Why Are the Clergy Discouraged?
MANY honest-hearted clergymen are becoming discouraged. A surprising number are even quitting their jobs. But why? Do not clergymen enjoy great prestige? Do not most of the clergy enjoy financial security? Are not the clergy enjoying the greatest religious boom in history?
True, but not all is well. This is seen in the results of a survey made not long ago among the Protestant clergy. To “find out how ministers function as pastors of churches in the United States,” the survey sponsors, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Union Theological Seminary, sent detailed questionnaires to 1,600 ministers. The sponsors received replies from 1,150 ministers in forty-seven states. The ministers represented twenty-two Protestant denominations. This is what the survey found: (1) Churches are becoming more like social centers than places of worship. (2) Today’s preacher is not so much preacher as he is organizer, counselor, promoter, financier, psychologist, administrator, socialite and entertainer. The role of being a preacher, said a spokesman for the survey, is one of “declining importance.”—New York Times, April 4, 1955.
What does this mean? That the clergy are doing almost everything except preaching the pure truths of the Bible. Has this getting away from Bible preaching been beneficial for the clergy? Financially, yes. But some ministers are honest with themselves. Thus one minister who sent in his survey questionnaire commented: “In addition to the matters covered in the questionnaire, I would like to mention the fact that I feel that there are a good many ministers who feel rather lost. I’m among them. We simply cannot see where we are going in the church. Our churches are successful. We gain more members, we have more at church, we have bigger budgets, we have more activities, we have better Sunday school materials, and so on. But we can’t see that we are making much of a difference in our communities or in the lives of the individual members of our communities. This disturbs me.”—New York Times, April 5, 1955.
If “a good many” Protestant clergymen feel lost because they are not making much difference in the lives of their parishioners, what of honest-hearted Catholic priests? As we look about North and South America and Europe, do we see Catholic priests making much difference in the lives of their parishioners? Are a good number of them also discouraged?
In 1948 a priest who spent fifteen years in the Franciscan order quit the Catholic Church. According to an Associated Press report of January 22, 1954, such as that which appeared in the Bergen (New Jersey) Evening Record of that date, ex-priest Emmett McLoughlin said: “The number of priests quitting the priesthood is kept as secret as possible.” Why? The news report continued: “McLoughlin, who left the priesthood in 1948 and now is superintendent of Memorial Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona, said 30 percent of all Roman priests leave Rome and that as many as 75 percent might quit if it were not for fear of hell, fear of family, fear of the public, and fear of destitution, deprivation, and insecurity.”
If Catholics were surprised at a statement asserting that 75 percent of all priests might quit Rome if it were not for their fears, and if Protestants were surprised that “a good many ministers” felt lost, they were still hardly as surprised as many Jewish persons last year when a rabbi with twenty-six years’ service resigned from the pulpit of Greater Miami’s oldest synagogue. In the Miami Herald of February 26, 1955, Rabbi Max Shapiro told his story. He explained his reasons for quitting his job by asking questions:
“Why then, after two thirds of my active life, and after 26 years of apparent ‘successful’ ministry, did I resign? There are three questions an honest minister asks of himself and of his congregation: ‘Do I reach the individuals whom I seek to reach?’ ‘Do I guide the people who need guidance?’ ‘Do I touch the lives I seek to touch?’ The minister finds it very difficult to give an affirmative answer.”
Explaining how the preaching role has been relegated to the background, Rabbi Shapiro went on to say: “Does the minister have nothing more offered to him than an opportunity to keep busy running from place to place, assume various offices, lend his name to all organizations and movements?” Of the ministry Rabbi Shapiro asked: “Does it offer him nothing more than a rushing to banquets, visiting the ‘elite,’ flattering the rich, and ‘playing’ to audiences who come to be entertained, not uplifted—and thus acquiring for himself a ‘big’ name and the favorable attentions generally reserved for ‘lights’ in the theater, politics or sports?
“There are many times in the life of a minister when he wonders whether he should go on. Many of my colleagues stated: ‘I wish I had your courage to quit.’”
Were it not for fear, then, there would be a mass quitting among the clergy. Honest-hearted clergymen are discouraged. Why? Because they are doing virtually nothing to change the lives of their parishioners, to make them live according to Bible principles. And why are they such failures? It must be that the religion they represent is not the true religion of the Bible! In the book Protestant—Catholic—Jew, published last year, author Will Herberg finds today’s religions, whether Protestant, Catholic or Jewish, not faithful to what he calls the Biblical true faith.
But we do not need Mr. Herberg’s book to discern this fact. It is the quality of people that a religion produces that is the key test to whether a religion is true or false. Look about Christendom. Then read the Bible. God’s Word says: “They publicly declare they know God, but they disown him by their works.”—Titus 1:16, NW.
True religion changes peoples’ lives. It produces right works, right conduct, right action. It inspires and encourages people. It holds forth God’s new world of righteousness as mankind’s only hope. It is the purpose of the Watchtower magazine to aid you in the practice of this true religion.