Stuttering Clergy Spread the Word

The Rev. Tom Sherrod loathed to "declare" a couple man and wife.

As a stutterer, Sherrod always had problems with hard “c” sounds, and the “c” in “declare” was a doozy. “P” sounds weren’t easy either, and the Bible is full of them.

“If I tried to read, I would lock onto words,” said Sherrod, a North Carolina hospital chaplain who is an ordained United Methodist minister. “I tried to steer clear of certain Scriptures.”

Now, after intensive speech therapy, Sherrod publicly reads aloud whatever parts of the liturgy he likes. But before he learned to control the stutter, life -- as it can be for many stutterers -- was an exhausting exercise in avoiding some tough words and muscling through others.