Everyone complaining about the state in which Anglican bishops live (without any subsidy from the state, by the way) should pause for a brief moment at this report in the New York Times, where a liberal Presbyterian church in the city has just had its new pastor resign after some of the congregation complained about his compensation package. It amounted to $600,000 a year, including a quarter of a million dollars in straight salary. Apparently this is the going rate for people who run big prestigious mainstream churches in America. It goes without saying that the evangelical heavy hitters make an order of magnitude more.
And before we get umpteen comments saying that this shows the congregation is brainwashed, indoctrinated, and so on … these are highly educated and – obviously – rich people spending their own money on something they value. There is obviously different to poor people being conned rotten by pentecostal mail order salesmen. It is a measure, in a free market, of how much people value what their church is giving them. It would appear from the outcome of this story that that's less than $600,000 a year; it's certainly at least $250,000.
