What happens when a devout believer who answered his vocation in the Church of Ireland, questions and then loses his faith in the supernatural or miraculous aspects of the life of Jesus Christ? Patrick Semple writes about the backdrop against which he grew up and became aware of the world and his questions about God and religion. This gripping memoir is his story: the story of a Church of Ireland clergyman who no longer believes the basic doctrines of Christianity and has found new insights in the teachings of modern astrophysics. "The Rector Who Wouldn't Pray for Rain" is also a picture of religious life in Ireland over the last sixty years, from an outsider's view of the Catholic triumphalist days of the 1940s, to the problems and benefits of the liberal secular society of today, told by a man who understands, and has lived through, both sides of the story.