Jump to content
IGNORED

Pastor's Kids Leaving the Church...


feministing

Recommended Posts

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... e-pastors/

Note that this is probably an underestimate because the pastors were interviewed, rather than the kids.

Do you think the numbers are higher or lower among fundies? Also, do you think more people join Christianity than leave it?

At first I thought more people left Christianity, but after meeting so many born-agains who were converted in college, I am beginning to think the opposite is true. Any thoughts/anecdotes?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Young people who go away to college due to tend to leave their faith. It could be that there is no one pushing them to go to church and read that bible. If they see peers in college actively engaged in their faith, they are likely to recommit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Young people who go away to college due to tend to leave their faith. It could be that there is no one pushing them to go to church and read that bible. If they see peers in college actively engaged in their faith, they are likely to recommit.

Very true! I think your statement & reasoning is probably why the Maxwell kids r not part of the "world" Steve thinks if they r part of the "world" they will go away from their faith & maybe realize their father is a nutcase.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Young people who go away to college due to tend to leave their faith. It could be that there is no one pushing them to go to church and read that bible. If they see peers in college actively engaged in their faith, they are likely to recommit.

Just from personal experience and the experiences of others I have known and we aren't pastor kids but kids raised with church/God being the very center of life, this isn't really that true. What happens is, is that you get to college, you start meeting people who believe differently than you do, you start studying things from a perspective that you have never been exposed to and then you realize that the faith that you thought you had wasn't really your faith, it was your parents faith. So you either go adopt a different sort of faith that might not include going to church or realize you have no faith at all. And this isn't a bad thing. If the only way a person can keep their faith is if everyone else is doing it so they do it to go with the norm, then the faith isn't really their faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My father was a pastor for many years and remained active in church for an even longer time after that, even when he decided to step down from his pastor position. I have 7 siblings, 4 of whom are adults and living outside of our parents' home now. The 5 of us who are on our own now are completely areligious. I know that 4 of us are atheist and the 5th is bordering on it. It's difficult to cut those ties when they were your foundation in life for the better part of 20 years but we've all managed to do it for a variety of reasons. Of the 3 children still living at home, I am fairly certain that at least one, if not two, of them will end up leaving religion as well.

From the end of the article:

If you really want to know what it’s like being a pastor’s kid, ask them. Don’t ask their parents. I suspect you’ll find that logic and reason play a bigger role in why they walked away from the church than even the hypocrisy they saw from within.

The bolded portion is why I left organized religion and eventually religion altogether. It just does not have any sense of reason to it and I cannot embrace, practice, or accept it in any way. One thing that did make it easier to leave religion was, ironically, my dad. Even as a very religious and spiritual person, he encouraged us not to accept things at face value. He wanted us to follow in his footsteps because we believed it and it was important to us, not because we had been force-fed it for life. I imagine my leaving would have been made more difficult if he hadn't opened that door to critical thinking when I was young.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very true! I think your statement & reasoning is probably why the Maxwell kids r not part of the "world" Steve thinks if they r part of the "world" they will go away from their faith & maybe realize their father is a nutcase.

I think that the reason why a lot of fundies in general don't like college is the fear that their children will drop away from the faith they have been raised in. Even if the child decides on a different faith that fits them better based on their true beliefs vs. what they have been told to believe, there's a lot of parents (and not just fundies) who equate it as totally falling away.

It depends though. I went to an evangelical Christian college and believe me a lot of those students were not falling away by any means and most of them were away from home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that the reason why a lot of fundies in general don't like college is the fear that their children will drop away from the faith they have been raised in. Even if the child decides on a different faith that fits them better based on their true beliefs vs. what they have been told to believe, there's a lot of parents (and not just fundies) who equate it as totally falling away.

It depends though. I went to an evangelical Christian college and believe me a lot of those students were not falling away by any means and most of them were away from home.

You just reminded me of something my mom said to me when I was entering high school. I was interested in studying psychology and had considered becoming a therapist. She told me that I should be careful because my uncle had studied psychology and it had caused him to fall away from spirituality and become an atheist. No joke. My parents are very different in that regard. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My parents' congregation (fundie lite) really push Christian college on the grounds that those young people will all leave the church if exposed to a real education.

More education destroying faith would seem to indicate a problem with the faith, but honestly embracing critical thought just doesn't happen there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As mentioned above I went to a evangelical Christian college, not fundie or fundie-lite just conservative. In my last year of college, I took one of my required religion course which was Philosophy of Relgion, taught by a former fundie (Baptist) professor. What was interesting about his class was helping us toward having an "intelligent faith" something that encompassed but faith and one's learning. He didn't seek to destroy anyone's faith just encouraged to think about it in new ways. I loved the class but there some classmates that just squirmed their way through it.

I liked it because I was already changing in my views of Christianity but for the first time felt OK about it. Before I thought that I didn't accept everything taught in Sunday School / Confirmation and preached that I wasn't truly Christian.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm. Is this for a specific denomination? In my experience, the children of priests (in the Anglican church) either tend to join the priesthood or leave the faith entirely - the latter in huge numbers these days. There are very few who fall in between, maybe having the kids baptized or having a religious wedding, but certainly no involvement in the Anglican community after that. The numbers here seem way too low.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just from personal experience and the experiences of others I have known and we aren't pastor kids but kids raised with church/God being the very center of life, this isn't really that true. What happens is, is that you get to college, you start meeting people who believe differently than you do, you start studying things from a perspective that you have never been exposed to and then you realize that the faith that you thought you had wasn't really your faith, it was your parents faith. So you either go adopt a different sort of faith that might not include going to church or realize you have no faith at all. And this isn't a bad thing. If the only way a person can keep their faith is if everyone else is doing it so they do it to go with the norm, then the faith isn't really their faith.

This was how it was for me as well, especially the part about it not being MY beliefs, they were my parent's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a PK here, but a former fundie from a very conservative/fundie-lite/occasionally fundie for real family.

College was the beginning of the end for me not because of the education in the classroom, but because I finally got to meet people who I'd been told all my life were horrible, awful folks Atheists. Feminists. Gay people. People who lived with/slept with their boyfriends/girlfriends. Oh, I still did go to church every week, and was a teetotaller throughout college (As were most of my non-religious friends). But I was very fortunate in that despite myself most of those "evil" people I met loved me and cared about me, and were easy to love and care for in return. So I knew the church was lying to me. It wasn't too hard of a stretch to wonder what else they were lying about too. It was a very humbling experience, realizing how much I had to atone for.

I think despite what fundie parents might say about sexytimes and 'immorality' being the main reason why they're afraid of college for their kids, I actually think they're afraid of the people: normal, kind, sweet, loving, generous, friendly people who do not share the same religious/spiritual/legalistic background that their kids might meet. And realize how they've been lied to by their families and church.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think that because you go to college you are automatically going to leave your faith, question it or give up religion at all. I think a lot of it depends on how religion was presented to you growing up. If your family was hardcore everything is bad or you are going to hell if you do something they believe is against God, then I think you may be shocked going out into the world and seeing people who think or live differently. I can see those kids changing just because they found that much of what they were taught about others were lies.

I grew up Catholic, although not crazy conservative, and my friends were either Catholic or some other version of Christianity. No one left the faith as an adult and they still go to mass or church. We all went to college, met different people and yet kept the faith. The difference is that we were raised to believe in God and his teachings but not raised to hate or fear people for some crazy reason. I never questioned by faith but I also don't think that religion should be involved in every aspect of my life.

I did know a couple of pastor's kids that went off the rails for awhile, although they are doing fine now, and I don't think it had anything to do with religion. I think the problem was that there is an enormous amount of pressure being a pastor's child. You are part of the first family of the church. You have to be perfect all the time. Any mistake reflects poorly on your family and the church. I think it just becomes too much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think, too, a lot of kids are just waiting until they're out of the home and they don't have to attend church with their family every week, and that's also just an age where you're going to be forging a new identity anyway. I've heard a lot of "college makes people abandon their faith" panicking, but I don't think it's that simple at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My fundie side of the family includes four generations of ministers, all college educated and nearly all terribly devout. They all attended college, but even if some of those colleges weren't fundie (Lee, Liberty, Seattle Pacific, Palm Beach Atlantic, Trinity Western) they were always Christian colleges. Generation 3 included a son disowned because he was gay yet that one remained Christian & joined another denomination, and one son who left the church but continued to send his children. Generation 4 seems stronger fundie than 2 & 3, almost hearkening back to generation 1 which was practically puritan. The couple of exceptions in generation 4 are some cousins who are Mark Driscoll followers, and a couple of the young ones who seem to be going through the motions rather halfheartedly, probably to please their parents and grandparents, who I can see either walking away or just being lite once they grow up and figure things out.

I often wonder why there are so few defections from that group. Indoctrinated with fear is my best guess. My great-uncle was fond of telling a story of a church member who took the name of the lord in vain in the sanctuary and was struck dead by lightening the moment he walked outdoors. That and the hefty dose of fire & brimstone during every Sunday (morning & night) sermon , Wednesday prayer meeting, Friday youth group, chapel at school every weekday morning, and most of summer at the chruch's bible camp and the rest of summer at daily vacation bible school and Christianity is saturating every pore for life.

edited for spelling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I have a lot of preachers in my family, including both my parents. (Both are retired, but my mom still does chaplaincy work.)

In my family, it's normative to get as much education as you can afford (and college is considered something worth taking on debt for). There are even more teachers and social workers in my family than there are preachers.

I experimented with not going to church for a while when I got to college, because I could, and discovered I really missed it. Top on the list of things I missed was having people I could talk with about spiritual experience and ethics. Next was singing with other people. Next was working through scripture passages with other people. None of those activities are as joyful or as thought-provoking to me on my own. I've gone pretty close to weekly since then.

Had I grown up in a church that was particularly repressive, misogynist, or hateful, even the things I love about church wouldn't have brought me back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IME, yes PKs are the first to leave the church. We grow up seeing the hypocrisy up close and personally.

There are eight in my family. Of those eight, only two of us identify as Christian now and we don't attend church much at all. The others are either agnostic or outright atheists.

I knew which members of the church would smile at children on Sunday but yell at my father on Tuesday because the children of the church were using the wheelchair ramp to run on. I knew who wouldn't reign in the choir director even though he was predatory with the children he was providing piano lessons, because his grandmother was a founding member of the church and therefore he was not to be corrected. I knew who forced their teen daughter into having an abortion, but spouted pro-life all day long from the church.

I also knew that my father had a public face and a private face, and in private he was a cruel man to us even when he was a gentle shepherd to his "flock."

I am one of the two who identifies as Christian still and I refuse to step foot in a church. My faith is intact, but I find the hypocrisy in the church too disgusting to tolerate anymore in my life.

I think ministers are too quick to sacrifice their own family for their ministry. I think that is why even as far back as Samuel, you see great men of faith....with children who do everything but carry on the faith of their parents. I think that even a great person of faith can and often does neglect their own children. I know that church members demand that they be a higher priority than a minister's family and I've even known churches who have fired ministers who insisted on putting their family first. At the same time, even as a grown adult, until my father left the minister, anytime he needed to "prove" he was a good minister, he had to have my family come be put on display because I was the one adult child still identified as Christian to "prove" he could walk the walk. That is entirely unfair. Being a preacher does not guarantee that your children will remain in the faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Um, yeah, totally inaccurate to make ANY determination by asking the actual preachers.

Here's why. We are not the only PKs I know who allow our parents to believe one thing about our faith and involvement in the church and actually live something ENTIRELY different. If you were to ask my father, he would tell you a very similar break down of holding onto the faith versus actual rejection. He would tell you that all but one of his children still retained their faith and the reality is that only one of his children will bother to tell HIM that they reject his faith.

I happen to know that if my atheist sister were to identify with any religion now, it is Budhist. However, if you ask my father, he believes she is a member of a local Methodist congregation. Technically, I think she is. I think she goes for Christmas once every five years just so her clients don't realize that she's not Christian in the middle of the Bible belt. The others are nearly identical stories.

I personally would attend church IF I could go to a UU congregation but am afraid of giving my father a heart attack and thus go to no church. However, he believes I am involved in my local church and would answer far differently in a survey asking HIM about our faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just from my personal experience, I think 33% still in is on the high side. I was a (homeschooling, frumper wearing, CYIA summer missionaries, fundy, non-quiverfull) Elder's kid, and my family is 0 for 3, for kids staying in the church. I went to a strict Baptist Uni, and my younger brothers went to state schools.

For the most part we left because our parents instilled us with critical thinking skills from a young age, boy did that backfire!

I can't speak for my brothers, but I left because I was tired of the bigotry and hatred and anti-intellectualism I saw in the church. Also, the more I researched and dug into the scriptures, the less I could rationalize away the inconsistencies and other problems that I found.

I also got tired of being told I am less of a person for being born with a vagina.

At this point I would say I am an Agnostic leaning towards Atheism, and my brothers are Agnostic/ just don't give a fuck.

This is my first post here, and since I have been literally been lurking since Yuku, it's probably time for me to post something, right? :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A way in which being a PK probably changed the kind of church where I feel at home:

The arguments my father and I had about scripture, doctrine, and sermons when I was growing up were so much more reasoned and functional than the arguments we had about anything else. They're probably my favorite aspect of our often troubled relationship. I think he found it heartening that I was paying enough attention to engage intellectually with what he was saying, and I found it heartening that we could read the same text in different ways without bringing on World War III.

This is to say that I am vastly more interested in attending a church where difference ≠ disloyalty, where the pastor(s) view(s) theological argument as a part of life in community, not as a sign of insubordination on the part of a parishioner.

Forgot to add: My brother is also still a regular church attendee, so we're two for two. I don't think liberal denominations provoke the same kind of crisis of faith among their young members as more fundamentalist denominations do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting... In the adventist church, pastors are moved around so often, and my family happened to move around often as well, so I never actually got to observe any pastor's kids growing up.

I do have a friend who's a pastor's wife who's kids are rebelling, but I can't tell yet if that's just teenage rebellion or not. And hey just moved away, so I doubt I'll ever get to find out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am a PK. My father was an Anglican minister. I am the eldest of four siblings. Three of us are agnostic and one borders on fundie lite.i cannot speak for my siblings, but for me a number of factors led to my leaving Christianity. I was very disappointed with the way my family's church handled my father's early onset dementia and death. On top of that, my father had been strong on encouraging us to think for ourselves, and I ended up deciding that I could not prove that Christianity was any more the one true way than any other faith.

We attend church when we travel to visit Mum and also when we are staying with the inlaws, who are Roman Catholic. It is easier than any dramatic coming out, doesn't hurt us and keeps the family happy. If our children wanted to go to church I would be fine with it, as I feel religion is a personal decision.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The bolded portion is why I left organized religion and eventually religion altogether. It just does not have any sense of reason to it and I cannot embrace, practice, or accept it in any way. One thing that did make it easier to leave religion was, ironically, my dad. Even as a very religious and spiritual person, he encouraged us not to accept things at face value. He wanted us to follow in his footsteps because we believed it and it was important to us, not because we had been force-fed it for life. I imagine my leaving would have been made more difficult if he hadn't opened that door to critical thinking when I was young.

This is exactly my experience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm a PK. I agree with whoever on the first page who said that one of the reasons why we leave is that we see the hypocrisy up close and personal.

Of me and my two siblings, none of us are still Christian. I'm the oldest and converted to Islam (and have been way better treated by the community that barely knows me sometimes than the church I grew up in ever did). Middle brother is now an atheist. He's married to a devout seventh day Adventist. Youngest brother is an "I don't care.". His wife will go to church with my parents because she thinks she needs to ecause theye sone ao much for them (stupid reason and I tried to tell them that).

Every PK I grew up with isn't in their church anymore or at least not very active. I'm my case it was because it was shoved down my throat and the hypocrisy that I still see it on a regular basis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I knew a girl who was a PK. She left after 2nd grade I always wondered what happened to her. I wonder if she is still involved w/ church. She had to move cause the church didn't renew her Dad's contract.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.