Calling it a “sanctuary for religious refugees,” the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and the Freedom From Religion Foundation have announced the formation of a new group to support religious leaders who have “moved beyond faith” and no longer believe.
The Clergy Project—a community of current and former pastors, priests and rabbis who no longer hold their religious traditions—has now grown to almost 100 members and expects to attract more with the launching of its public informational website, ClergyProject.org on Oct. 7, 2011.
“We know there must be thousands of clergy out there who have secretly abandoned their faith but have nowhere to turn,” says Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher who “lost faith in faith” after 19 years of preaching the gospel. “Now they do have a place to meet, a true sanctuary, a congregation of those of us who have replaced faith and dogma with reason and human well-being.”
“The Clergy Project: Moving Beyond Faith” was started by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, researcher Linda LaScola and Barker. The group claims that members of the project, who remain anonymous, include not only liberal clergy but also “many” evangelical Christian pastors, Southern Baptist pastors, and “a number of Pentecostal preachers.” Membership hopefuls are screened in several stages and require that members no longer hold supernatural beliefs and choose to identify as non-believers.
