Church of Power & Church of Piety
Posted by tom | Jul 23, 2005In One True God, Rodney Stark (note recent addition to Baylor Faculty) argues:
Church of Power, was by far the largest and consisted of most of the official Roman Catholic hierarchy, from parish clergy through popes, and the masses of nominal Catholics . . . masses slightly Christianized . . . [religious elite] openly devoted to opulent living and vice.
Church of Piety: At the head of this church were the monks (and sometimes nuns playing leading roles as well). An immense structure of monasteries crisscrossed medieval Europe as monasticism continued to attract the most ardent Christians from each generation. Most monks did not lead a sequestered life but were a very influential social force in the eleventh century they were still busy missionizing the pagan political elites of northern Europe . . .
Monks also served as chaplains and even as pastors to various groups of laity, for the fact is that while the people as a whole were quite lacking in piety, there were significant numbers of devout laypersons, many of whom had been led to serious commitment through instruction from a monk. Indeed, periodically monks embarked on preaching tours -- an early form of revival campaign that added to the membership of the Church of Piety . . . along came several popes who wanted to inspire an enormous outburst of popular piety -- the Crusades. In fact, all of the popes of the second half of the eleventh century were monks who wished to reassert the Church of Piety, and who themselves often stressed the moral shortcomings within the Church . . . And the longer they [monks of the Church of Piety] thundered about the infidel, the more they began to include as infidel all who were insufficiently faithful to Christ -- including unworthy priests and bishops. . . Slowly, and out of frustration, the reformers begin to venture toward the old Donatist position that sacraments are of no value if received from unworthy priests . . . they voided the previous general toleration of Christian nonconformity . . . gave rise to organized and truly threatening dissent: Waldensians, Cathars (called Albigensians in southern France), Lollards, Hussites, Lutherans, and Calvinists -- to name only some major movements in what eventually came to be known as Protestantism . . . the Church of Power responded to each of these challenges with fire and sword, to the fullest extent possible. But in the end an unlikely coalition of pious religionists and opportunistic politicians secured the survival of Protestantism. The Catholic response was the Counter-Reformation, during which many of the sins condemned by the heretics were corrected as the Church purged unobservant clergy and began serious efforts to Christianize laity (p.159-61).
