What’s Weirder? Religious Leaders Who Don’t Believe in God or Atheists Who Do?

When you start disagreeing with Church doctrine, you should probably question why you have a leadership role within it.

When you don’t even think God is real, it’s probably well past time for you to step down.

According to a YouGov poll surveying 1,500 Anglican clergy members, 2% of them agreed with the statement “I am not sure ‘God’ is more than a human construct”:

Clergy were significantly more likely to hold unorthodox beliefs the older they were and the longer they had been in the ministry. Nearly 90 per cent of those ordained since 2011 believe in God compared with only 72 per cent of those who became priests in the 1960s, the research discovered.

Given the number of people who are in the Clergy Project, I suppose it’s not really all that surprising. There are always going to be people whose lives are so invested in their faith that it becomes nearly impossible to leave no matter what they believe. Their skills, their community, they’re all contained within those walls. (Can we do more research into that group? That’s *way* more interesting than church leaders who believe in God.)

Speaking of incongruent beliefs, Tobin Grant at Religion News Service highlights another survey revealing how 6% of atheists are “absolutely certain” they believe in God.

Now that’s weird. Do they not understand atheism or do they have a warped concept of God?