There's An Atheist in Our Confirmation Class!

After reading the Faith Statements this morning, to my great surprise, I learned we have an atheist in class! But not a very articulate or smart one. She needs to work on her belief system if I am going to 'believe she is an atheist and not just mad at her parents for her life.'

Each of the confirmands was required to write a Faith Statement, which is a written document of a person’s beliefs. If this student does not believe in God in Jesus (I am cool with that), but then she needs to articulate her atheist belief system. The fact that she disagrees with her parent’s belief system is not enough of an acceptable answer in order to complete the confirmation program. There are a lot of reasons to not believe in God. And here are better ones that she has stated.

Therefore, she will be told to re-write her Faith Statement to tell us why she does not believe in God and how her non-God system of beliefs are shaped in order to complete the Confirmation program (yet not be baptized or confirmed).

Here are questions to get her started...

God (why you do not believe in a God who has the Trinitarian vowels?)

Jesus (why you do not believe in a God who pardons and forgives?, why this is unnecessary?)

Holy Spirit (why you do not believe in a God who invisibly shapes your life and speaks to you?)

Bible (why it is not a sacred book?; why you don’t believe it has truth for you?)

Church (why it is not an important community to shape your life and values?; why you would not want to be involved?)

I want either a believer or an articulate non-believer. If this student cannot articulate either… then we have a different problem.