Can you even be a member of the clergy if you don't believe in God? Shouldn't that be met with automatic excommunication?
I have to wonder what they're doing there in the first place...
A communist/athiest can be a pastor but a true, believing pastor cannot be a communist/athiest.
Not when your "church" is actually a quasi-government agency, as it in is the UK. Think of it as somewhat equivalent to the United States Postal Service: It doesn't get any direct government financial support, but it wouldn't last a week if the laws mandating its existence were to be repealed.
Probably not.
In the US, Divinity Schools opened their doors to anyone who applied in 1968, when the US Govt stopped issuing 2S Defferances to grad students, unless they were in Divinity School. Such things like believing in God, were optional.
When they graduated many stayed and worked their way up the heirarchies.