Truth and Responsibility: Understanding Christian Pastors and Priests

Abstract

This special issue focuses on the roles and lived experience of pastors and priests, with an emphasis on North America and Europe. This introduction to the special issue includes: (1) the rationale for focusing on pastors and priests as a way to further the anthropological understanding of Christianity as it is lived by the agents at the core of its culturally generative forces, (2) a short review of the burgeoning literature both within and outside anthropology that coalesces around the centrality and risks of being a pastor or priest, and (3) an introduction to the five papers and the kinds of pastors, pastoral concerns, and theoretical and conceptual problems they address. Throughout, there is an emphasis on how a pastoral habitus that mutually, if not seamlessly, conjoins the human and divine fortifies and reproduces pastors and priests in their work, whether they are providing subtle nudges to their parishioners, confronting the devil on behalf of those parishioners, or giving more focused this-worldly practical advice.