An atheist practising minister, in a mainstream church, incumbent with his own congregation, with the backing of both his peers and parishioners. Cloud cuckoo land? Not according to the BBC’s Amsterdam Religious affairs correspondent. Rev Klaas Hendrikse doesn’t believe in God as a ‘supernatural being. The very Rev Hendrikse believes that:
God is not a being at all… it’s a word for experience, or human experience
He goes as far as acknowledging that the Bible is a resource of insight on leading a good life, but clarifies that with his belief that the description of the life of Jesus is a mythical tale and that he may not have existed.
The article also reports that a recent survey by the Free University of Amsterdam has revealed that one in six of the clergy in the main Dutch Protestant Church and several smaller denominations are either atheists or agnostic…
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