{"id":5311,"date":"2021-12-16T13:27:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T19:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=5311"},"modified":"2021-12-16T13:27:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T19:27:36","slug":"former-minister-says-updike-all-but-told-his-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2021\/12\/16\/former-minister-says-updike-all-but-told-his-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Former minister says Updike all but told his story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In an opinion piece for Baptist News<\/em>, David Ramsey<\/strong> contemplated “Atheism and agnosticism: The last closet<\/a>,” which began, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“In 1996, John Updike released his 17th novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies<\/em>, a story about a Presbyterian minister, Clarence Wilmot, who loses his faith, leaves the ministry and becomes an encyclopedia salesman. In a strange case of art imitating life, Updike was narrating my story. I was a Baptist minister who had slowly been losing my faith. That same year, I left the ministry and embarked on a second career in technology sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“While Updike captured my painful but liberating movement from Christianity to agnosticism, he failed to narrate the stigma and stereotypes associated with being an agnostic or atheist,” Ramsey wrote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Last year, I wrote a book in which I discuss my journey from minister to agnostic and critique popular religious notions like ‘everything happens for a reason.’ I have friends who have reviewed my book online, some of whom masked their names to avoid being outed by their association with a controversial topic and agnostic writer,” Ramsey said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole opinion piece.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an opinion piece for Baptist News, David Ramsey contemplated “Atheism and agnosticism: The last closet,” which began, “In 1996, John Updike released his 17th novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, a story about a Presbyterian minister, Clarence Wilmot, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5313,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5311\/revisions\/5313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}