Raised in an evangelical home. Published by evangelical publishers. Employed by an evangelical seminary and divinity school. That was my life until last year when — at the end of a long and difficult intellectual journey — I concluded I was actually a secular humanist and part of the growing demographic of Americans unaffiliated with a particular faith or church.
Being a person of faith is an academic credential in the evangelical world, so when it was clear that I no longer possessed that faith, I made the difficult decision to leave behind my full-time (nontenured) faculty position.
I’m far from being the only American who has parted ways with his family religion. The recent, and highly discussed, Pew Research study on the changing religious landscape in America found a noticeable decline in the number of Christians in the United States and a rise in the number of those who are religiously unaffiliated (atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular”). In 2007 the proportion of Americans who fell into the unaffiliated cohort was about 16 percent, but by 2014 that proportion had climbed to nearly 23 percent. That figure makes the unaffiliated the second largest group in America, just behind evangelicals.
Until now, I have discussed my “deconversion” only privately with a few people, undoubtedly leaving more than a few family and friends perplexed as to why I left my job. Many of those I have told are outside the academic-seminary world and have responded with one of two questions: Why didn’t I leave earlier? Or, Why did I leave at all? Some wondered why I couldn’t just fake my faith.
Should I stay or should I go? Leaving my faculty position freed my conscience, given that I had already left evangelicalism for the ranks of the unaffiliated, but it was not a decision I took lightly. Before I settled on any new and potentially controversial identity, I wanted to be sure it was the right one for me. While I continue to teach as an adjunct in religious studies at a local university, the choice to leave the seminary not only posed family difficulties, but also had the potential to be career suicide.
Finding another full-time faculty position is a grim prospect. The number of candidates for openings in my field far outnumber the full-time opportunities. I take some solace in knowing that I’m not alone, since this is true for most academics. (Misery in the job market, apparently, does love company.)
When your employment depends on a religious identification, and especially when your closest family and friends remain intertwined with that faith, joining the unaffiliated secular in America is not always the first or easiest choice, even if it is the honest one.
Teaching while nonbelieving is a special crime in faith-based institutions. My field is in religious history, and it is entirely possible for me to teach academically — meaning educating students without casting judgment on or interfering with their faith. The expectation of a professor in faith-based education, however, is that he or she is also a theologian, an advocate for the specific religious mission of the institution.
A secular humanist clearly cannot advocate for doctrine.
Raised as a pastor’s kid, I wanted to be a theologian, so I read everything from the church fathers to systematic theology. I did a B.A. in theology. Then I discovered I loved history and did an M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of Christianity. Teaching at a seminary, therefore, was a natural place for me to land.
But a seminary is a distinctly affiliated place, and that is its main reason for existing. It is affiliated because it is in service to one or more denominations and requires professors to affirm a statement of faith, an entirely understandable expectation. Christians assume that their future ministers are being trained by those who are also on board with the mission.
Having minor disagreements among faculty over doctrinal issues is one thing, but disagreeing with the entire religion is unquestionably a deal breaker. If faith is the first credential in a seminary, then my nonfaith would also be a falsification or loss of those credentials.
What academe gives … Like many of the unaffiliated in America, my problems with religion included biblical, social, personal, and scientific issues, the fine details of which are beyond this short article. I can say, however, that my path to faithlessness began by putting my religion under the academic microscope. (I recognize that many religious academics would not see my disbelief as a necessary conclusion of this process.)
The more my approach to my field became academic, the less I stayed an adherent. Why? As K.L. Noll describes it in “The Ethics of Being a Theologian,” the “religion researcher is related to the theologian as the biologist is related to the frog in her lab.” The theologian defends and propagates a religious perspective, but the religion researcher will “select sample religions, slice them open, and poke around inside,” which “tends to ‘kill’ the religion.”
I became both researcher and frog. By poking around in my religion, I discovered what made it tick and found a creative but entirely human faith. I also dissected my nonexistent soul and its motivations and concluded that the faith I was handed as a child was not one I could embrace as an adult.
At first I attempted to hold a middle ground in my faith, staying only loosely connected to the evangelical world and joining the broader Episcopal Church. But I was only a few short years into my teaching career when I decided that I needed to leave.
Taking my own medicine. The pivotal moment leading to my departure came as I did research for a book on the problems of academic freedom in religious higher education. It was a project driven (in part) by my experiences as a student and as a professor, especially after watching colleagues being pushed out of evangelical institutions over theological disagreements.
As I sat thinking about the advice I would give faculty who were mired in controversy over theology, I typed the sentence “know when to leave.” I stared at that sentence for a long time; it haunted me. I knew that if I was heading in the intellectual direction that it appeared, then I was talking to myself.
Professors whose worldviews dramatically change often wait too long to leave their institutions, leading to trouble that frequently rips communities apart. Maybe we think that if we hide long enough things will change, so we force ourselves to choose between the job we studied for and our happiness. In that case, happiness often loses.
So when the time came that I could own my new identity, I eventually took my own advice. I carefully and politely arranged to leave my seminary position, slowly closing the door, hoping not to disturb the community on my way out.
Embracing the future. I am many statistics right now. I’m one of many Ph.D.s saddled with educational debt, when I should be establishing a retirement fund. I’m one of the many adjuncts that make up the new faculty majority teaching America’s future leaders. I’m one of many leaving my faith for the unaffiliated, a category about which nobody’s entirely sure what to think.
I’m also much happier. I hope that other professors like me, who can afford to be happier and move on from their faculty positions, will consider being open about their new identity as well.
Fortunately, leaving my faculty position could have been more difficult than it was. I have a supportive spouse with a good career, and she’s urged me to see this as a chance to reinvent. Whatever that reinvented future holds, my freed conscience welcomes that journey.
Brandon G. Withrow is an adjunct lecturer of religious studies at the University of Findlay. Formerly he was an assistant professor of the history of Christianity and religious studies at the Winebrenner Theological Seminary. His most recent book (co-authored with Menachem Wecker) is Consider No Evil: Two Faith Traditions and the Problem of Academic Freedom in Religious Higher Education. Follow him on Twitter at @bwithrow.
