insular to acheive this in the internet age.
May 21st, 2010 at 5:19 pm
He might come tonight, Broga – are you ready? This threat is continually held over the heads of Christians, who are exhorted not to be “ashamed before Him at His coming”! (1 John 2:28)
May 21st, 2010 at 6:08 pm
I was brought up to believe that one necessary requirement of a happy life was honest, useful work. This just confirms the truth of that.
May 21st, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Thanks barrie, I will say my prayers. When I was a child, Scotland and Presbyterian, I was taught to say my prayers e.g.
“If I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take.” As a healthy five year old I thought later that was a touch on the pessimistic side. However, here is another I remember,
“Grow like a tree, strong and fine;
Smile as you go, never whine.
Travel with courage, climb or plod,
Live as Jesus did, near to God.”
The technicalities, or practicalities, of following these injunctions were never explained. Later I had to learn “The Lord’s Prayer” in the days when we had to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Later than became trespasses.
I never had any pressure on me as we were not a religious family. My own kids learned non of this. Although I read to them in bed at night for years. They liked children’s versions of the Greek legends, Theseus and the Minotaur, Perseus, Odysseus, the Trojan War and so on. On holidays the sea, rocks, cliffs – we loved the sea – were rechristened to re-enact the legends. I still remember with delight “The Clashing Rocks.” I was just a big kid myself, I suppose.
May 21st, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Among the many reasons offered for god-pushers abandoning their crime against humanity, I don’t see any mention of the quantity and quality of evidence they encounter every day that is incompatible with what they are required to preach. Presumably pushers sit on toilet seats, and watch TV ads for tampons, as often as the rest of us. Inevitably at least a percentage are going to ask themselves, “Would any god that is not a sick, repulsive, antihuman sadist have created such abominations?”
The big reason Catholic priests and psychiatrists have the highest suicide rates* is that, when they finally recognize that they are practising humbuggery, they also recognize that they have no ability to do anything else. They either stay on as hypocrites, or they get out by the most convenient means.
*The suicide rate of psychiatrists is a matter of record. The RC church falsifies death certificates at every opportunity to show priestly suicides as death from some other cause.
May 21st, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I think, from a visit to Ireland a few years ago, that alcoholism and associated liver disease, must kill many who drink themselves to death. The heavy drinking of the priest seemed to be taken for granted. The character in “Father Ted” – Father Jack – may be sketched from life.
The need to numb their brains from the thoughts of what they have undertaken, and what they now endure, must be overwhelming. Add to that the fact that they are daily playing a role in a nonsensical charade and something has got to give. Imagine the bitter regrets of what might have been. And all this in the context of a role, a faith, a system shown with clarity to be bogus. The Emperor’s (Pope’s) New Clothes I suppose.
May 21st, 2010 at 7:10 pm
As an aside to all this, can I just relate that, when I had a “nervous breakdown”, one of the leading Brethren (also my landlord, coincidentally – now there’s a surprise!), realizing that the local churches were about to lose a very useful member, tried very hard to get me to see a prominent christian homoeopath (I kid you not!) who had apparently been of great assistance to members of his own family who had experienced similar problems (no further comment necessary there!). According to him, this help could be obtained on the NHS if I went through the right channels – something which amazed me then and appalls me today!!
May 21st, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Broga: aren’t you overlooking the problem of alcoholism and mental illness in the medical profession as well – doubtless with much the same underlying cause?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea.....check.html
May 21st, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I can’t bring myself to feel an ounce of pity for those predatory charlatans.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:07 pm
The RC church falsifies death certificates at every opportunity to show priestly suicides as death from some other cause.
Plausible, entirely plausible. But are you going by evidence, anecdote or assumption?
May 21st, 2010 at 8:17 pm
@barriejohn. Thanks for that about doctors. I know doctors are heavy drinkers and, in the past, smokers. But I didn’t know things were that bad. My wife is a doctor and drinks very little. However, she tells me that hitting the bottle very hard is often acquired as medical students. She smoked but gave up decades ago. Bloody scary when you think who you might be getting if you need an operation.
I know vets have a high suicide rate and that may be something to do with easy access to the means – bollocks to the assisted dying views of the bishops in the House of Lords for them. Having watched a couple of my old dogs being euthanased I wish, should it be needed, I could have as easy an exit.
What about teachers? In many schools that seems a really tough job. My sympathies were with that recent teacher who was driven to thump some bumptious dumfuck who was deliberately pushing him. I just know I couldn’t handle a class of kids with no interest in learning and intent on entertaining themselves by tormenting the teacher.
Bit off subject. But has it always been like this, I wonder. Or is there some flaw or weaknesses running right through the core of our society.
May 21st, 2010 at 9:08 pm
@barriejohn Absolutely. You wouldn’t want to be under the knife or on the receiving end of some of the injections from some medics.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Re Catholic priests and their death certificates, this was reported on several sites about ten years ago:
A report that hundreds of Catholic priests in America have died of AIDS is “sad” and a “disappointment” but not necessarily a surprise because the disease is so pervasive in society in general, Catholic Church officials said on Monday.
The statements by Catholic officials came in response to a nationwide investigation by the Kansas City Star newspaper — a three-part series running from Sunday to Tuesday — that found Catholic priests were dying of AIDS at a rate far higher than the general U.S. population.
Calling AIDS the “black plague of our times”, Kansas City, Kansas, Archbishop James Keleher said in a statement, “It is no wonder that it (AIDS) has also touched Catholic clergy as well as ministers of other churches. But no matter how few clergy it has infected this is surely very sad.”
Rebecca Summers, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City in Missouri, said though priests take a vow of celibacy, the church is aware that not all priests are celibate. She said while the Star’s findings were a “disappointment,” they were not necessarily a surprise.
“You have to look at society in general. Why would we say they (priests) would not mirror what is in the society?” she asked.
In its investigation, the Star reported that at least 300 Catholic priests have died of AIDS since the mid-1980s, an annualized death rate at least four times that of the general U.S. population. The newspaper confirmed that the annualized AIDS death rate of priests in Kansas and Missouri from 1987 to 1999 was seven times that of the general population.
The newspaper’s story was based on an 18-month investigation that included 800 responses from a national survey of 3,000 Catholic priests, as well as an analysis of health statistics, a review of death certificates and interviews with hundreds of priests, church officials and AIDS experts across the United States.
According to several sources quoted by the Star, many of the priests who died were infected through sexual activity, including homosexual acts.
The newspaper report said many Catholic clergy blamed church practices, including a lack of sexual education, for the spread of the disease in their ranks.
But Summers said current church practices in seminaries include thorough discussion of sexuality as well as an analysis of a potential priest’s psychological and medical background.
Given the sensitivity of the issue, many priests kept their illness a secret and the information on some death certificates was falsified, the Star reported.
http://ainews.com/Archives/Story261.phtml
May 21st, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Don: a logical deduction based on what is known about how the RC church operates in covering up embarrassing facts, the certainty that it is what they would do, and the observable reality that they have means, motive and opportunity.
May 21st, 2010 at 11:43 pm
@ Broga, in the mid-nineties I rented a room to a young doctor who worked at one of the big London hospitals. He drank frightening quanties of booze without ever appearing drunk, and smoked like a chimney. But the stress he had at work – and his hours – beggared belief. One morning, at about 8, he was already halfway through a bottle of vodka, having just finished a shift. “Bad night?” I asked. “You better believe it,” he said, then told me that he had almost been lynched by a posse of enraged Muslims at 4 am.
About an hour earlier a nurse told him a patient had flat-lined, and asked him to notify the family, who quickly converged on the hospital in great numbers, demanding to know how the old lady had come to snuff it when she’d only been admitted for some minor surgery. In the midst of all the loud wailing, shouting and praying, an elderly woman shuffled from a ward and demanded to know what all the noise was about. It was their “dead” relative. The nurse had given the doc the wrong patient details. Uproar followed, and the family tried to attack him. But for the intervention of security guards, he reckoned he would have ended up as a patient in casualty.
May 22nd, 2010 at 12:00 am
I didn’t need telling these people are a miserable bunch of bastards.
May 22nd, 2010 at 12:34 am
I’ll try to make this short because no one wants to hear my life story. I will confine this to the “happiness” during my years as a child in a fundamentalist christian family.
Early years, I felt like a freak, no peers except in the church. My teachers recognized my inteligence, and even tried to foster it, but it was all lost in my lack of self worth. Teen years, I turned to drugs because stoners were the only group I could find acceptance. Early adulthood was an oscillation between rebellion and repentance. But, never finding a center.
But, in retrospect, I can see now that religion NEVER made any sense to me, and the more I studied the Bible trying to build my faith, the more bullshit I found. Add to that, my family was one big closet of skeletons, we had one face we put on for the congregation, another we wore for the world. (I found my dad’s stash of porn, skanky shit, too) Piece by piece though, over the years, it became clear that everyone was wearing the same mask. You have to pretend to be happy or it will be taken as a sign of spiritual weakness. You never ask questions or reveal your doubts.
Is there any reason to wonder why fundies have a scrambled psyche? You can’t even be real with yourself, let alone others. And the best way to convince your peers of your spiritual fortitude is to be heard belittling unbelievers. Sad on so many levels.
NeoWolfe