I think this is probably pretty common and something that goes a long way back in history. Maybe it’s still scandalous in the US, but the non-believing minister is a pretty old character type and not that shocking to the flock, in certain circles of liberal Protestantism at least.
In New Zealand in the 1960s we had Lloyd Geering, a Presbyterian minister who came out of the closet, saying the resurrection should not be understood literally and rejecting a supernatural god. He was charged with doctrinal error by the church and became a cause celebre within and outside it. He won his case.
Nowadays he has the Kiwi equivalent of a knighthood, and there are functioning churches with ministers who openly subscribe to that kind of theology. Geering always said his ideas were nothing original and common currency among the theologians ministers get their training from (something similar is said by one of the people Dennett and LaScola interview, only they feel they couldn’t say it openly to their flock, or wife).
Then there’s a classic NZ novel, Maurice Gee’s ‘Plumb’, about a similar radical Presbyterian pre-World War I, based on Gee’s grandfather. IIRC the early chapters set in the 1890s show big, well-attended public meetings listening to a visiting British ‘free-thinking’ clergyman.
Mike Beggs