PRIESTCRAFT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Priestcraft

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Priestcraft

noun

A derogatory reference to priests who use their influence to control secular or political affairs.

The skills involved in the work of a priest.

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Etymology of 'Priestcraft'

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"Priestcraft" Quotes from Famous Books

... success that attended his efforts, and he failed to see the clouds that were gathering. {225a} Borrow saw the danger of Graydon's reckless evangelism, and although he himself had few good words for the pope and priestcraft, he recognised that a discreet veiling of his opinions was best calculated to further the ends he had ...

— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... duties he had no inclination to practice, and condemn faults he did not like to renounce. It is no wonder, therefore, that Humphreys wrought himself into a most patriotic resolution, no longer to submit to tyranny and priestcraft, and to vow that the next time the Doctor admonished him, he would retort with "Ye take too much upon ...

— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... symbolism, the popular mythology, and also the corruptions, distortions, and abuses which are the parasites of all religion, with the religion itself, can easily come away with the impression that there is nothing but ghost-worship, priestcraft, and superstition, no conception whatever of a personal "Power that makes for Righteousness." If Protestants have almost as crude an idea of the religion of their Catholic fellow-Christians with whom they live side by side, and converse in the same language, if they ...

— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... power who can understand?" That all this is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter the fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of Priestcraft. ...

— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... ignorant multitude; as in sacred groves a tree might have been made to speak by the simple contrivance of a man concealed within the hollow stem, which to outward appearance would have been considered solid. The devices of priestcraft to bring grist to their mill are not yet obsolete, as will be seen in many of the ...

— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

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