I was sad. I still am sad. I studied for six years to fulfill all the requirements for ordination. I wore my dog collar proudly and worked tirelessly to help people and to help God’s kingdom come. Being a minister was the lion’s share of my identity. That’s gone now.
For closeted clergy, ministers who are still active but no longer believe, the risks of candor are huge. Family and finances are jeopardized.
By the time he gets out of seminary, every bright kid knows three things:
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Biblical scholarship has dispositively established that the familiar, orthodox Christian narrative is false.
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If he ever says so aloud he will be unemployable as a pastor.
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His expensive seminary education leaves him wholly unfitted for any other kind of work.
I suspect, but can’t prove, that this is what lies behind the Southern Baptist insistence upon young marriage and childbirth; it moves the escape hatch out of reach.
So there you are: Just graduated, married to a woman who was herself raised to be a preacher’s wife and who is wildly impatient to get out of married student housing, and with a nest full of hungry and clamoring little birds. You accept the glib assurances that everybody has occasional episodes of doubt, but faith will overcome that, and get that first job and perhaps even take out a mortgage.
Walking that back and living as an honest man is very nearly impossible.