{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01942319011183049, 'fraction_numerical': 0.015891701000588582, 'mean_word_length': 4.802047781569966, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Reviews : Conflict and Decline: Ministers and Laymen in an Australian Country Town, by Kenneth Dempsey

This book is a socio-historical case study of conflict between clergy and lay people in a Methodist church in N.S.W. This church was established in the 1870s; the study covers a period of sixty-three years, commencing in 1905 through to the time the fieldwork was conducted. Dempsey describes the actors in the drama as the ministers, their wives, the lay people in the congregations (particularly the core of influential and powerful members) and the wider Methodist Church. The very important backdrop to the drama is the changing wider society. During this period, twenty-six ministers were appointed to the church, their incumbencies varying from four years to a few months. Dempsey describes nine of these appointments as conflictual and seventeen as harmonious, a conflictual relationship between clergy and laity being marked by tension and repeated disagreements leading either to a public showdown or to a rebuke of the minister by influential lay people which became public knowledge. Dempsey has divided the study into two periods, 1905 to 1949 and 1950 to 1967. Two of the sixteen ministries in the first period, compared with seven out of ten in the second period, were classified as conflictual. The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides a description of the church and its community during the second period and includes case studies of the ten ministries. The church had about 100 members during this period. Part II sets the second period in context by briefly tracing the history of Methodism, Australian Methodism and Methodism in this rural area. It includes