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The Growth of Denominational Bureaucracies: A Neglected Aspect of American Church History*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Conrad Wright
Conrad Wright
Affiliation:
The Divinity School, Harvard University
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Extract

I invite your attention this morning to a problem in Church History that has thus far been most inadequately addressed by scholars. It is the development of ecclesiastical bureaucracies by Protestant denominations in this country. These bureaucracies are major realities of institutional religion in our day, which our M.Div. students will be dealing with all through their professional careers. Yet as a field for historical investigation, this is an almost entirely neglected subject. Our students may argue at length over theological issues like the doctrine of God; or will study with surprising enthusiasm the christological controversies of the ancient church; or will debate the role of the church in current social issues. In courses in Applied Theology they will talk at length about the local church as community, and the role of the minister as he or she interacts with lay members in the pews. But extraparochial structures are seldom looked at with any care. Their behavior may be criticized when ministerial settlement does not proceed rapidly enough, but the rationale for their existence is not examined. To state it in theological terms, theological analysis has paid little attention to a doctrine of the church that seems to have anything much to say about these institutions, how they came into being and why they have taken the shape and form that they have.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 177 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1984

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