Evangelicals, priesthood and elitism

A lot of what I have written about ministry over the last few days has been ‘thinking out loud’ (for the last posting, see here) — and whilst I don’t think I’m at the end of the trail, I do think I’ve reached something of a personal milestone.

Some time ago, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali caused some controversy when he said that there are “virtually two religions” in the Church of England. He was referring, of course, to the long-standing divide between conservatives and liberals, and although this division is endlessly nuanced, in the end it is clearly present.

I have now reached the (interim!) conclusion, however, that we must overlay on top of this divide between “two religions” another divide between ‘two ministries’ — in short, two ‘priesthoods’.

On one side of the divide are those who view the Anglican priesthood as essentially ‘functional’. The priest is someone given public authority to do what any Christian can do, as it were ‘in the privacy of their home’. Ordination therefore confers on the priest nothing other than this authority, and any accompanying prayer for the grace of the Holy Spirit is simply that the priest may perform this function of priesthood properly and effectively — just as we might similarly pray for a newly-arrived teacher or a local mayor. For sake of simplicity, we will call this the ‘priest as presbyter’ model, bearing in mind that the English word ‘priest’ derives from the Greek presbuteros, or ‘elder’.

On the other side are those who take the view that the Anglican priesthood is essentially ‘personal’ (the technical term is ‘ontological’). In ordination, the person being ordained is, as it were, ‘made into’ a priest — he (or she) is no longer quite what they were as a layperson, and is not simply ‘authorized’ by ordination, but is changed and ‘empowered’ by it. The views on this ‘empowerment’ may vary, but the essential characteristic is that priest and laity are in some way separated in what they are, not just in what they do. We will call this simply the ‘priestly’ model, since for most people, the word ‘priest’ conjures up exactly this ‘set apart specialness’ of someone different from the layperson.

Now of course, there are nuances also to these distinctions. There are many jobs, for example, in which it is hard to separate the office from the person. A policeman, for example, is always a member of the police at all hours of the day or night, whether on duty or not. Again, a fortunate person may find themselves in a job for which they were, in a sense, ‘made’ — such as the skilled teacher or compassionate carer. The clergy are very fortunate in often being able to find their niche in this way.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the two views are clearly distinguishable. And the important thing is that they overlap the other distinction between liberal and conservative.

In particular, there are traditionalist priests and liberal priests — both sure of their ‘separateness’ and of the fundamental importance of their own ordination to their relationship with God, with the Church and with the world, but both (as Nazir-Ali observed) operating with entirely different theological assumptions at almost every other level. Importantly, this overlap also includes ‘evangelical priests’, who, for example, see themselves having a singular importance in relation to the sacraments, not simply a particular role.

One finds rather less overlap between traditionalist and liberal presbyters. Indeed, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually encountered the latter. On the contrary, the insistence on using the actual term ‘presbyter’ is something I have only found in the most ‘straight’ of strait-laced evangelicals. However, there are undoubtedly liberal Anglican priests for whom what they do outside the framework of liturgy and church is a fundamental expression of their ‘priesthood’ — as theologically important to them as celebrating the sacraments.

To repeat: the key point is that the ‘priesthoods’ overlap, rather than simply distinguish, the theologies.

The recognition of these two ‘priesthood’ models is important, however, for two pressing reasons. The first is that it directly affects whom we will admit to the priesthood and on what basis. The second is that it directly affects what we expect this person to do, and therefore how we will train and equip them.

Now the problem as I see it at the moment is this: the Church of England desperately needs, and indeed is increasingly demanding of its ministers, a predominantly ‘functional’, ‘presbyteral’, approach to ministry. However, it is deeply committed to the personal, ‘priestly’, model of ministry. We are thus calling people on the basis of their ‘personal’ characteristics, and training them to function accordingly, whilst what we need is predominantly ‘functional’ ministers, completely unlike what has gone before, enabling others to share their ‘presbyterate’.

The final point I want to make at this stage, however, is that for all evangelicals our whole practice of ministry is infused with the ‘image’ of the personal priest. The result is that even whilst we may decry the ‘sacramentalism’ of the  ‘priestly’ model, we imbue the  ‘presbyterial’ model with an almost unconscious elitism! Later, when there is a bit more time, I want to post on the implications of this for Anglican ministry.

John Richardson
1 March 2010

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