Clergy work-related satisfactions in parochial ministry: The influence of personality and churchmanship

Abstract

The aim of this study was to test several hypotheses that clergy work-related satisfaction could be better explained by a multi-dimensional rather than a uni-dimensional model. A sample of 1071 male stipendiary parochial clergy in the Church of England completed the Clergy Role Inventory, together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality It has long been accepted that work is one of the more important domains of life to affect overall life satisfaction (Andrews & Inglehart, 1979;Campbell, Converse & Rodgers, 1976; 5 Headey & Wearing, 1992). Headey, Holmstrom, and Wearing (1985) found that work ranked third in importance of the five domains that together explained most of the variation in reported well-being, and was considered to give greater overall satisfaction than standard of living and health. There is also an extensive literature on the sources of job satisfaction -and dissatisfaction -in the work place and on the mediating influences of job-roles and individual 10 differences in employee predispositions and personality. However, until recently, few formal studies have appeared on work satisfaction among the clergy and other religious professionals.The clergy are commonly regarded as being exposed to relatively few work-related problems and this view is confirmed by several social surveys (Barna, 1993; National 15 Federation of Priests' Councils, 1994). In an ad hoc study of work-induced stress, Cooper (1985) found that members of the clergy were the fifth least-stressed of 60 different occupations. Goetz (1997) reviewed the results of several American surveys and concluded that the clergy demonstrated a remarkably high degree of work satisfaction. Rose (1999) carried out a detailed statistical analysis of some 34,000 observations on job satisfaction 20 collected in the British Household Panel Survey over the period 1991-99. In terms of overall work satisfaction, clergy ranked second only to medical secretaries out of 143 occupational groupings, with 72% of clergy respondents stating that their work satisfaction was "high" or "very high". Indirect evidence for the clergy's satisfaction with their work is provided by demographic data on longevity and the low incidence of stress-related diseases. Lock and 25 Clergy Work Satisfaction 3 King (1980) found that US Baptist clergy lived longer than members of the general population, and King and Lock (1980) proposed white American Presbyterian ministers as a low risk population for mortality research.Other work has been guided by a paradigm that maintains that clergy are subject to a form of sub-clinical occupational stress known as "burnout". This syndrome is characterised by 5 feelings of emotional exhaustion, lack of personal achievement and the development of an uncaring and cynical attitude towards others, and is principally associated with workers in the caring professions (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). It has been argued that clergy are susceptible to burnout because of the peculiar demands of their ministry. Sanford (1982) drew...

Professional Burnout among Catholic Religious Sisters in Italy: An Empirical Enquiry Exploring the Protective Role of Quality of Community Life

“…Eysenck and Eysenck style these factors as follows: the continuum from introversion through ambiversion to extraversion; the continuum from emotional stability through emotional lability to neurotic disorder; and the continuum from tendermindedness through toughmindedness to psychotic disorder. This model of personality has been employed among clergy by Francis and Rutledge (2000), Francis, Louden, and Rutledge (2004), Rutledge and Francis (2004), Francis, Turton, and Louden (2007), Turton and Francis (2007), and Francis, Hills, and Rutledge (2008). These studies agree that the clergy most vulnerable to burnout are introverts who also score high on the neuroticism scale, while the clergy most resilient to burnout are extraverts who score low on the neuroticism scale.…”

Workplace characteristics, career/vocation satisfaction, and existential well-being in Episcopal clergy

“…While other studies have found that women clergy are more satisfied with their work (Francis, Hills, & Rutledge, 2008;McDuff & Mueller, 2002), men in this study reported more career/vocation satisfaction. This appears to contradict earlier research, but it is likely that satisfaction with one's career is not equivalent to satisfaction with one's job, the variable in these other studies.…”

“…Clergy satisfaction is more multidimensional than unidimensional (Francis et al, 2008); so, satisfaction measures could be designed to look at various aspects of one's current position and one's career development. More direct measures of positive affect/engagement and negative affect/ burnout would also be useful.…”

Religious Resources, Spiritual Struggles, and Mental Health in a Nationwide Sample of PCUSA Clergy

“…Clergy make significant investments in learning about their faith tradition, and their work life and occupational identity is oriented around their religious community (Finke and Dougherty 2002;Ingram 1981;Mueller and McDuff 2004;Perl and Chang 2000). As clergy, they play many different roles that involve many distinct activities and responsibilities, ranging from preaching and teaching, to planning and administering congregational affairs, to pastoral visitations and counseling (Francis et al 2008;Kay 2000;Monahan 1999;Rowell 2000).…”

“…Much of the work in this area has built on models of job burnout (Maslach et al 2001) that focus on the fit between the personality characteristics and the demands of congregational ministry (Francis and Rodger 1994;Francis et al 2008;Miner 2007a, b). Although this is a valuable approach, we take a different tack in this study, capitalizing on developments in: (a) the conceptualization and measurement of health-relevant domains of religiousness (e.g., Idler et al 2003), (b) growing interest in the religious and spiritual sources of clergy resilience as well as strain (e.g., Meek et al 2003), and (c) the marriage of religion-health research with the broader life-stress (or stress-and-coping) paradigm Fabricatore et al 2004).…”