Pastoral Misconduct (eBook)

“Sociologist Anson Shupe finishes his series on clergy malfeasance and abuse with his new book Pastoral Misconduct: The American Black Church Examined. Written with Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini, the book is likely to be controversial in its argument that certain features of the black church tradition and African-American clergy lend themselves to deviant behavior. . . . Shupe and Eliasson-Nannini focus on the way the minority status of black churches born of a history of prejudice tends to move members to seek to protect, and in some cases excuse, their clergy even in cases of misconduct.”
—Religion Watch

Today clergy misconduct is acknowledged as a social problem with growing conceptual and theoretical implications. In Pastoral Misconduct, Anson Shupe and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini argue that the history and traditions of black pastoral leadership, coupled with the close identity of many black congregants with their pastor, congregation, and racial subculture, creates opportunity structures that facilitate predatory behavior.

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In the past, clergy malfeasance was mentioned only in passing by group members or adherents. The subject was invisible and those who studied it were often stigmatized as hostile to religion itself. Today clergy misconduct is acknowledged as a social problem with growing conceptual and theoretical implications.

In Pastoral Misconduct, Anson Shupe and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini argue that the history and traditions of black pastoral leadership, coupled with the close identity of many black congregants with their pastor, congregation, and racial subculture, creates opportunity structures that facilitate predatory behavior. Familiarity and mutual identity frequently leads victims to drop their normal levels of wariness.

Major denominations and minor sects have been studied, but this unique study by Shupe and Eliasson-Nannini pursues nuances of pastoral bad behavior in a new context. This book is not a tabloid treatment of the American black church. In fact, the black church becomes the vehicle for a major new sociological development: a theory of clergy misconduct in any minority religion.