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Article: Pastoral clout: have clergy lost authority?(Excerpt)
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- October 2, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IT SEEMS TO BE a commonplace that the history of the clergy in America is a story of steadily declining authority. According to this narrative of decline, other professions have usurped duties once assigned solely to priests and ministers, and the secularization of elite institutions has relegated the clergy to private spheres.
But having explored this issue for several years as part of a Pulpit and Pew project, I have concluded that the reality is more complicated. Ministers have lost some forms of cultural power, but within their primary sphere of responsibility, they have about as much authority now as they had 300 years ago.
If one concentrates on ...