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HOUSTON - This Easter Sunday, Christians will celebrate the holiest day of their faith, but with that backdrop, a local pastor is making headlines with what he no longer believes.
In recent months, Mike Aus has joined a growing number of clergy who no longer believe what they have preached. Aus says his journey was years in the making, leading to the time when he could publicly say: he no longer believes what he has taught for more than 20 years.
"It was just kind of a gradual journey," says Aus. "Understanding that the three great questions of life: Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? Really couldn't be answered by religion or philosophy."
His public soapbox was rolled out on cable television, in a discussion about clergy who have turned to atheism.
An invitation-only website, The Clergy Project, provides a couple hundred members a private place to discuss their struggles with faith.
But Aus wants to talk about it in the open. At his northwest Houston home, the Bible still holds a prominent place in his office, but it sits alongside a growing number of publications that challenge religion, as well.
Aus says his need for more than "blind faith," as he calls it, has led him to ideas, he feels, provide the answers he's been seeking: an evolution that, for him, negates the need for religion.
"If there was no first original human being, there was no Adam. There was no fall from a state of paradise, which means there was no need for redemption, which kind of destroys the need for Christianity's existence," he says.
It leaves a bit of a hole for those who have relied on his teachings. For the last couple of years, Aus was a pastor of a non-denominational west Houston church that has agreed to part-ways with him, since his coming-out. And in Katy, at the Living Word Lutheran Church, where Aus ministered, before resigning amid allegations of sexual-misconduct.
He says his new position has been a source of disappointment for some, but the new pastor at Living Word says while it is 'unnatural' not to have doubts, that shouldn't be an invitation to abandon faith.
"In the end, that's what faith is about," says Pastor Dale Olson. "This relationship of 'What does this mean for me to be a person of faith who believes in this God or believes in Jesus Christ' And so, from those pages of scripture, we always translate it into 'What does this mean for my life'?"
For Mike Aus, it means a very different life than the one he has led till now.
"It feels very good to say it out loud... and to be able to express what I've been thinking and studying and hope that it will spur the conversation. If I can add to the conversation, I feel good about that," Aus says.
Read more: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/120404-pastor-abandons-flock-for-atheism#ixzz1rB32T42Q
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