Preacher's kid is a term to refer to a child of a preacher, pastor, deacon, vicar, lay leader, priest, minister or other similar church leader. Although the phrase can be used in a purely descriptive way, it may also be used as a stereotype. In some countries, a preacher's kid is referred to as a vicar's son/daughter.
Children of clergy often experience pressure due to the expectations placed on them, [1] [2] [3] [4] and may develop feelings of isolation and inner conflict as a result. [5] Parental workload (which, by definition, includes working on the weekend) may also be a source of stress. [4] Some writers suggest that there is a "preacher's kid syndrome", in which children of clergy reject religion and the church. [6]
Such rebellious children of the clergy are a stock figure in the Southern literature of the United States, [7] and this view is seen as a stereotype. [8] One literary example occurs in Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh when the traveling salesman Hickey describes his life: "You see, even as a kid I was always restless. I had to keep on the go. You’ve heard the old saying, 'Ministers' sons are sons of guns.' Well, that was me, and then some." Other writers note that children of the clergy (both Christian and Jewish) may often become clergy themselves, [9] such as Martin Luther King Jr., son of Martin Luther King Sr.; and Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham.
Children of clergy may be more exposed than their peers to the defining events of life. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recalled that he learned much about life, death, poverty, injustice and unemployment as the son of a Church of Scotland minister. [10] The "preacher's kid" phenomenon has been connected with the related phenomenon of "military brats" (children of active-duty military personnel). [11] Children of preachers who are missionaries (missionary kids) may also be third culture kids.
There are two different stereotypes of the preacher's kid: in one, they are perfectly angelic role models, [12] in the other they are rebels at the opposite extreme. [12] [13] The existence of these stereotypes is a source of pressure on children of clergy. [13]
Examples of the negative stereotype include the preacher's son from Maine in the film Gettysburg , described as the "best darn cusser I've ever heard" and Jessica Lovejoy in the "Bart's Girlfriend" episode of The Simpsons . [14] On the sitcom Three's Company , the character Chrissy Snow played by Suzanne Somers played off a variety of stereotypes including the "dumb blonde", but also as daughter of Reverend Luther Snow (Peter Mark Richman), the character – as well as much of the show's humor – was developed around aspects of Chrissy's innocence and naïvety based on a stereotype of her religious upbringing in small town America. The TV series 7th Heaven is also a good example of the pastor's kid stereotype. The Camden family father, Eric (Stephen Collins), is a minister, and he and his wife Annie (Catherine Hicks) have seven children. Sometimes they are perfect angels but most of the time the show displays the trials that the family go through as the children grow up, and often the children are criticized because of who their father is. Lifetime reality TV series Preachers' Daughters follows the lives of Christian preacher's daughters and their families.
An enduring image from popular music is presented in the hit song "Son of a Preacher Man," a ballad of young love remembered, places the minister's son as a "sweet-talkin' son of a preacher man", who is possibly more sensitive to women and thus able to emotionally reach the girl who claims that, "The only one who could ever reach me/Was the son of a preacher man/The only boy who could ever teach me/Was the son of a preacher man." Versions of the recording from major stars like Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin kept this image, drawn from a southern US setting, visible internationally. The "preacher's daughter" is also a pervasive negative stereotype ascribed to female children that has a particular set of connotations, often sexual, rebellious, or dark in nature. The stereotype is typically suggestive of a dual life: one lived as the expected descendant of piety and the other lived wild, outside of the morals of religion, cloaked in secrecy. Songs such as "Preacher's Daughter" by American R&B singer-songwriter Anthony Hamilton exhibit this role: "She had a habit that she couldn't really stop, needed money so she had to hit the block, nobody knew it so she steady had to play a role, went to church, but surely tearin' up her soul... she was a Preacher's Daughter."
In Scotland, to be a "child of the manse" is considered very influential on a person's upbringing. [10]
In German, the terms Pfarrerskind [15] and Priesterkind are used to refer to children of clergy.
Greek surnames with the prefix Papa- and Armenian surnames with the prefix Ter- or Der- refer to people who are the descendants of clergy.
In certain Christian denominations, holy orders are the ordained ministries of bishop, priest (presbyter), and deacon, and the sacrament or rite by which candidates are ordained to those orders. Churches recognizing these orders include the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Assyrian, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic and some Lutheran churches. Except for Lutherans and some Anglicans, these churches regard ordination as a sacrament.
A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as a moral or social worldview or philosophy.
Bridget of Sweden, OSsS born as Birgitta Birgersdotter, also Birgitta of Vadstena, was a Swedish widow, mystic, saint, and the founder of the Bridgettines. Outside Sweden, she was also known as the Princess of Nericia and was the mother of Catherine of Vadstena.
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is an international Holiness–Pentecostal Christian denomination, and the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Although an international and multi-ethnic religious organization, it has a predominantly African-American membership based within the United States. The international headquarters is in Memphis, Tennessee. The current Presiding Bishop is Bishop John Drew Sheard Sr., who is the Senior Pastor of the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ of Detroit, Michigan. He was elected as the denomination's leader on March 27, 2021.
In denominations of Christianity, a godparent is someone who bears witness to a child's baptism (christening) and later is willing to help in their catechesis, as well as their lifelong spiritual formation. In the past, in some countries, the role carried some legal obligations as well as religious responsibilities. In both religious and civil views, a godparent tends to be an individual chosen by the parents to take an interest in the child's upbringing and personal development, to offer mentorship or claim legal guardianship of the child if anything should happen to the parents. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother. The child is a godchild.
Charles Frazier Stanley was an American Southern Baptist pastor and writer. He was senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta for 49 years and took on emeritus status in 2020. He founded and was president of In Touch Ministries, which widely broadcasts his sermons through television and radio. He also served two one-year terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, from 1984 to 1986.
Martin Luther King Sr. was an African-American Baptist pastor, missionary, and an early figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the father and namesake of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.. He was the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1931 to 1975.
Alberta Christine Williams King was an American civil rights organizer best known as the mother of Martin Luther King Jr., and as the wife of Martin Luther King Sr. She was the choir director of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She was shot and killed in the church by 23-year-old Black Hebrew Israelite Marcus Wayne Chenault six years after the assassination of her eldest son Martin Luther King Jr.
Circuit rider clergy, in the earliest years of the United States, were clergy assigned to travel around specific geographic territories to minister to settlers and organize congregations. Circuit riders were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church and related denominations, although similar itinerant preachers could be found in other faiths as well, particularly among minority faith groups.
A clerical collar, clergy collar, or, informally, dog collar, is an item of Christian clerical clothing.
Gilead is a novel written by Marilynne Robinson published in 2004. It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is Robinson's second novel, following Housekeeping (1980). Gilead is an epistolary novel, as the entire narrative is a single, continuing, albeit episodic, document, written on several occasions in a form combining a journal and a memoir. It comprises the fictional autobiography of John Ames, an elderly, white Congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa, who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. At the beginning of the book, the date is established as 1956, and Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his seven-year-old son, who will have few memories of him. Ames indicates he was born in 1880 and that, at the time of writing, he is seventy-six years old.
Alfred Daniel Williams King was an American Baptist minister and civil rights activist. He was the younger brother of Martin Luther King Jr. and the youngest son of Martin Luther King Sr.
Luther Alexander Gotwald, D.D. was a professor of theology in the Wittenberg Theological Seminary in the United States. He was tried for heresy by the board of directors at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, on April 4 and 5, 1893, which put on trial many key issues that Lutherans still debate today.
Francis Marbury (1555–1611) was a Cambridge-educated English cleric, schoolmaster and playwright. He is best known for being the father of Anne Hutchinson, considered the most famous English woman in colonial America, and Katherine Marbury Scott, the first known woman to convert to Quakerism in the United States.
Methodist views on the ordination of women in the rite of holy orders are diverse.
Ida B. Robinson was an American Holiness-Pentecostal and Charismatic denominational leader. She was the founder, first Senior Bishop and President of the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America, Inc. Robinson formed the organization in response to her vision and Divine Call to secure an organizational home where women preachers would be welcomed and encouraged. Mount Sinai Holy Church of America is the only organization founded by an African-American woman that held consistent female leadership from its founding in 1924 until February 2001.
Mae Eleanor Edick Frey was an American Pentecostal minister, leader, and writer. She was a social newspaper reporter when she was assigned to cover religious revival meetings; at one of these meetings, she met her future husband, evangelist P. I. Frey, and was converted to Christianity. She became an evangelist, working alongside her husband, and in 1905, became the first woman to be ordained in the Northern Baptist Convention. Frey served as pastor and assistant pastor of congregations in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. She became a military chaplain and nurse late in World War I, doing volunteer hospital work with the Red Cross while maintaining her regular preaching duties. Despite success as a minister and evangelist, Frey's spiritual and vocational dissatisfaction brought her to a meeting at a Pentecostal church, where she was introduced to Pentecostalism, including the doctrine of the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the practice of speaking in tongues, which "changed the trajectory of her life and ministry". She and her husband joined the Assemblies of God (AG) denomination and in 1920, traveled the country as evangelists. Frey was never ordained by the AG church due to their prohibition of women ministers, but she was hired as temporary pastor in a few churches and held an evangelist certificate with the denomination until her death in 1954.
David Carment (1772–1856) was a minister of first the Church of Scotland and then the Free Church of Scotland, who was involved in the Disruption of 1843 and in the legal troubles of the aftermath regarding church property ownership.
