David B. Speaks

[_Cicero]

Campus politics are the worst.

Yep, especially when it's the Lord's university . . .

I am personally much more familiar with history department squabbles. Generally speaking the Religion department always wins.

[_sock puppet]

Oh, what a tangled web...

Trust me, the Lord doesn't need lies.

But Mormon Jesus does.

[_Doctor Scratch]

It appears that they've shut down the thread at David B.'s request. I thought that Kerry Shirts had some trenchant closing remarks re: restrictions places on certain kinds of scholarship. It seems, however, that the conservative Powers-that-Be in BYU's Religious Education department have enormous power. And they seem very afraid of the kinds of scholarship that Bokovoy and Shirts are talking about.

[_Kishkumen]

It appears that they've shut down the thread at David B.'s request. I thought that Kerry Shirts had some trenchant closing remarks re: restrictions places on certain kinds of scholarship. It seems, however, that the conservative Powers-that-Be in BYU's Religious Education department have enormous power. And they seem very afraid of the kinds of scholarship that Bokovoy and Shirts are talking about.

It's probably for the best. No need for David to become needlessly entangled in this political quagmire.

[_harmony]

It's probably for the best. No need for David to become needlessly entangled in this political quagmire.

Agreed. He's such a great example of what's good about the church, I'd hate for him to stained by any of this muck.

[_Kishkumen]

Agreed. He's such a great example of what's good about the church, I'd hate for him to stained by any of this muck.

Indeed. Me too.

[_Ceeboo]

It's probably for the best. No need for David to become needlessly entangled in this political quagmire.

Agreed. He's such a great example of what's good about the church, I'd hate for him to stained by any of this muck.

Bing to the O!

A HUGE Bokovoy fan!

Peace,
Ceeboo

[Guest]

-

[_lulu]

Finke & Stark, The Churching of America 2nd ed.

Number crunching sociologists of religion Finke & Stark’s overall thesis is that church membership has grown enormously in the US from colonial times to today and that simple, rigorist religions in the US grow while religions with complex theology and lax standards shrink. Although the book bills itself as being from 1776-2005, it looks like the “center of gravity” of the book is late 1800’s and early 1900’s (caveat: I haven’t read all of the chapters closely yet.)

In chapter 5, they are looking at US RC’s from 1850-1926.

Finke & Stark provide no citation for the following:

Most parish priests were secular (not members of religious orders), raised in local families and were “’of the people’” 133. “As graduates of local seminaries secular priests are trained by other local secular priests, not by ‘learned professors,’ and their interpretations of Catholic doctrine will tend, therefore, to be quite orthodox and in keeping with local practices.”

Finke & Stark then cite a study by Dolan of extant sermon manuscripts which concludes that the homilies were homely and more oriented toward the will, like a revival sermon, than complex theological discourses, 133.

Has it, on the whole, been priests who have been subversive of Roman Catholic belief over the last hundred and fifty years?

Hell yes, Jesuits put out stuff in biblical studies that make secular projects look like faith promotion. The Catholic Church has a huge huge gap between what the lay people believe and the theological elite who train priests and publish in journals.

There is no need for us to bore everybody else by getting into a cat-fight about this, but I remain skeptical about the general applicability of the idea "Trained clergy - > loss of belief".

Roger Finke and Rodney Stark found that one of the single surest causes of denominational decline is a ministry with collegiate theological training. Other kinds of training don't have the same effect. Ministers with BAs in business or politics are actually healthy for religious institutions. But university degrees in theology or religion make bad ministers. Why? Well, partly because people trained in religion and theology are much more likely than average to lose their faith as a result of their education. And it's hard for an agnostic or theologically liberal pastor to sustain the interest of his congregation. Finke and Stark call this a "loss of product content".

But the Roman Catholic church had a trained, and indeed 'educated' clergy long, long before the 1960s. I have no horse in this race, but I think some Catholics might object to your use of a value-concealing temporal expression in referring to the changes introduced by Vatican II. Yes, I know a Pope started it ...

That's true, but until Vatican II the church's day-to-day governance was largely in the hands of (uneducated) lay religious. The erosion of this administrative force decidedly shifted the balance of church governance to the seminary-educated clergy. Not that I'm saying this is the only factor; there were others. I highly recommend Finke/Stark's chapter on Catholic decline. But I don't think think Catholicism entirely bucks the trend.