By Tom Boggoini
Raw Story: According to a report from the Washington Post, religious institutions in the United States are seeing an exodus of clergy members who have grown weary of secular politics invading their conversations and counseling with parishioners.
As Michele Boorstein documents, churches are undergoing a “crisis” as pastors and clergy members abandon their posts and look for greener pastures with the past few years of political strife taking its toll.
As Boorstein writes, there has been an “exodus of clergy who have left ministry in the past couple years because of a powerful combination of pandemic demands and political stress. Amid fights about masks and vaccine mandates, to how far religious leaders can go in expressing political views that might alienate some of their followers, to whether Zoom creates or stifles spiritual community, pastoral burnout has been high.”
Citing a recent poll that revealed 38 percent said of Protestant pastors claimed, “they’d considered quitting full-time ministry in the past year,” the report notes that “stress levels are through the roof” for the clergy in recent years.
According to Matthew Manion, director of the Center for Church Management at Villanova University, “Clergy are meant to be there for all their people — so if their people are having more challenges, more stress — and what’s made it particularly challenging is they can’t be together in their normal ways of being together. Spiritual counseling and being present for people is very, very difficult.”
Case in point, Joel Gustafson, a church youth leader who has butted head with his superiors in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Gustafson, “was planning to make a career of ministry. Soon he was struggling with the segment of his 100-person church that saw mask-wearing as an issue of individual rights and refused to wear them. Gustafson found himself at odds with higher-ranking clergy… Then came fall 2020, and President Donald Trump’s comment in a presidential debate to right-wing extremists that they should “stand back and stand by.” Read more..
https://www.rawstory.com/christian-leaving-churches/
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They spiritually and morally left their ministry years ago, the Protestant churches beginning 500 years ago, when they began teaching a false gospel under the influence of Judaism and later Judeo-Masonry. See the works of Fr Denis Fahey (d. 1954), some online, for authenticity. See Bishop Donald Sanborn and the “Defeat Modernism” channel for authenticity today.
Churches are luxury private clubhouses. Private gathering places with property tax provided by the taxpayers. The idea to do this, was supposedly based on the idea that religion has no place in politics and that is true, if speaking of the spiritual portion of religion. The cognitive dissonance begins when a church realizes that the majority of people will not vote for this or that law which pertains to the whims of one group only. So they push with lobbyists and seek high courts to turn them over. If religion insists on staying in politics, then either it or the government will fail. The dumbest argument people have, is which god is the best god, and what does he/she want us to do. This will only clog up the will of the people in banality and court fights. Many church leaders are getting out of religion altogether. They study and find things.
The FFRF , Freedom From Religion Foundation, is led by an ex pastor, and they have many ex pastors or ex believers swelling their ranks. The fundamental truth is that our government was designed to provide people freedom, FROM religion as much as it was freedom of religion.
So technically, removing taxes on private clubhouses for the non-religious would be the obvious move to reconcile this wrongful privilege. Either that or the buildings and income of the religious must be taxed. What qualifies as religion must also be elucidated to a more modern description. The way the court is stacked, is a religious coup. Embarrassing that we allowed it to happen.
The minute I heard this title I immediately thought of a great comment David Odell made concerning taxing the Churches and Synagogues because they are disobeying the Separation of Church
and State. I was going to ask him to post it again.
Well, I opened the comments and David has a more brilliant comment already posted!
Listen to David Odell, he really knows what he is talking about!
Thanks David!
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