Clergy fleeing their ministries due to fights with parishioners over politics: report
[Excellent, they should flee!!! IMO there is far too much political bullshit going on in churches.]
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/clergy-church/
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."
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And I'd bet that it has continued to be down sharply in 2021.
