Rogue Clerics: The Social Problem of Clergy Deviance

Front Cover
Transaction Publishers, Dec 31, 2011 - Social Science - 217 pages
During the past several years the mass media in the United States has been awash with reports of priestly pedophilia, ecclesiastical cover-up, and clerical intimidation or financial settlements intended to silence victims. Based on journalistic accounts, or scholarly research, it might be assumed that this is a recent phenomenon. Journalist reports began only within the past few years. Similarly, most sociologists of religion and particularly specialists in deviance and criminology did not reflect awareness of clerical misbehavior in their work. Despite this, Anson Shupe shows that clergy deviance, whether it is sexual or otherwise, is not merely a recent problem. It is as old as the church itself and is inevitably bound to recur due to the nature of religious groups. This comprehensive analysis offers the first up-to-date analysis of sexual, economic, and authoritative clergy malfeasance across faiths and denominational authority structures. Drawing on examples taken from antiquity up until the present day, and using reports by historians, theologians, church spokespersons, therapists, social scientists, and journalists, Shupe critically evaluates clergy deviant behavior, dividing it into various types. He also makes use of the therapeutic literature, addressing victimization at the level of the individual, church, and community at large. In this way, he compares the response of the clergy to victims' attempts to mobilize movements calling for church reform. Perhaps most controversial, this book considers the possible relationship of homosexuality in the clergy to the occurrences of scandals in all religious traditions across the board. As an overview of clergy misconduct, this book is singular. There is simply no other comprehensive serious examination of this subject. Written by a sociologist for a wide range of readers, its multi-disciplinary nature, vivid examples, and wealth of research, will make the volume of interest to sociologists of religion and crime, historians and theologians, as well as a general public.

From inside the book

Contents

Chapter 1
1
Chapter 2
29
Chapter 3
45
Chapter 4
83
Chapter 5
105
Chapter 6
151
Epilogue
181
References
183
Index
201
Back Cover
207
Copyright

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Page 116 - Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every impurity. 28In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Page 59 - When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan — it is God's Plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give directions, it should mark the end of controversy, God works in no other way.
Page 52 - ... two classes of people appear — a class that rules and a class that is ruled. The first class, always the less numerous, performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second, the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the first...
Page 55 - ... extensive organization renders necessary what is called expert leadership. Consequently the power of determination comes to be considered one of the specific attributes of leadership, and is gradually withdrawn from the masses to be concentrated in the hands of the leaders alone. Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than the executive organs of the collective will, soon emancipate themselves from the mass and become independent of its control.
Page 53 - It is obvious that such a gigantic number of persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work upon a system of direct discussion. The regular holding of deliberative assemblies of a thousand members encounters the gravest difficulties in respect of room and distance; while from the topographical point of view such an assembly would become altogether impossible if the members numbered ten thousand. Even if we imagined the means of communication to become much better than those...
Page 51 - ... union, or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. The mechanism of the organization, while conferring a solidity of structure, induces serious changes in the organized mass, completely inverting the respective position of the leaders and the led. As a result of organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a minority of directors and a majority of directed.
Page 153 - ... the press coverage attending any political event or circumstance where a critical mass of journalists leap to cover the same embarrassing or scandalous subject and pursue it intensely, often excessively, and sometimes uncontrollably...
Page 61 - Power is an actor's ability to induce or influence another actor to carry out his directives or any other norms he supports.3 Goldhamer and Shils state that "a person may be said to have power to the extent that he influences the behavior of others in accordance with his own intentions.
Page 51 - Thus the appearance of oligarchical phenomena in the very bosom of the revolutionary parties is a conclusive proof of the existence of immanent oligarchical tendencies in every kind of human organization which strives for the attainment of definite ends.
Page 59 - When they give directions, it should mark the end of controversy, God works in no other way. To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost one his faith, may destroy his testimony, and leave him a stranger to the kingdom of God.

About the author (2011)

Anson Shupe is professor of sociology at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne. A prolific writer dealing with religious movements, clergy misconduct, violence, and inequality, he is the author of Agents of Discord; Rogue Clerics; Self, Attitudes, and Emotion Work (all Transaction); and Spoils of the Kingdom.

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