I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy.
The clergy earns its living from religion. If your interests are secured through religion, then you will defend your interests first, and religion will become secondary.
And in times and places where there was not much persecution, people could become and continue Christians who neither were nor professed to be very devoted persons.
It is true that traditional Christianity is losing some of its appeal among Americans, but that is a religious, not political, matter. It is worth remembering that the Jeffersonian 'wall of separation' between church and state has always been intended to protect the church from the state as much as the state from the church.
The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.
The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society.
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
I think in a lot of network television, everyone's vaguely Protestant and doesn't really go to church so they can be 'relatable.'
I think there's an awful lot of noise about the Church being persecuted but there is a more real issue that the conventional churches face - that the people who are really driving their revival and success believe in an old-time religion which, in my view, is incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society.
In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
No opposing quotes found.