Timeline for What's the difference between a vicar and a pastor?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 24, 2011 at 1:42 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Nicholas Wilson: Quite so. I already expected you weren't offended, but I'd still rather not have written what I did in the circumstances. Not that I know, even now, whether you are in fact religious (but tolerant). Your circumspection does you credit, particularly on a site like this. I can only be what I am at any given time, but I hope I can try to recognise a potential 'better' me in the future, and steer myself in that direction. My future me will hopefully be less gobby. | |
| May 24, 2011 at 1:01 | comment | added | Nicholas Wilson | Not at all. I'm not in the least offended, but more interested. You were giving off some personal vibes, and it's just a bit unusual of a Q&A site to have a chance to make any sort of connection with the person on the other end who's also procrastinating by posting answers on the fine distinctions between different words. I mean, I'm real, and you're a real person, and I just thought I could make a gentle comment without upsetting you, and indeed SO does have plenty of polite users like you. Sometimes it's good to remember that words point to realities more important that the language itself. | |
| May 24, 2011 at 0:48 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Nicholas Wilson: My apologies for being unduly dismissive. I do sometimes forget my manners at the keyboard. Though to be honest I don't usually know if people I interact with online are religious, and I certainly wouldn't debate their faith with them if I did know. I was just mouthing off in a general sense, as I expect you realise, but I really didn't stop to think how it would be from the point of view of someone who doesn't share my lack of faith. | |
| May 24, 2011 at 0:31 | comment | added | Nicholas Wilson | That's a shame, because it's not really representative. I guess you know that, but still. Things don't have merit as and when they're popular; they're useful only so far as they really reflect the world (and that's linguistic too, to prevent this being too OT). You're giving lots of of atheist signals (sorry if that's a wrong linguistic comment, but many of my friends display the same!); perhaps it is fair to point out that if we are correct now, it has to be because we square up against everything else and win, whether it's still around or not, so we can't write anything off as just history. | |
| May 23, 2011 at 20:47 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Nicholas Wilson: Well I think at the last count less than 5% of the UK are regular church-goers, and it's expected that practising Muslims will outnumber them in a couple of decades. So I see the whole thing as historical anyway. OP says he's asking because he keeps coming across vicars in literary / cultural / scientific contexts, so I guess that's mostly pretty old stuff. For me today, the whole field of religion is more evocative of suicide bombers and people like Harold Camping (the latest End-Of-Worlder to get the date wrong), so I don't really keep up with it. | |
| May 23, 2011 at 20:17 | comment | added | Nicholas Wilson | In England, yes, but there are plenty of Americans around here where minister, pastor, and priest would probably each outnumber vicar as formal titles. Globally, in English-speaking countries, it's not entirely clear that 'vicar' would be the most common. | |
| May 23, 2011 at 19:58 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Nicholas Wilson: I don't doubt that for a moment. But taking all religious organisations together, I do seriously doubt that the number of pastors formally endowed with that title would be significant compared with the corresponding number of vicars, which was really all I was saying. Oh - and that in general, vicars are further up the hierarchy than pastors. | |
| May 23, 2011 at 19:09 | comment | added | Nicholas Wilson | Many churches (perhaps baptists most numerously) would have pastor or elder (they are synonymous for baptists) as a formal position. | |
| May 23, 2011 at 16:56 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
parson/pastor; edited body
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| May 23, 2011 at 16:36 | history | answered | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |