THE DEMISE OF CLERICAL PREROGATIVES

There has been enough clericalism in our Protestant culture to keep us going for a long time, and we need not waste energy trying to determine how much Roman Catholicism has influenced this. True, the Roman priests set the pace for a long time in sitting in judgment over men’s souls. They are not now quite like they once were. Protestants too are making some head-way in narrowing the gap that has long existed between clergy and laity. It appears that those who wish to hold to the old assumptions of clerical prerogatives are going to have a tough time of it in years ahead.

For generations the typical American community pampered “the Parson” to such an extent that nobody expected him to do any work. The fellows would get together and paint his house while the ladies were delivering him a ham. No physician would have considered sending him a bill for medical services. He hardly ever made a purchase at regular price. If the product were not given to him, it was understood that there would be a ten percent discount. When he visited with his brethren, the best bed was reserved for him (even when his body was young and his back strong) and food was prepared that the family could hardly afford. When the preacher came for a visit, it effected the home something like the visit of a monarch to a small municipality. The children came to realize that it was a time of trial.

Since the birth of our nation the clergyman has seldom been expected to take up arms for his country. Even when young and single he is exempt, while older men with families in his parish are required to leave home for years to fight a war. The fallacy has long endured that since a man is called to preach he is to be treated differently. Unlike the apostle Paul who worked with his hands alongside those to whom he ministered, the clergyman has been set apart with white cuffs bedecked with gold and unsoiled hands. Many railroads issued him a free pass, and he always traveled at half-fare. The bus lines followed suit by issuing clergy certificates. Surprisingly enough some modern airlines are keeping this folly alive by doing something similar.

These things are not the most serious forms of clericalism, if this is the right term to use. Indeed, the things we have referred to are as much the fault of the people as the clergy, for out of their pride, or perhaps their sense of guilt or naivete, the people have sought to make something like a petty king out of their ministers. Clericalism becomes pernicious as well as presumptuous when it seeks to control men’s minds, an evil still very much alive in our time, especially in our own ranks.

We still have preachers who do not hesitate to tell their people what they may or may not read. This journal sometimes makes the censored list, and the stories that come back to us in this regard make interesting reading. The ministers in question are sufficiently mature to read us, but they fear for their people who may be disturbed by what we say. Even Bible chair directors at universities who should be eager to get their hands on anything that might challenge the thinking of today’s youth are often found relegating our “far out” or “liberal” journals to special depositories where only more advanced students might see them.

Our unity meetings sometimes get this kind of treatment, especially when controversial names are listed on the program. The congregation must be protected, so it is subjected to the same old bromides from Sunday to Sunday, while the minister basks in the sun shine and freshness of new insights, provided by the unity sessions. It is as if it were appropriate for the minister to think, but not for his people. Must mind-expanding experiences be the prerogative of the clergy?

Our young people are tiring of this kind of distrust of their faith. They are warned against marrying “outside the church,” and so they are made to feel guilty for dating someone in another communion, however pious he may be. Some prudish joker is supposedly more promising since he is of us. The preachers have too long done the thinking for our youth as to whether they should dance, smoke or kiss. I recall the lad in a small Texas city where I ministered as a young man. He dared to attend a movie one Saturday afternoon, and to someone who caught him at it he said, “What-ever you do, don’t tell brother Garrett!” He seemed willing to take his chances with the Lord, but for the preacher to know was something else!

Even more serious is the way we have cut our youth off from the rest of the Christian community, and along with it we have taught them to hate. Even the most promising programs of Methodists and Baptists have been off limits, and how often have we arranged or participated in such an affair as an all-city youth rally that included the young people of all the denominations? Our young people have to go away to college before they have such broadening experiences as a coke and cookie get-together with clergymen of all faiths. Perhaps this is why only 10% choose (not all choose!) to attend one of our Christian colleges, for even there the same limitations are brought to bear upon them.

Much of this insidiousness is to be laid at the feet of our preachers. They could lead our youth into green pastures and beside still waters, bringing them the refreshment of new acquaintances and new ideas. They choose rather to enslave, a clerical prerogative that is all too often successful, as Dostoevsky so well dramatizes in his story of the Grand Inquistitor, where the cardinal has the power to turn even Jesus out into the night.

We are thankful that this picture is changing somewhat throughout the Christian community. The pulpit is less “the sacred desk” where only those ordained by the fathers of the church may stand, and more a forum where any believer may witness to his life in Christ. Even in the Roman church laymen are joining the clergy in the performance of the mass. More striking is the emergence of young clergymen who, though disenchanted with the pulpit, find an exciting ministry in the coffee shops of skid row. Young priests, wearing sweaters instead of clerical collars, are going out where the action is. If the institutional church is in trouble, the clergy system is also waning.

The seminaries are well aware of the evils of clericalism in modern society, and they may do more than anything else in achieving its demise, as unlikely as that may seem, being themselves clerical institutions. In recent years they have greatly enlarged their concept of ministry, not only in including women in their programs but by curricula that cut across a huge hunk of our culture. They are hardly “preacher factories” any longer, for men and women go out from them into scores of ministries that reach all the way from counseling the deprived in a ghetto to teaching ethics in a community college. In the shifting scenes the classroom, conference table, hospital ward, art studio, community center, coffee shops, and street corners overshadow the pulpit in significance.

I was impressed by remarks made by Dean Krister Stendahl of Harvard Divinity School in a recent report to the president of the university. Dealing with the problem of the draft, he explained that some of those who applied for entrance to the school admitted that they were motivated by the prospect of being drafted, and so the divinity school was made “an alternative to Canada or Sweden.” He observed that he thought the faculty could not sit in judgment on such motives, and so applicants were chosen in view of their qualifications and their promise of religious leadership.

But he said something even more interesting. There are other students who, though they are fully qualified for exemption from the draft, insist on not accepting the prerogative.

Some of our students are strongly opposed to the exempt status of clergy and theological students and insist on not using this “privilege” even where it fully applies to them. It is my conviction that they are right. The time must come soon when church leaders, theological educators, clergy, and students combine their efforts to abolish all types of clergy privileges. Such privileges are outdated and contrary to the whole thrust of contemporary understanding of the relation between clergy and laymen.

This viewpoint could not have come from the dean’s office of a seminary even a few years ago, and it is novel enough even now. But it shows how the church is adjusting to a changing world. The dean favors the abolition of all clerical privileges. I fear that he is a step ahead of most of our brethren, and we are suppose to be a people who recognizes no distinction between clergy and laity, gloriously restoring as we have the priesthood of all believers.

It is also encouraging to know that there are those young men in the seminaries who want no special music played for them, men who are willing to yield to the draft rather than accept clerical exemption. If such ones do go to war, they are likely to be listened to with more respect when they return than those who use the clerical garb as a hiding place.

But what is important here is that a divinity school dean and some seminarians are saying that they do not want to be treated differently from other men. It is a witness to the priesthood of all believers and an assertion, that all Christians are ministers. Such a viewpoint softens the distinction between the sacred and the secular. To say that “the Parson” has as much business in a foxhole as the man in the pew is something like saying that the man in the pew has as much business in the pulpit as “the Parson.” Or it is like saying that one may worship God as much at work on Monday as at church on Sunday.—the Editor