Clergy Members Become ‘The Unbelieving’ In A New Play

Photo by Richard Termine.

(REVIEW) NEW YORK — What’s it like to stop believing in something? What if everything relies on those beliefs: a family, a community, a livelihood? What’s it like to be a clergy member who’s lost their religion?

A new play on a limited run in New York puts clergy firmly in the spotlight to explore those questions and more.

“The Unbelieving” is based on interviews conducted for the nonfiction book “Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind” by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett and qualitative researcher Linda LaScola. Over the course of the study, which expanded after significant media attention, the research involved interviewing clergy members of different faiths and denominations who stopped believing in God.

Playwright Marin Gazzaniga said that from the beginning of the study, Dennett was interested in adapting the interviews theatrically. Gazzaniga’s father, a neuroscientist, introduced the two, and it was a quickly realized perfect match. 

Gazzaniga began her career as a journalist and transitioned into writing for theater, TV and film. Her first play, “So Close,” explores domestic violence through an abusive relationship. It’s a verbatim play, meaning all the dialogue comes from real life sources: “So Close” is based on interviews she conducted as a writer for Victim Services.  

Another of Gazzaniga’s plays, “100 Degrees Celsius,” explores the gray area between religion and science. 

“I’ve always been interested in ideas of who we are, what it means to be human and how we interact with each other,” Gazzaniga said. “And as a writer and as an artist, I believe theater has its own sense of spirituality.” 

“The Unbelieving” is also a verbatim play, written using only the real words of the clergy interviewed. 

It was produced by The Civilians, a theater company founded in 2001 to tell stories that combine theatrical work with real life. They call their work “investigative theater,” which involves work similar to qualitative research — often, total immersion in unique communities. 

“We’re interested in telling stories that might be underheard, subject matters that haven’t made their way onto the stage as much as they should; we’re very interested in learning new things,” said Steve Cosson, founding artistic director of The Civilians and director of “The Unbelieving.”

Gazzaniga said that because of her background, she’s always prioritized being “as accurate as possible” but that authenticity was particularly important with this story. 

“If you start dramatizing something like this, people think you’re exaggerating or making stuff up,” Gazzaniga said.

But the stories of these clergy are real, as are the emotional and material struggles they face. 

“We’ve all just been very cognizant that we are telling the complicated stories of real actual people,” Cosson said. “Whenever you tell a story that’s taking somebody's life experience and condensing that down into a play or a monologue, it’s an important responsibility.”

Before Gazzaniga began writing the script, LaScola asked the original participants if they’d be willing to have their transcripts shared and dramatized — 19 agreed. Gazzaniga began with thousands of pages of transcript and conducted a few interviews of her own. All in all, 10 characters (plus the character of LaScola) appear in the play. 

“The Unbelieving” is driven by monologues, closely following the narrative of the study as it began and developed.  

“These are all people who are used to being public leaders, so a lot of them had a very gregarious voice or interesting voice and a distinct way of explaining things,” Gazzaniga said.

The play includes one scene in which the clergy have the opportunity to speak to each other. It’s an in-person imagining of The Clergy Project, which arose in part as a result of the initial study. TCP is a members-only online forum that functions as a support group for nonbelieving clergy, created with the collaboration of former minister Dan Barker, atheist author Richard Dawkins, LaScola, Dennett and others.

Otherwise, the play mostly happens as clergy give interviews to LaScola. 

“As a director, the first thing to think about with a show like this is that in reality, interviews were two people sitting in chairs talking to each other,” Cosson said. “I had to ask, ‘Well, how does this show live in its space? What are the opportunities to depart from the realism of sitting into two chairs and enter into a story in a different way?’”

Visually, that involves a number of choreographed transitions and reenactments of some of the characters’ statements — like when Johnny, a minister at a Universalist church, was at the center of a chaotic and thundering prayer to rid him of demons. He said after it was done that it wasn’t demons but instead his “first panic attack.”

That means that the work relies on authentic dramatic performances from its cast, which it fully delivers. 

“The Unbelieving” is inherently an advocate for atheism, agnosticism and other secular worldviews because these are the only belief systems its characters could find freedom in. That said, it doesn’t attempt to suggest any universal truths about religion, nor does it show any disrespect to those who are religious (the members of each clergy member’s congregation, for example).

Interestingly, a large number of the stories begin as the clergy member asks just one question — and that question unravels their belief to the top.

For some, doubt comes from the fact that they’re discouraged from asking questions by the greater institution, and they decide they don’t want to place faith where questions aren’t allowed. For others, something like a belief in evolution or the possibility of a non-virgin Mary conflicts too much with religious belief.

The latter is something that seems too reductionist, particularly in a modern religious age. Plenty of people don’t believe their doctrine down to the letter, but that doesn’t negate a belief in God. Still, these characters are clergy, and their role as leaders is undoubtedly more strict than the common believer.

Because of these ideas, the play is somewhat more digestible for the non-religious. But Cosson and Gazzaniga want their audience to be both believers and nonbelievers, and they want the material to be challenging to both groups for different reasons.

“I think some might come into it with the idea that it’s easy: these people don't believe in God, so they should just leave their jobs,” Gazzaniga said. “I think non-believers can learn what it is to believe something.”

The play’s ultimate purpose is to depict the personal journeys of the clergy who found themselves in an impossible dilemma of faith.

“They’re risking losing their family, their friends, their community, their job,” Gazzaniga said. “They don’t feel like they have any other skills or know what else they can do. They don’t know how they can continue to support their family.”

Many clergy in the play said they remained in their jobs despite identifying as atheist, agnostic or a religious “None” because of these guaranteed losses — at least until they could find another job and leave the church without ever confessing their disbelief. 

Those who did leave said the changes were immediate. 

“I quit on a Wednesday, and Friday I realized I had no friends and nothing to do,” says Dennis, a former Assemblies of God minister, in the play. “My whole world was ripped out from me.”

“It’s something that we don’t necessarily think about, but it’s so hard to change your worldview,” Gazzaniga said. 

“The Unbelieving” aims to spark discussion around that difficulty to challenge its audience and promote a fuller understanding of humanity’s relationship to religion.  

“We all have a relationship to religion that we’re, for the most part, born into,” Gazzaniga said. “I think it gives an opportunity to contemplate what that is for each of us and whether we’re making conscious choices about it or not.”

“The Unbelieving” runs from Oct. 27 to Nov. 20. Tickets and more information can be found on the theater’s website.

Jillian Cheney is a contributing culture writer for Religion Unplugged. She also writes on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity and was Religion Unplugged’s 2020-21 Poynter-Koch fellow. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.