Seven Hundred Clergy Can Be Wrong

By: Alan Sears
August 22, 2011

An enterprising chiropractor ought to be able to make a good living in New York these days, going church to church and offering his services. So many clergy in the Empire State have been vigorously patting themselves on the back over their recent success, lobbying for the same-sex “marriage” law, that many must be giving themselves a pain in the neck, for a change.

Some 734 clergy and lay leaders combined forces as part of New York’s “Pride in the Pulpit” initiative -- a conformist conglomeration of priests, rabbis, and mainline Protestants that many political analysts credit with bringing home the necessary swing votes to squeak out a 33-29 win in the legislature.

“They provided a kind of political and theological cover to the moderate and conservative state senators,” as The New York Times explains it. In the words of Princeton history professor Julian E. Zelizer, “Politicians draw on clergy to give themselves moral authority when taking on these kinds of social and cultural issues.”

What he means is, if a wolf is looking for sheep’s clothing, there’s no better place to get it than from a shepherd. As moral authorities go, clergy -- even in this jaded age -- rank pretty high. Higher, it turns out, than the God they’re jockeying to speak for.  the rest