In case you haven’t heard about it, the Clergy Project serves to help ministers who have lost their faith move on with their lives. There are currently more than 185 members, most of whom are former ministers and there are several dozen members who are active ministers. There have also been at least three graduates from the program, including Jerry DeWitt, Michael Aus, and Teresa MacBaine. You can find videos of each of them telling their story after the fold.

One of the goals of the project is to help with reemployment, something that can definitely be difficult. Although for some it’ll be harder than for others. For example, bi-vocational pastors without a theological education would already have another career and at most would have to drop a few details off a resume. For those who serve as full time ministers and all of their education is in theology, it’ll be more difficult.

Even though I was never quite clergy, I understand the difficulty. Sure, it only took me a month to get a job, but I applied to more than 200 different companies across the entire western US and I only interviewed with five companies, had two progress to a second round interview, and only one yielded a job offer. I later found out that the regional who hired me had thought he had hired a good Christian and felt deceived when he found out that he had actually hired a good atheist. At that point I hadn’t sanitized my resume at all, in fact it wasn’t substantially different from the one I had been using to try to get denominational employment. Of course the current version looks a lot different with no unnecessary details (including what my major was).

Even though it’s illegal to ask questions about religion in job interviews, the question is still there. I was only asked it once and even then it was prefaced with “I know I can’t ask you this” and I responded with “You’re right, you can’t.” I was just a student, I can only imagine how much harder it would be for an actual ex-pastor. The reasons most people would think of for why they quit the ministry would be scandal (sex or money), burn out (not the type of person you’d want to hire), or losing faith. At least for a ministerial student only the later option would seem obvious. An employer could even have the fear that it’s someone who’s going to cause trouble by proselytizing at work.

Some of the goals that Teresa talked about at the American Atheist convention and the Northwest Freethought Conference include creating a fund to assist with finances, interviewing, and possibly relocation while looking for work; employment ads in the American Atheist magazine for those willing to hire Clergy Project graduates; and trade school or similar educational opportunities. I hope these efforts are successful since everyone deserves a chance to move on with their lives.