WHAT HAPPENS WHEN POWER POLITICS ENTERS RELIGION
by Norman L. Parks

Every reform in the history of religion has been directed against the phenomenon of power, which is the essence of politics. The depoliticization of religion was at the very heart of the Reformation in the sixteenth century —the separation of church and state, the overthrow of the clergy, the purification of the language, forms of worship, and manner of life of the Christian community.

The surest way to corrupt religion and change it from a way of life to a power structure (a denomination) is to politicize its language and develop office and hierarchy. This was the tragedy of the Christian community in the early centuries after the apostles. This has been the tragedy of the American Restoration launched by Campbell and Stone. The “restructuring” of the Disciples into a “mini-Methodist” system of governance and the development of the “eldership” into a governing oligarchy in the Churches of Christ and the Christian Church reflect the re-emergence of power against which the Restoration was originally directed. The emergence of the “house church” movement within th past few years is a reaction against the corrupting influence of politicization.¹

The goal of the Restoration was the recovery of The Way in spirit, form, and language. “Back to the Bible” meant back to Bible verbage and connotation. Strangely, the movement failed to exploit the European precedent of rejecting the non-Biblical word “church” in favor of the Biblical term “assembly” as rendered in the great Tyndale translation. The word “church” is derived from the Greek kyrios, which carries the political connotation of power. It is no surprise that King James demanded that his translators in effect substitute this word for the Biblical term ecclesia, which the hated Tyndale version properly translated as “assembly.” In the quest for a “pure” language, we meet here an interesting paradox, for the New Testament writers borrow Greek political terms and give them a non-political meaning. Aristotle in his Politics observes that “every polis (state) is a community (koinonia)” and its entire citizenship meets for deliberation in an “assembly” (ecclesia). Holy Writ speaks like a non-political Aristotle: Christ’s polis (kingdom) is a koinonia (community) composed of citizens (disciples) who meet in an ecclesia (assembly) for mutual edification, prayer, love-feasting, and remembering the death of their Lord. If there were decisions to be made, the “whole assembly” made them in choosing “the seven” (Acts 6:2), in sending Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem (Acts 15:3), and in hearing and deciding the most serious doctrinal issue of the time (Acts 15:22). The great letters of the New Testament were for the most part directed to these “assemblies,” not to special “authorities” (of which there was none).

Such was the kind of society Christ came to build. It was not to be characterized by superordination or subordination, but by equality and fellowship. The power element was flatly rejected by him: “You know that the so-called rulers in the heathen world lord it over them, and their great men have absolute power. But it must not be so among you. No, whoever among you wants to be great must become the servant of you all, and if he wants to be first among you he must be the slave of all men” (Mk. 10:42-43). Since the chief vehicle of power is office, it followed that his ecclesia had no offices to be filled, no positions to be held, no emoluments of power to be enjoyed, no instruments of rule to be wielded. It is true that a typical assembly had various functions to be carried out and works to be done. Older men carried the responsibility of “feeding” (educating in spirituality) the flock as pastors, shepherds, leaders, presbyters, bishops, and presidents (presiders at meetings). Numerous men and women served the community in many ways as deacons and deaconesses. Some carried the Good News to the unsaved as preachers or evangelists. All bore a direct relationship to their Lord as ministers, servants, slaves. But these various terms did not define offices or positions, but were merely descriptives of work or relationship.

The contemporary Restoration movement has changed the assembly into a church, work into offices, service into power, and relationship into hierarchy. Title to property bought from the common treasury is held by a board of bishops, not by the membership. Decisions are made at the top, not by the membership as in the early Christian communities. Offices and positions of power have been made out of what were once roles, and are generally self-perpetuating, elders choosing their successors, naming deacons, and filling the recently emergent office of “minister.” The model for this power-wielding and decision-making system is not the Biblical ecclesia, but the corporate board of directors. Not remarkably, the role of “teacher” has not made it into the status of an “office,” and remains, apart from the pulpit, among the most neglected and underdeveloped aspects of the religious community. It is ironic that a movement which began with Jeffersonian Democracy and expanded enormously on the flood tide of Jacksonian Democracy and the leveling force of the Westward movement should develop such an oligarchy of power as to make it one of the least democratic religious movements in America.

Emergence of the “Minister”

Our study of the phenomenon of power in religion can be highlighted by examining the “office” of “minister.” If anyone doubts that this is an office, his doubts will be dissolved by examining the church letterhead, the weekly bulletin, or the newspaper advertisement. This man is not the “slave” of God, but the “minister” of the church. He may actually be a “prime minister,” with one or more “associate ministers” or “assistant ministers.” This is a term derived from the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible. One recognizes the concept of “little” in the prefix “mini.” It was a Roman political position of assistant to the “magister” (one recognizes the concept of “great” from the prefix “magi”). But far from being a person of insignificance today, he is an officer of prestige and power, the foremost figure in the local assembly. He is the chief pastor, the expounder of orthodoxy, the public exposer of unorthodoxy (usually prefaced with the sad announcement that he “must call names”), the chief promoter of the treasury, the author of excommunication edicts, and a major voice at the “business meeting.” No church today is considered healthy or mature without a “regular minister.” It may take almost the whole of the common treasury to finance one, but “necessity” demands it. And since a system feeds on itself, each passing decade increases this necessity.

This office, totally absent from Biblical literature, is an interesting fabrication. How much of a fabrication it is becomes clear in the replacement of the word “minister” from the modern and more accurate translations of the New Testament by the words “slave” and “servant.” There is an obvious absurdity in the vehement Church of Christ insistence on a “plurality” of pastors while church after church has only one pastor in fact, with the fact concealed behind the name “minister.”

A Relationship Rather Than An Office

In the New Testament the various Greek words which have been generally translated “minister” do not describe either an office or a work in the Christian community. They picture (with one exception) the relationship which all Christians bear to God. Gentiles and Jews alike were once slaves of Sin. The Savior bought them from the auction block and these redeemed souls became his property (“Know you not that . . . you are not your own? For you are bought with a price …”). Those thus bought are described as Christ’s “slaves” (doulos). As an example of the more than one hundred times this expression is used (and regrettably translated “minister” in the King James Bible), Paul in the salutation of his letter to the Roman disciples describes himself as “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ.” It is a fitting finale to Biblical literature for the aged John, in picturing the redeemed about the throne in the New Jerusalem, to write, … and his slaves shall serve him” (Rev. 22:3).

Considering the present usage of the word, it is obvious that a beautiful concept is robbed of its meaning when Romans is made to read “Paul, a minister.” It is pertinent to observe further that in no instance does Paul or any other New Testament writer refer to himself as a “minister” of a church, either at Ephesus or Corinth or any other place. There is a tremendous gulf between the primitive Christian concept of slave of Christ and the latter-day innovation of minister of a church.

Not content with the ordinary Greek doulos, Paul on occasion applied the undignified or dishonorable term huperetes (“galley slave”) to himself or fellow workers. This was the lowest level to which a slave could sink. Yet he writes in 1 Cor. 4:1: “This is how you are to look upon us, as galley slaves of Christ . . .” The imagination is sorely strained to see behind the strut, bombast, pomposity, egotistical sureness, or papistical pontificating of some “ministers” the abject humility of the slave at his oar.

Every Man a Priest

To carry through a beautiful figure of the priestly sacrifice and to emphasize his special mission to the Gentiles, Paul applied the term leitourgos to himself in Romans 15:16: “ . . . my divine commission as a priest to the Gentiles in the service of God’s gospel, my aim is to make the Gentiles an acceptable offering.” Once more, the King James Bible renders this “minister . . . to the Gentiles,” and thus pales out the concept of priestly servant. Since the clergy-laity classification is at least officially rejected by the Church of Christ, the priestly connotation of this term has application today only as every Christian is a priest.

Like baptizo, the Greek word diakonos has found its way Anglicized into various places in English versions, but at other places is translated “servants” or “minister.” Was Paul a “deacon”? Yes, in 1 Cor. 3:5: “Paul and . . . Apollos . . . servants by whom you believed.” So was Tychicus, “the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord” (Eph. 6:21). Even the pagan Roman magistrate may be a deacon, for the magistrate “is God’s servant for your good” (Rom. 13:4). Most impressively, and curiously neglected, there is “our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the ecclesia at Canchreae.” Obviously this is no office or position which Phoebe or Tychicus or Paul or any other diakonos held, for there is no office or position in God’s ecclesia —only relationships, responsibilities, roles, duties, services, and privileges. The term does not describe Phoebe’s work or that of any other person. It explains a relationship.

All Are Ministers

Thus the conclusion presents itself that in any congregation of saints there are as many ministers as there are working Christians. There can be no minister in “a special sense” any more than there can be a disciple or a Christian in a special sense. It makes as much Biblical sense to write: “the Christian of Oak Hill Church of Christ” as “the minister of Oak Hill Church of Christ.” The religious movement which once set as its goal the recovery of the New Testament order and language has in fact created a position wholly in conflict with the broad meanings given in Holy Writ. The term “assistant minister” makes sense only in modern clerical language, but becomes ridiculous when rendered “assistant slave.” If the church has the right to create an office like “minister,” then it has the right to create presbyteries, synods, conventions, bishoprics, archbishoprics, cardinals, and popes.

Clearly such language is not “speaking where the Bible speaks” and it pauperizes our understanding of our spiritual relationship with Christ. Moreover, it obscures the pivotal truth of the Christian system that Christians have been bought from the corrupting dominion of Sin, Wrath, and Death and have been transferred to a new master. Finally, it replaces the concept of community with the fact of organization, with authorities and power —and a devitalized membership. Such is what happens when power politics enters religion.²