The first Christmas as a layperson: Burned out by the pandemic, many clergy quit in the past year

[mahatmakanejeeves]

This article has already appeared elsewhere at DU today. I'll add a link that gets you past the paywall.

Religion

The first Christmas as a layperson: Burned out by the pandemic, many clergy quit in the past year

By Michelle Boorstein
Yesterday at 7:00 p.m. EST

It was Christmas Eve and the Rev. Alyssa Aldape was getting ready for work. Over her decade in Baptist youth ministry, Dec. 24 meant prepping sermons at the church, sending out last-minute Christmas emails to her young people, robing up. After church, her Mexican American family would have tamales.

But this Christmas Eve day, Aldape was in her Van Ness apartment, in a green turtleneck and jeans, drinking iced coffee and getting ready for her shift at the retailer Madewell. She’d clock in, then spend the afternoon folding sweaters and greeting last-minute holiday shoppers at the door with her big smile and “Hi! Welcome!”

“At the store they’re like: ‘You’re so good at welcoming people!’” said Aldape, her smile shifting into a chuckle and then into tears. For the first time in a decade, the 34-year-old wouldn’t be pastoring a congregation on Christmas Eve.

“I miss doing that with my people,” she said. Her fiance put his hand on her back as their Christmas tree twinkled behind them.

Aldape is part of an exodus of clergy who have left ministry in the past couple years because of a powerful combination of pandemic demands and political stress. Amid fights about masks and vaccine mandates, to how far religious leaders can go in expressing political views that might alienate some of their followers, to whether Zoom creates or stifles spiritual community, pastoral burnout has been high.

The past few years have jostled and rocked the labor market overall, with many millions losing and changing jobs either by force, by choice or a combination of the two. But some research and anecdotes suggest this period is a crisis for American clergy.

A Barna survey of Protestant pastors published last month found 38 percent said they’d considered quitting full-time ministry in the past year.

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Gift Article
https://wapo.st/3JizJYE

By Michelle Boorstein
Michelle Boorstein has been a religion reporter since 2006. She has covered the shifting blend of religion and politics under four U.S. presidents, chronicled the rise of secularism in the United States, and broken financial and sexual scandals from the synagogue down the street to the Mormon Church in Utah to the Vatican. Twitter https://twitter.com/mboorstein

[keithbvadu2]

1. Waiting to get back to work?

[Collimator]

5. Multiple thumps up on this one.

(Though, in the interests of diversity, there should be different shades of thumbs up icons, including an all-inclusive yellow one.)

[keithbvadu2]

6. The Bart Simpson race.

[3Hotdogs]

2. The fewer pastors, the better off we all will be.

[Bucky]

3. The going got tough, so a lot of them went to other jobs

Not exactly living in imitation of Christ

[EarthFirst]

4. If political expression is cited as a reason for leaving ministry...

Good riddance.

[Hortensis]

7. Political corruption of religion is finally becoming an existential crisis

for some sects, or at least severely impacting their wellbeing in ways everyone can see, emptier pews, less money to do what needs to be done, fewer dynamic members leading and joining activities, lack of qualified pastors, etc.

Way, way, way past time, of course.

But there are problems with people leaving also. Some kind of belief system and guidance are basic needs for almost everyone.

The passionate faith of some here that religion is intrinsically evil is a secular belief system. It's a secular mirror of religionists who also condemn all other beliefs as sources of evil. The lack of moral grounding of all ideologies that exist mainly to oppose others is obvious.

These times are showing more clearly than ever before that large numbers of people are not capable of consistently understanding what is right and wrong and vulnerable to bad influences by themselves.

Competent guidance and teaching of right and wrong is desperately needed. And where does that come from? Yoga teachers? Q? Fox and Friends? Social media? Read a book? That's about what's available for most people. Some churches anyone can walk into still provide it reliably, even offer classes, but fewer.

We are seeing the terrible effects on society from religion's current corruption and degradation. For many who leave, the degradation just continues because they're newly vulnerable to the pernicious secular influences preying on all these days. Like all of us, they need what they need...