While I agree with the observations, there is one question I have to check to what extent the analogy is valid. What are the proportions of hypocrites to real believers in both societies?
Is it almost all pastors and almost all imams that behave the way described? All males of enough position in both groups?
Or is there a statistically significant difference in proportions, maybe?
The purpose of my question is not to undermine the analogy, but to verify how close actually the two groups really are.
What I was comparing was less the clergy themselves than the mindset, political instincts, and social logic around them.
It’s hard to make sweeping claims about “the Muslim world” when there are more than 50 Muslim-majority countries and huge differences between them. The influence of imams and religious authorities varies a lot from country to country, sect to sect, and even community to community.
That said, in many Muslim contexts, the local imam does not play quite the same role as the pastor does in parts of American evangelical culture. Sunni Islam has no priesthood in the Christian sense and no formal need for a human middleman between the believer and God.
Christianity is different there. Some branches, especially Catholicism and Orthodoxy, are much more clerical by structure. Protestantism rejects priestly mediation in theory, but in practice many pastors in America still become major social and political authorities inside their communities.
So no, I was not saying imams and pastors are identical in status or function. I was saying the follower mentality and the social outcomes can look strikingly similar even when the structure at the top is different.
For an imam to hold power comparable to that of a major American pastor, he usually has to become something closer to a cult leader. And once you get into cult-leader territory, the money is not really coming from being an imam. It comes from turning the following itself into a business.
While I agree with the observations, there is one question I have to check to what extent the analogy is valid. What are the proportions of hypocrites to real believers in both societies?
Is it almost all pastors and almost all imams that behave the way described? All males of enough position in both groups?
Or is there a statistically significant difference in proportions, maybe?
The purpose of my question is not to undermine the analogy, but to verify how close actually the two groups really are.
Hi Grzegorz,
What I was comparing was less the clergy themselves than the mindset, political instincts, and social logic around them.
It’s hard to make sweeping claims about “the Muslim world” when there are more than 50 Muslim-majority countries and huge differences between them. The influence of imams and religious authorities varies a lot from country to country, sect to sect, and even community to community.
That said, in many Muslim contexts, the local imam does not play quite the same role as the pastor does in parts of American evangelical culture. Sunni Islam has no priesthood in the Christian sense and no formal need for a human middleman between the believer and God.
Christianity is different there. Some branches, especially Catholicism and Orthodoxy, are much more clerical by structure. Protestantism rejects priestly mediation in theory, but in practice many pastors in America still become major social and political authorities inside their communities.
So no, I was not saying imams and pastors are identical in status or function. I was saying the follower mentality and the social outcomes can look strikingly similar even when the structure at the top is different.
For an imam to hold power comparable to that of a major American pastor, he usually has to become something closer to a cult leader. And once you get into cult-leader territory, the money is not really coming from being an imam. It comes from turning the following itself into a business.
Thank you, that's a nice clarification.
I love this series. But do most of them know?.That isn't the impression I get from those who have escaped.