Contemporary clerical constructions of a spiritual rural idyll

Abstract

Research among rural clergy in Somerset suggests that both historically and in the present, country clergy play a part in the creation, re–creation, envisioning, and transmission of a spiritual variant of the rural idyll. Earlier studies on the origins, nature, and function of the rural idyll have largely neglected this spiritual dimension. Few have regarded the clergy as an object of scholarly enquiry. What this article suggested is that rural clergy are contributing to the creation of an idealised spirituality as one component within an evolving rural idyll. This is largely the result of growing institutional marginalisation. The creation of a spiritualised component within the rural idyll is the result of a symbiotic or dialectical relationship with ‘folk–religion’. For the most part such a process is as unconscious as it is explicit, but it enables country clergy to retain a sense of their own relevance as religious functionaries in a secular world. As such the emergence and re–emergence of these spiritual aspects of the idyll provides a mechanism of clerical self–justification for many rural clergy.