Spoils of the Kingdom: Clergy Misconduct and Religious Community

Preface

Preface The reader should note the use of the phrase “modern times” in the title of chapter 1. This time frame is an imposed restriction since the suspicion or occurrence of clergy malfeasance is no new note in the history of deviance and criminality. The abuse of power among religious leaders has a hoary existence. For example, Ladurie (1978), a historian of medieval Europe, observed how fraught with the potential for sexual abuse were the inequitable status relationships between Roman Catholic clerics and laity, not to mention between senior clerics and novitiates in orders, and between priests and nuns. Homosexual revelations among clerics of different degrees in medieval Christendom were so rampant, according to Boswell (1981, 182), that “Saint Peter Damian . . . complained bitterly about the widespread practice of gay priests confessing to each other in order to avoid detection and obtained milder penance, and he alleged that spiritual advisors commonly had sexual relations with those entrusted to their care, a circumstance which would presumably render confessions from the advisee considerably less awkward.” Similarly, Daichman (1990, 106) has cited parallel instances of heterosexual exploitation and abuse of nuns and sisters by priests who could rather facilely blur their roles of tempter and absolver. Some half a millennia later, as Jenkins (2002) points out, there was in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century North America a continuous pool of religious hustlers and lecherous, malfeasant institutional leaders. Sexual and economic betrayals were rampant. And for a more recent parallel: If there was a precursor to the televangelist financial excesses and sexual escapades of the late 1980s, it was in the person of pre–World War II’s evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (Blumhofer 1993). By “modern times,” therefore, for practicality I mean the era of the generation now being born, or growing up, or living through the years since World War II. This definition leaves us with a manageable scope of persons, organizations, and events to illustrate how social exchange theory can illuminate the general problem of nonnormative clergy. I coined the term clergy malfeasance in a previous work (Shupe 1995) to merge religion and criminological concepts. Clergy is generally meant to be synonymous with cleric (by which any religious functionary with formal or delegated or self-delegated authority, from a bishop to a pastor to a deacon to a church youth leader or treasurer, is included). Malfeasance can be construed as a religious leader’s malpractice (though the latter term is usually reserved for lawyers and physicians) or cruel treatment or actions contrary to official (fiduciary) obligations to safeguard the interests and persons of lay persons, parishioners, or disciples. Readers will see I use the terms clergy malfeasance, clergy abuse, clergy exploitation , and clergy misconduct interchangeably. Not all such actions (as will be delineated in chapter 1) fall into criminal categories, but all are considered deviant by the norms of communities of faith and the larger societies in which they occur. Finally, in this project, though my primary intent is to further build theory on clergy malfeasance for academics, I consider questions that have occurred to the average onlooker observing clergy deviance (particularly if it occurs in someone else’s group) but that no previous researcher has directly asked: When there have been witnesses to, and reported experiences of, clergy misconduct, why do some communities of faith begin to fragment and others do not? Why do some believers rally behind their leaders, even if the latter are exposed as culpable or crooked in the face of undeniable evidence? How elastic is faith? As will be seen, I reject outright the simplistic “dupe” explanation for believers who stay. While I embrace the social-psychological exchange explanations at points to explain individuals’ feelings when transactions of faith have gone bad, at the same time I believe there is something deeper and more sociological at work in communities of faith. xii Preface ...