Albert Mohler Calls Closeted Atheist Clergy “Charlatans and Cowards”

Who’s being the coward here? Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an unapologetic young Earth creationist, plays rough with secretly atheist clergy members who have talked in confidence to Daniel Dennett’s The Clergy Project, writing at his blog the following:

The Clergy Project is a magnet for charlatans and cowards who, by their own admission, openly lie to their congregations, hide behind beliefs they do not hold, make common cause with atheists, and still retain their positions and salaries.

Methinks Mohler here doth protest too much, for isn’t it also cowardice that drives the believing clergyman to sublimate, by a leap of faith, an honest confrontation with his own doubts? Additionally, isn’t it charlatanism for a clergyman to then enter the pulpit on a weekend morning, and know that what he says may not be true, and yet he says it (with the confidence of faith) anyway? Mark Twain famously wrote that “faith is believing things you know ain’t so.”

So faith isn’t being brave, it’s being in denial. It’s the let’s pretend game. Let’s pretend we know things we don’t–and pass that off as knowledge shared with courage.

But acting like you have knowledge and courage isn’t the same as actually having knowledge and courage. It’s playing the confidence man–the charlatan–the very thing Mohler accuses the atheist clergyman of being.

A double-bind on atheist clergymen (and women). Let’s give closeted atheist clergy their due. They’re in pain, and the Clergy Project gives them a place where they can talk in private about their conflicted lives. The clergy member who makes use of the Clergy Project is at least admitting her inner truth to someone somewhere. She’s at least not practicing self deception and cognitive dissonance (like so many of her believing colleagues). It’s a first step.

And think of the callous logic of Mohler’s position. He’s basically saying that once you’ve committed yourself intellectually and vocationally to the ministry, you can’t be like Lot’s wife and start looking back. You’ve got to just keep plowing forward in faith, perhaps for decades, and then, if you find yourself losing your beliefs, you’ve got to cut bait and get out. There’s no middle ground to negotiate, only either/or, black or white.

Put another way: Get with the program, stay with the program, don’t doubt the program. That’s Mohler’s alternative to the Clergy Project.

And if you’re going to be a Judas, what you do, do quickly. This means coming out all at once to friends, family members, and one’s supervisors within your religious organization, and walking away, abandoning your source of income (which may be supporting kids in college, etc.).

How many people are really capable of such a traumatic bridge-burning gesture? Probably only very few.

Thus Mohler, by laying the scarlet letter C (for cowardice; for charlatan) on those who contact the Clergy Project, is putting his fellow clerical colleagues in a double-bind: if you doubt your vocation, and secretly contact Dennett’s group, you’re a coward; if you don’t talk to Dennett’s group, and your doubts persist, you’re expected to man-up, confess your sin to everybody of significance to you, and hit-the-road into the secular wilderness, bereft of support.

Call them Ishmael. So if you’re a member of the clergy, you’ve been forewarned. Confess your doubts to unbelievers, and you will not get sympathy or emotional support of any kind from your clerical colleagues. Choose ye this day which team ye are on. Here’s Mohler in the same blog post:

Pernicious doubt leads to unfaithfulness, unbelief, skepticism, cynicism, and despair. Christians — ministers or otherwise — who are struggling with doubt, need to seek help from the faithful, not the faithless.

Pernicious doubt. Did you catch that? Doubt is framed by Mohler as something that causes subtle harm; it’s not a positive virtue. It’s something to be tamped down. If you’re going to get sympathy for your doubt, you have to bring it to your fellow clergymen; you’ve got to keep it in the guild, and your intent must be to kill the infant of doubt in its cradle. It’s Damian; it’s Rosemary’s Baby.

But to treat doubt in this way means the objective truth doesn’t really matter, for doubt leads humans to the truth. Doubt is the bloodhound of truth; the seeker-of-truth’s best friend. Mohler is thus giving his fellow clergymen very narrow parameters for their doubts to chase the truth. They must send forth their doubts in such a way that: (1) institutional religion is not harmed in reputation; and (2) confirmation bias toward one’s religious faith remains in tact. The bloodhound of doubt must pass through “the faithful, not the faithless.”

Which may not get you to the truth at all.

Doubting, Thomas? At the end of his essay, Mohler puts on a brave face as to what the Clergy Project means for religion: “Christianity has little to fear from the Clergy Project. Its website reveals it to be a toothless tiger that will attract media attention, and that is about all.”

And as for squishy liberal members of the clergy who don’t preach red meat superstitions (like a literal Noah’s ark and the rapture) and orthodox doctrines (like Jesus’ virgin birth and physical resurrection), Mohler puts them all on notice as well, writing in the last sentence of his essay the following: “The greater danger to the church is a reduction in doctrine that leaves atheism hard to distinguish from belief.”

Got that, liberal doubting Thomases? Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.