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orthonormal comments on How can people be actually converted? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Amusingly, my university's Theology department has a reputation of deconverting people, many of whom are studying the subject in order to become priests. Apparently the subject is taught in a very scientific and critical manner. E.g. the exegesis lectures talk a lot about how it was common to make someone seem more impressive by claiming that he was born of a virgin, or about how many pre-Christian religions had a god who sacrificed his son and Christianity may just have borrowed the popular motif. This can apparently be disenchanting.
Same thing at the academically best divinity schools in the US; they turn out a lot of non-theists, a fact that shocked me when (as a devout undergraduate) I took a "History of the New Testament" class and found myself surrounded my aspiring preachers who were losing their religion.
One interesting facet of this: since they're exposed to all of these facts by a respected scholar who's not trying to turn them into atheists (i.e. a non-adversarial interaction with someone of higher status), they're much more susceptible to the ideas than they'd be if they were arguing with an atheist peer.
I'd be interested in hearing more of this story.
Do you think this is intentional to find only the most devout preachers?
Unlikely; I think it's more a case of lost purposes.
One notable case is that of the Jesuit order, which from its inception had the most extensive scriptural/theological/philosophical training (seven years before ordination) of any order. In previous centuries, this reliably produced extremely devoted and intelligent priests, who racked up massive numbers of conversions as missionaries.
However, as the field of scriptural studies changed in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jesuits incorporated new historical-critical material which contradicted some of the traditional claims of the Old Testament. (It's to their credit that they did this, even if their reasoning was that knowing the exaggerations of the Old Testament surely wouldn't undermine the core of the faith.)
But as this process continued, eventually the Jesuits transformed into one of the most liberal of the Catholic orders. The original policy came at a time when the most educated people knew of little to contradict the Church, but the world changed.