Sarah Sentilles was about to be ordained as an Episcopal priest when she lost her faith in God.
To put it in perspective-she was engaged and the wedding invitations were sent. Calling things off was more than a little awkward.
In Breaking Up with God: A Love Story (HarperOne; Hardcover; June 2011), Sentilles tells the deeply personal story of her difficult decision to leave not only the priesthood, but to let go of Christianity altogether. She had spent years immersed in the religion-from CCD to youth ministry to Harvard Divinity-and had, as an adult, wholeheartedly embraced the religion that had defined her youth. And yet one day she woke up and realized…it was over.
[blockquote] And yet one day she woke up and realized…it was over.[/blockquote]
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/06/07/prweb8540233.DTL#ixzz1Od9V6UzW
There has to be more than this, but I am not going to read her book.
Well, I’m just glad she went on her merry way before she was ordained. Since she and the article didn’t care to provide even the smallest detail of “why,” it seems solely like a hook to get you to buy her book. I’m not biting, either.
I am, not surprisingly, somewhat underwhelmed by those endorsing the book. But seeing religion as relating to everything in her life, though not a personal relationship with God, makes her journey so very Episcopalian.
It was never a true call. The fact that she realized that she was really not a Christian at all should be considered a blessing as well. Too bad a lot of other people who went through with the rite didn’t figure out who they really were as early as Sarah did. I wish they would, and then quit the charade they’re playing.
One well-written Amazon.com review of the book says,
“Her split with organized religion had something to do with feminism. Most of her teachers were female and they made it painfully clear what a misogynist book the Bible is. It also had to do with the other well-known liberal theologians she studied under – Gordon Kaufman and John Shelby Spong, among others – while she simultaneously had a position in a church, preparing her for the Episcopal priesthood. ‘The distance between the theology I studied in school and the theology being practiced in the pews and preached from the pulpit by the other priests on the staff was enormous…..Divinity school had been like an autopsy of my faith and it didn’t look the same any more….The vision of God being worshipped in that place was so narrow. In our weekly staff meetings we barely talked about God. Theology, it seemed, was not the point of running a church. Being an institution was the point.'”
RE: “Well, I’m just glad she went on her merry way before she was ordained.”
I tip my hat also — it would have been so nice if so many other Episcopal clergy had behaved with such integrity and done the same thing.
No kidding; I’ve been recently poking around TEC websites and it seems as if the offering is usually no more than a mere shell of Christianity, if that.
New motto of the TEo: Leading people away from Christ.
I remember a posting here that was sort of the opposite where a someone was talking about how they came to Christ in seminary. Good for them, but one has to question the seminary admissions board.
I just can’t get over Spong’s comment: “Would that institutional religion were big enough to embrace and affirm her work.”
Would that the NRA were big enough to embrace people who want to restrict guns.
Would that the Sierra Club were big enough to embrace people who advocate clear cutting.
Would that the American Lung Association were big enough to embrace Philip Morris.
Would that the Anti-Defamation League were big enough to embrace neo-Nazis.
I could go on. It’s simply not why the Church exists. This relentless drive to make the Church so open to everything that it stands for nothing at all is insane.
Does it not seem tragic that the bishop and ordination advisory committee people were unable to “discern” this almost-ordinand’s lack of faith before she did?
She will live to regret this. There have been patterns set in her soul that she cannot root out. She THINKS she can, but she will learn otherwise when times get tough and she needs help she cannot otherwise find. Larry
I feel for her. I hope–and pray–she finds her way back to God.
I do not think she can find her way BACK to God – she never knew him to start with, it would seem. She was interested in the church as an institution for social change and for a vague and foggy spirituality. That she found even the watery theology “in the pews” to be so different than her own is a testimony to how lacking in any real faith she was.
From an article she wrote, “Imagining God,” found on her web site:
Quote:
Divinity schools and seminaries can help students connect the study of theology with the practice of theology in church communities. As a divinity student, I read everything from John Calvin to Jon Sobrino. I studied feminist and womanist and liberation and black theologies. I took classes on Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi.
But I was not taught how to take this rich theological material back to my church community. Nor was I taught how to understand — or to bridge — the gap between the theologies I learned in divinity school and the theologies being preached from the pulpit and practiced in the pews of the churches where I would soon work.
Congregations can encourage their leaders to take theological risks by reminding them that people are hungry for new ways to think about and experience God. When the ministers I interviewed experimented with new language, they often heard from people who didn’t like it, but rarely heard from people who did. Many of us are used to speaking up when we don’t agree with something happening in our faith communities, but we forget it’s equally important to speak up when we agree.
Finally, leaders at all levels can shift the focus from “true†or “traditional†ways of thinking about God to holding congregations and denominations accountable for the effects of their thinking about God. What if we did not worry so much about getting the words we use for God “right†and instead worried about how our words affect the world in which we live? Theology matters, and denominational leaders can support all of us as we engage in the hard work of examining how the way we think about God shapes how we live, how we treat other people and how we care for the earth and all living beings.
Close Quote
“Theology” evaluated on the basis of its pragmatic effects (evaluated according to some other point of view – most likely some form of semi-socialism in her case) is not theology, but a justification of a political agenda.
#14… Fascinating quote! Interesting that she is able to so boldly acknowledge that God is for her (and her theological fellow travelers) an imaginary construct.
#9… thanks so much, Alta C, for saying this so clearly. Your (often hilarious) examples show that opposing the insane rhetoric of “inclusion” isn’t about being right-wing, whatever that means. It means simply treating language and logic in a meaningful fashion — which is why you give examples like the Sierra Club and the ADL and so on.
I agree with folks on this thread who tip their hat to the book’s author for at least having the integrity to not take vows. On the other hand, after reading the following….
… it occurred to me that the reporter could have added: “Like Jack Spong, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, Karen Armstrong, John Robinson, and many others before her, she discovered that writing books about her abandonment of Christianity was a lucrative consolation for this unfamiliar future.”
Poor thing–it might have helped if she was taught Christianity by actual Christians, not deconstructionists.
My hope and prayer is that many liberal clergy will read the book and come to the realization that they too do not believe in God and then either seek Him, or leave the church.
[blockquote] She had spent years immersed in the religion-from CCD to youth ministry to Harvard Divinity-and had, as an adult, wholeheartedly embraced the religion that had defined her youth. [/blockquote]
Well, since CCD [“Confraternity of Christian Doctrine”] is the religious education program of the Catholic Church, this is either a mistake or she had already traveled a long way from “the religion that had defined her youth” by the time she got to the point of contemplating ordination in the Episcopal Church.
[blockquote]Finally, leaders at all levels can shift the focus from “true†or “traditional†ways of thinking about God to holding congregations and denominations accountable for the effects of their thinking about God. What if we did not worry so much about getting the words we use for God “right†and instead worried about how our words affect the world in which we live?[/blockquote]
A great deal of traditional Christian theology has to do with worrying about getting the words we use for God wrong and figuring out why we are attracted to those wrong approaches. Her summary of traditional Christian theology is a distortion.
Also, if her aim is to relieve human suffering, studying different theological jargons at Harvard is probably a waste of time and money. Being able to cut fine distinctions between the work of Sobrino and his contemporaries can be worthwhile work. But students of theology should have no illusions that they have therefore filled stomachs, healed diseases, sheltered the homeless, or reduced illiteracy.
Wrong theological views end up distorting our understanding of ourselves and of life. Obviously Sarah was poorly educated at Harvard since her so-called education only served to detach her from a spiritual life, not deepen it.
Looks like she has been grazing in some barren pastures. Will we ever see the day when you have to be an orthodox Chirstian to teach in a seminary.
She simply has a great deal more honesty than the like of Spong and the other bishops. They have no talents beyond application of a clerical collar and have lifelong careers. They entertain masses and reinvent their beliefs every couple of months and have shut off their reason. She has enough integrity (in a good sense, not the Episcopalian sense) to not believe and not want to con others. That is called “Spine”. No wonder she left. She prefers the company of vertebrates to invertebrates.
In her list of books she listed only far leftist, virtually anti-Christian books by believers who, for the most part, don’t believe (but still fraudulently–with little integrity– make a living out of religion).
Too bad she didn’t read some of the women Doctors of the Church who were passionate believers like St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, or St. Therese of Liseux.
St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography has even converted Jewish philosophers–like Edith Stein–to a deep and passionate Faith that resulted in her becoming a saint.
At least the book writer spared her church more instruction in how not to be a Christian.
Okay, I’ll say it: My greatest concern about this is for her eternal soul and the souls of any who read this and find consolation in their rejection of God. People like John Shelby Spong can congratulate her until they turn blue, the fact remains that her path now leads directly to Hell. Now, who wants to read this book? Certainly not I.
Fr. Michael+
Not a word about why. Very strange. What a weird journey, only possible for an Episcopal priest (about to become). This is beyond the beyond.
They note in the article “written in the style of Barbara Taylor Bradford” whose book I read, something like “Leaving Church.” I threw it away. I was looking for something from someone who had found real Christianity and had left the apostate TEC. Instead I got new age crap complete with “native American” crap (nice for them, just has nothing to do with Christianity). What a load of crap.
Went back to the Bible. So satisfying.
#24 – “the fact remains that her path now leads directly to Hell.” I think this is the kind of language she was addressing. And I admit, the word “hell” while apparent to some Christians, remains obscure to others, and seems more like a way of stoking fear and abusing children rather than a way of modeling on the Lord of Love.
#27 FWLIW, and whatever one is to make of it, Jesus refers to the place of separation more than any other figure in Scripture. Poor old Chorazin and Capernaum…
Sooo glad she did not go through with ordination — she’d prob be a bishop within a few years! Seriously, though, I was reminded of the title of Fitz Allison’s book [b] The Cruelty of Heresy[/b]. What is preached, taught and read *does* have a consequence. Bad teaching not just a nusiance. It is cruel and hurtful. And, it was tragic for this woman. She will be in my prayers.
Hakkatan, post 14,
Your quotation from her article reveals much about her theological? studies when she says: “As a divinity student, I read everything from John Calvin to Jon Sobrino. I studied feminist and womanist and liberation and black theologies. I took classes on Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi.”
It seems to me that she studied everything except Christian theology as it has been revealed to us in Scripture. I hope she will decide to study the Bible and gain a better understanding of the religion which she in her ignorance rejects at this time.
#29, if she studied Calvin, she studied some of the best biblical theology possible – but if she understood it at all, she overwhelmed it with a flood of deceit and garbage.
Earthly intelligence is certainly no substitute for being born of the Spirit.
I didn’t mean to suggest that she could not have learned from studying the writings of Calvin, but it seems to me that it is important to study of Scripture in order to understand Calvin and other Christian theologians – and – I agree that she was probably overwhelmed by the other stuff she was studying.