I recently had this conversation with a friend of mine who’s about to be ordained (Catholic, doing his diaconate rn), so I’m curious if you’d say the same:

Do you think an atheist could fake their way into becoming a priest/pastor?

My friend says no, he thinks you just wouldn’t survive the seminar because your sermons wouldn’t be convincing if you don’t genuinely believe. He says they’d definitely notice.

(I say yea, it can be done. Of course there’s not really any reason to and the ethical implications are something else, but I’ve been successfully pretending to be a devout Christian for ten years now - for safety reasons, not in order to dupe Christianity or something. I’m relatively confident I could convince anyone of my belief.)

Oh also, please don’t take this the wrong way, this whole discussion was just born out of curiosity, and although I’m an atheist I think Christianity, like other religions, has a lot of fascinating facets that are worth learning about. :)