Religion: Pastoral Pay

Pastors used to be as poor as church mice; the men in black were mostly in the red. Now, it seems, the age of prosperity has caught up with the clerics. Surveying the state of pastoral pay last week. TIME correspondents across the U.S. found that ministers generally are beginning to share with their congregations in the national affluence.

Episcopal Bishop Roger Blanchard of the Southern Ohio diocese reports that the average minimum pay for priests in his 85 parishes is $8,000—an increase of about three thousand in a decade. In the American Baptist Convention, the average ministerial salary (including housing allowance)...