The agnostic priests and the nun were Catholics while the atheist priest was an Anglican.

I met all these people in Papua New Guinea.

In my discourse with the priests, it was some fine bottles of wine that loosened their tongues. With the nun it was her attitude and approach to life that made me suspect that she had doubts.

Their revelations surprised me at the time but not these days.

Of course I asked them what they were still doing in the church if they had doubts about their god. Their answers, although not evasive, were complex but I’ll try to broadly summarise them here.

They had stayed in their churches because it gave them the opportunity to help people and make a difference to their lives. They didn’t want to lose this ability by leaving their ministries.

One of the priests told me that if he had to leave the church he wouldn’t know what to do. It wasn’t so much that the church cosseted him but that he was appalled at the venality and savagery of the outside world.

To him, leaving the church would be tantamount to leaping into a pit of snakes.

But that wasn’t his main reason. Like the others he valued the ability the church gave him to do good work. He didn’t think he could continue so easily doing that outside the church, especially in Papua New Guinea, a place he loved.

Somehow Papua New Guinea, and the experiences these good people had there, made them reassess their faith but decide to stay on regardless.

I’m guessing that the closeness to the earth and sense of community they encountered among the Papua New Guinean people was a reason for their self-examination and reappraisal.

I struck the same thing among many lay workers in the missions. They were interesting people, too. Many of them had had traumatic pasts and came to the mission later in life.

They weren’t so much seeking refuge or monastic seclusion but were trying to atone for their earlier lives.

You also see this trait among people in both religious and secular charitable organisations.

Something happened to make people walk away from their previous lives and seek a kind of redemption.

If you go to a street kitchen, a refuge or an organisation like Save the Children you are likely to encounter ex-businessmen working alongside ex-criminals and highly qualified professionals working alongside ex-street kids. They are a real mixed bag.

In the late 1960s at a remote mission station far up a particular river I came across a German lay worker. I suspected he might have once been a Nazi.

I didn’t know what he had done or where he had done it but he was a valuable asset to the mission and one best left in peace to deal with his own demons.

I have the greatest respect for these people. They are doing things and enduring conditions that I would be unable to cope with.

And it’s to the credit of many churches and missions that they are allowed to do what they do, whether they are believers or not.