HOLLAND, Mich. — In his living room, Keith Mannes, a former pastor, read aloud from his brand new book.
"I believe the church, the spiritual mother who formed me, nurtured me and blessed me, has lost its mind," said Mannes, choosing a chapter called 'A Church in Dementia.' "It is using God's name to give religious adulation to a man whose every imagination is evil."
The man, in this case, is former president Donald Trump. In 2020, Mannes left his lakeshore church and eventually divorced his denomination because of "Religious Trumpism" he saw in American Evangelicalism.
"The passion with which they pursued [Trump], that was just untenable to me," Mannes said in a Wednesday interview with FOX 17. "I could not, in my own heart and spirit, do that anymore as a pastor and stay silent."
Mannes lost his faith. Over the last few years, he found spirituality "without the interference of Christianity," leading him to write his book, UnMediated.
For those who feel unmoored from the church or at odds with its congregants, the Holland resident says the book brings a message of peace: "You're not crazy. You're the heartbeat of God, and your soul is just fine," he said.
Mannes now works as a hospice chaplain, leading people to the end of their earthly lives, spending time with them in their final moments. Still, he doesn't call himself a Christian.
"There is a dissonance," Mannes said about the religious nature of his profession. "But ultimately it works."
The former pastor's approach to spirituality is more rooted in people.
"I'm not so focused on Jesus as a doorway to heaven, but as a doorway to humanity," Mannes said. "If you walk every day through that doorway, there's no doubt in my spirit that there's eternity in store."
There are days, Mannes says, where he does not see Jesus while at work. In the Reformed Journal, a Christian publication, he recently wrote, "There are days when I wonder if I imagine this whole “Jesus” thing."
And yet, moments of holiness sometimes shine through, too, like the giving of communion through a can of green beans. Simple. Profound.
"This is the most neglected and weakened place that that people come to in life," Mannes said about hospice care It's there that I experience moments of what I think is Jesus. Those little 'sometimes' moments are the essence and core of my faith."
