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Comments from pastors & spouses

This is a forum for pastors, their spouses, theologians, and other concerned citizens to tell us about their redefining of, or loss of, faith and God. Tell us your story in as few or as many words as you wish. In order to provide anonymity, and protect, those sharing their stories, we change names and omit personal information and locations.

His calling, not mine

Joan: I fell in love with a man, not a pastor or church. The pastor's life is his calling, not mine. I aim to support him in all the practical ways I can, but that does not include free paid work in the church.

I have my own career which I enjoy. I have children, I have a home. My husband's church is not my second home. Church is often a hostile environment. Members gossip; they love to store information about each other. I do not enjoy being there at all, but sometimes I attend in order to support my husband.

I do not know whether my husband's congregation know that I do not believe in God. Perhaps some do, but most don't. It really is none of their business.

The bottom line is that the church and congregation paid my husband to do a job, which he does very well. I am not part of that equation as an unpaid church servant. I am a professional person with my own ambitions.

No need for God

Jessica: There's the helpful, valuable, useful work that pastors do: comforting people; hospital visits; pastoral counseling; assisting families when children are on the wrong side of the law; prison visits; fund-raising for the needy; mission trips. None of that work requires belief in a supreme being, though a pastor might see himself as serving the Lord.

I see belief in God as ornamentation, like decoration on a Christmas tree.

I do not think you have to believe in a supreme being to be a great pastor and a good pastor's spouse.

It's impossible to be an educated and enlightened person and believe the traditional notion of God as a being out there in the universe, a being who is concerned about the details of our lives. That definition has served its purpose, it's dead, but church lives on.

Church can be hateful

Barb: When you are a pastor's spouse, church is often a hateful and harmful environment.

You watch your spouse giving all his time to a congregation, so much time that your family suffers and frustration builds. Your husband spends much more time in church than he does with you and your family.

Church members are incredibly needy. They refuse to accept that a pastor needs to be with his family, that a pastor's children need his father, and that a wife needs quality time with her husband.

Although pastors are not qualified counselors, they are expected to provide free advice to people who really need therapy or a psychiatrist. Churches house a lot of mentally disturbed people who drain everyone around them. At church, they do not receive the help they need.

Disillusioned with church

Mary: When I began my life as a pastor's wife, I dutifully attended church every Sunday. I participated in activities, many of them mind-crushingly dull, and I attended and even led a number of classes.

As the years passed, I became more and more disillusioned with church people. They are among the most emotionally damaged I have met.

Churches are full of bipolar, depressed, and mentally challenged men and women. Pastors are not equipped to deal with those folks who use church as free therapy. They emotionally terrorize the normally-functioning members. They hold members hostage with their mental problems.

They can make the pastor's life a misery because he does his best to help the needy and afflicted.

I lost my faith as I came to see church as a battleground of petty conflicts, mental disorder, power struggle, and selfishness/

Members are so stifled by personal conflict that church has no time or energy for the spiritual and transformative work it is supposed to do. It is a place of squabbles and back biting.

After a life of being a Christian, I am now an agnostic and much happier. My husband is still a pastor, and he is terribly depressed most of the time.

Center of ignorance

George: I fell in love with the woman who would become my wife when I was a science major and she was at divinity school. I was a mild Christian with agnostic tendencies, and she was an enthusiastic and intellectually curious liberal Christian.

We had wonderful discussions about science and religion, evolution, politics, fundamentalism, the good and bad done in the name of God.

My wife got her M. Div., became ordained as a pastor, then began a church career.

The freedom we had known at university, the no-holds barred discussions, disappeared. My wife would become hurt and resentful if I challenged any of her church's beliefs. She said it was different now she was a pastor. She said it was her job to defend the church.

I told her I couldn't take seriously people who insisted the universe was only 10,000 years old, or that the Bible was literally true in all its details. I couldn't accept that people go to hell merely for not being Christian. I refused to listen to the rampant homophobia of so many church members.

I know that my wife does not believe these things, but she refuses to challenge church members who spout these beliefs.

I love my wife, but I stopped attending church. I took no part in it whatsover.

For me, church is petty, dishonest, and hateful. It is the home of considerable evil which is allowed to run wild in the name of religious freedom.

I will not leave my wive, I will not ask her to abandon her calling. But I will not take part in church as long as it is a center of hatred and ignorance.

Church is not for thinkers

Laura: If you are an intellectual, if you love ideas and free, open discussion, church is the worst possible place to be.

Church is where you are expected to believe myth as fact, lies as truth, and nonsense as morality.

As an intellectual, if you want to survive in church, you must park your brain at the door.

I cannot, and will not, believe something simply because it has been passed from father to son for generations. So much hatred has been passed down in that way. So much hatred has gone unchallenged in the name of obedience to God.

My husband is a pastor. I love him, but I dislike his work and all it stands for.

I have no love, nor even sympathy, for church and its teachings. I think churches are horrible places full or horrible ideas.

Damage to family

Alan: I am so grateful for this opportunity to vent about the damage done to me and my family by that hateful institution called church.

God is said to be love, but his members can so often be mean and cruel.

My wife is the pastor of a church where the members are petty and divisive. They have broken her spirit. She so wants to do God's work but spends all her time resolving personal disagreements and soothing bruised egos.

Church is all about ego. It is nothing to do with reaching for our better, higher, spiritual selves.

Church is power struggle. Church is defending the status quo. Those who give the most, decide the most.

I hate it. I hate everything about it. I am qualified to say that because I have been a pastor's husband for 15 years. Church is a vile environment in which to raise a family.

Loss of faith

Sue: The quickest and easiest way to lose your faith in God is to marry a priest.

A decade of intense exposure to church has taught me God is a human invention, speaking to human fears and frailties, to human weakness and human selfishness.

If you want to do good, spread tolerance, and make a positve difference in the world, church is the worst possible place to be.

If you are thinking of marrying a pastor, DON'T DO IT!

Church homophobia

Gordon: One issue alone destroyed my love of church and my faith in God: homophobia.

The most intense hatred toward fellow human beings is found in church and among religious people.

Churches provide people with the freedom and opportunity to say and do great harm. It is called religious freedom.

In any mainstream congregation in American, you will witness a hatred of gay people which would be illegal in the workplace.

Humans use the name of God to justify their hatred of our gay and lesbian brothes and sisters.

That hatred has driven me from church and turned me away from God.

Punishing the curious

Grace: Pastors are in a very difficult position. They might be highly qualified with degrees from good schools. They might be open to free discussion, but their congregations prevent this.

Most church members have no theological training. What they know and understand of theology and scripture has been passed down to them over the generations. They believe because their families have always believed it. They don't want to entertain the thought their parents and grandparents lived by ideas and beliefs that were wrong.

When a person's faith is questioned, the person can become defensive and angry if they lack the intellectual tools to engage in discussion. Rather than talk with you, such people will shut you up or cut you off.

That's how church works. It silences honest inquiry. It does not allow dissent. It values obedience, and praises unquestioning faith.

Pastors break wth tradition at their peril. That's one reason why church is an unhealthy place to bring up bright children. Church punishes the curious.

Life and happiness

Robin: I think we expect too much of church. For most members it's an important place to be on Sunday, something that families have always done. But during the week, people don't give church and God much thought. Which I think is fine

Church is no longer at the forefront of many struggles. Church is often a backward force, aiming to restrict people's freedoms and rights. Church is not able to keep up with the pace of societal change.

Enthusiastic young pastors can become disullusioned very quickly because church members don't want to transform or be transformed. They just want church life to tick along as it always has.

I lost my faith because church is so dull and boring. If that is God, I don't need God. I prefer life and happiness.

Corporate culture

Alex: Church is no longer a major driving force in society. It's more of an knee-jerk operation, reacting to change rather than initiating it.

Evangelicals are active, but only in a negative way. Gay marrige? Let's stop it, say evangelicals. Science education? Let's restrict it.

My loss of faith as a pastor's spouse was gradual as I began to see church as a faint reflection of American corporate culture. Church props up what it is to be a mainstream American. Church has no unique voice. It is the voice of behave, work hard, and buy lots of stuff.

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God is not a being

Maria: It should not surprise us that there are many pastors, priests, clergy of all faiths and denominations who do not believe in God, certainly not in God as a being with a mind, a plan, and an exclusive purpose for human beings. My husband is a pastor and he abandoned the idea of a supreme being many years ago.

The idea of God as a being is primitive. It has stuck with us for as long as humans have been able to put their thoughts into language.

This fossilized idea of God as a supernatural being is probably what most believers have in mind when they think of God. It is very easy as an educated person to dismiss that God.

Huge difficulties arise in giving church members a different idea and definition of God, one which is consistent with science and modern knowledge. It would lead to millions losing their faith, or at least becoming very angry. And it would mean thousands of clergy losing their jobs.

It's far easier for pastors to keep working within the old framework. It is even possible to find some value in that.

Also, being a pastor is a job. It enables you to feed and raise and house a family. Why give that up over a definition of God?

There is no need to get upset about this. Pastors do a lot of useful work. Many people and families would function less well if it were not for the presence of a good pastor in their lives.

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