Author Keith Long, having a good ponder.
Keith Long’s Doubting Faithfully: Confessions of a Skeptical Pastor is the kind of book I wish more pastors wrote—and more congregants read. In this age of tectonic religious shifts and growing numbers of “nones,” Long doesn’t offer a frantic defense of faith or an apologetic Band-Aid for a bleeding Western church. Instead, he offers something far more radical: vulnerability, honesty, and an invitation to grow through our doubts rather than despite them.
As someone raised in the swirl of evangelical intensity and steeped in the language of spiritual certainty, I’ve come to believe that the best kind of faith is the kind that’s metabolized—chewed on, digested, and even spit out sometimes, only to be reimagined through lived experience. Long gets this. His book isn’t a deconstruction manifesto or a bitter sendoff. It’s a love letter to what faith can be when we trust the tether even as we fall.
“Over twenty years later and questioning my faith as a leader in the church feels just like that fall. I feel the dread of leaving the familiarity and safety of my beliefs as well as the thrill of jumping into the unknown.”
This isn’t abstract metaphor for Long. He begins with the literal story of jumping off a bridge as a college student—yes, on purpose—and equates that adrenaline-drenched leap with his plunge into spiritual uncertainty. What makes this memoir stand out is that Long doesn’t use his fall as a cautionary tale or a triumphant arc. Instead, he sits with it. He confesses, explores, and even celebrates it.
Throughout Doubting Faithfully, Long walks us through the internal dissonance many spiritual leaders experience but rarely articulate. Whether in his reflections on confirmation students like Evan—deeply skeptical yet richly curious—or his own seminary wrestling matches, Long’s voice is never didactic. It’s conversational, confessional, and often funny.
“I had been perfectly content to check my brain at the door for many years… and then I fell in love with knowledge. Learning suddenly became as enticing as beauty.”
As someone who resonates with this trajectory—from fundamentalist fury to contemplative flame—Long’s words feel like running into a long-lost cousin at a family reunion you didn’t know you needed. His hunger for integration, his refusal to split spirit from intellect, evokes Owen Barfield’s plea to reunite perception with imagination. And when Long dares to explore the evolutionary impulse within faith itself, I hear echoes of the mystical wisdom of Teilhard de Chardin and the unflinching honesty of Barbara Brown Taylor.
Perhaps the heart of Doubting Faithfully lies in Long’s refusal to “resolve” the tension. Doubt, for him, is not a problem to solve but a presence to befriend. He invites us to “test the tether,” to fall not as a sign of failure but as a necessary step toward trust:
“Trusting the tether was the first and best lesson I learned… Unfortunately, not all of our falling comes by choice.”
Long’s own spiritual tether is built not only of theology and ecclesiology, but of lived, flesh-and-blood friendships. One such tether is Carl, a brilliant friend diagnosed with ALS whose essays and conversations offer Long—and us—a vision of embodied grace outside of traditional religious frameworks. Carl forgives, accepts, and even teaches Long to let go—not because of a celestial reward but because of the clarity that mortality brings.
“I forgave myself… for the things I did not do. All the times I was too conservative, too cautious, and didn’t act… I forgave others… there was a freedom, a liberation, in putting things behind me and moving on.”
Reading this reminded me of conversations I’ve had with friends facing mortality too young, whose courage and clarity never hinged on belief systems but on love, presence, and unflinching truth. Like Long, I’ve witnessed the sacred beyond the bounds of doctrinal fidelity, and Doubting Faithfully affirms this sacredness without apology.
And yet, this is no easy grace. Long is honest about the cost. As a pastor who confesses doubt from the pulpit, he knows the edge of community, the whispers, the quiet exits. But he also knows the sacred trust of those who stay—and those who draw nearer because of the honesty.
“If my vulnerability in disclosing these religious doubts… allows others to embrace their doubts and questions, then this work will have been worth every risk and consequence.”
As someone who often writes at the intersection of doubt, beauty, and belonging, I felt a kinship here. Long doesn’t offer a new dogma to replace the old. He offers a practice. A way. A lens. He writes as one who’s been undone by the mystery and decided, somehow, to love God and neighbor through it anyway.
In a world hungry for certainty, Doubting Faithfully reminds us that faith is not certainty’s opposite, but its dance partner. “I would be consumed for love; and I would consume,” goes the second-century Hymn of Jesus. Long doesn’t quote it, but he lives it.
For anyone who has ever found themselves “on the edge of faith,” staring into the void with more questions than answers, this book is a companion. For every former believer trying to make sense of inherited dogmas, for every pastor holding space for congregants even as their own beliefs wobble, and for every spiritual weirdo (like me) trying to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength—Keith Long offers a faithful doubt and a doubting faith worth living into.
I’ll close with Long’s own invitation:
“May the following words… resonate, encourage, and help you to articulate who you are, where you’ve been and what you’ve learned. And may that contemplative thinking lead to your transformation as Doubting Faithfully has for mine.” (p. 3)
Amen to that.
About the Author
Keith Long is the author of three books, Doubting Faithfully: Confessions of a Skeptical Pastor, Growing Spirit Wise: A Heretic’s Guide to Resurrection and Eternal Life, and Moviemakers, a novella. Keith has also written for New Testament scholar, speaker, and consultant Bart D. Ehrman and is a Lutheran (ELCA) pastor in Minnesota, where he resides with his family.
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This young clergyman reminds me of the disciple Thomas, who doubted that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. Who hasn’t been in that place where we wonder when the shadow side of our existence becomes a path of discouragement? For me it often leads me to a person, a place, a time, where God’s grace gives me the oxygen to breathe again. I am forced to confront my doubts and renew my desire to find the light again.When I do, i know that I will be okay. The mystery reminds me of the essential truths that I am not in control, I am not that important, that my life is not just about me, that life can sometimes be hard, and that finally I will indeed die. It does not discourage me enough to give up and wrap myself in a cocoon. Like Thomas, in the end it will only increase my faith and make me realize that my God does love me with an everlasting love. The book sounds interesting. Richard Rohr helped me recognize those essential truths. I am sure Rev. Long would agree with those truths even knowing I haven’t read his book yet.