Men have a perfect right to claim authority from God.  Granted his existence, there ar egood reasons to believet hat he would call and authorize men to be his servants on earth.  Authority implies a legal or rightful command without which orderly social action is quite impossible.  The principle of authoritarianism, by contrast, discounts man's ability to rule himself and advocates in principle the right of men to rule over their fellow men.  In this system of government authority is not looked upon as a necessary means of achieving desirable human goals, but rather as an end in itself.  In political science a dictatorshp is authoritarian; in religion any action that is carried out simply by reason of one's office and calling, with no regard for the value of that action in terms of religious purpose and principle, may be called authoritarian.

Lowell Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth pg. 116