A RELIGIOUS SOCIOLOGY OF THE BASES AND AUTHORITY OF THE UNITARIAN MINISTRY
Dr. Adrian Worsfold (1990)
(Student for the Unitarian Ministry at the Unitarian College, Manchester)
Abstract
External and internal changes have altered the Unitarian ministry so that whereas in the latter part of the nineteenth century it had a clear identity, today its basis, activity and authority is problemmatic even to the point of questioning its justification. This essay surveys the historic changes that have brought about this situation, and then looks at how various models of the church today reflect upon the ministry and the bases for its existence. Finally, the suggested ways of looking at ministry today lead to issues of leadership and authority.
The essay intends to be of general interest to those of liberal and radical religion and is for discussion and debate within the Unitarian Church.
Contents
1. Outlines
1 (a). Introduction
1 (b). Perspectives
1 (b) i. The Unitarian Church
1 (b) ii. Approach
1 (b) iii Methodological Perspectives
2. The Nature of the Church: Models of Unitarianism
2 (a). History and the Priesthood of All Believers
2 (b). Christian Belief Equality and Unitarianism
2 (c). Liberal Protestant Evolutionary Superiority
2 (d). Salvation by Self
2 (e). Liberal Welfare Paternalism
2 (f). Inheritances, Changes and Professional Ministry
3. Models of the Contemporary Unitarian Church
3 (a). Introduction
3 (b). The Priesthood of All Believers
3 (c). Unitarian Middle Way
3 (d). Progressive Revelation
3 (e). Pluralist Church
3 (f). Dividing Church
3 (g). Post-Christian Church
3 (h). Beyond the Mainstream: Heterodox Liberal Church
3 (i). Church of Chaos
3 (j). Learners' Church
3 (k). Church Models and Ministry
4. Ministry and Authority
4 (a). Introduction
4 (b). Biblical Models
4 (b) i. Descriptions of Types of Minister
4 (b) ii. Usefulness for Unitarianism
4 (c). Means of Authority
4 (c) i. Theoretical Authority
4 (c) ii. Authority from Separation
4 (c) iii. Authority from Activity
4 (c) iv. Authority and Leadership
4 (d). Changing Times
4 (d) i. Introduction
4 (d) ii. Mainstream Models for the Future
4 (d) iii. Ministry: Tradition, Adapt or Reform?
4 (e). Conclusions of Ministry and Authority
5. The Unitarian Church and the Ministry
A Religious Sociology of the Bases and Authority of the Unitarian Ministry
1. Outlines
1 (a). Introduction
This is an attempt to produce a contemporary analysis of the nature and basis of the professional Unitarian ministry. Given the non-credal nature of Unitarian and Free Christian churches in the General Assembly, and their autonomy, such analysis is only offered for the purposes of further debate.
1 (b). Perspectives
1 (b) i. The Unitarian Church
Here Unitarianism is understood as a non-credal body with a current variety of beliefs and stances and where none of these have superior status over any other (because there is no written means of guaranteeing superiority).
In the 1660's, at the time of the Restoration and Great Ejection, Calvinism was the unified faith of the churches that became Unitarian. After the affirmation of non-subscription in 1719, Arminian theology became dominant, accompanied by some Arianism. Something of a jump from this was biblical Unitarianism in the denominational wing, and the non-denominationalists promoted a moderating Free Christianity where authority was increasingly seen as resting in the individual. A short lived Free Catholicism claimed that symbols unite but creeds divide. However, into the twentieth century Religious Humanism arose out of Free Christianity, and alongside Religious Humanism came Inter-Faith and Neo-Pagan variances. These changes mirror biblical criticism and liberal and radical theology, and Unitarianism has responded to the fact that Christianity is now a memory of faith in the general population which is no longer being re-informed of this tradition by contact with mainstream liturgies, even at Sunday School level. Technology, market forces and social welfarism and ideologies have altered religion.
So the changes in Unitarianism, seen from today's perspective, are from a largely unified position to Christian debate, and then to a wider debate. The point is that, unlike for the mainstream, these various positions form the content of worship material.
No credal test is made of Unitarian ministers, and now this means wide variations in their interpretations of faith. Of course, some congregations have past inheritances and present preferences, as do individual ministers. Unitarian ministers are not actually ordained (though individuals sometimes seek ordination from those who are, and some who are not), and they have no cultic privileges. Each active minister normally serves and is subject to congregational autonomy, but is recognised as a minister (Full when full time and Associate when part time) on the roll of the General Assembly once the first position has been secured. Most ministers are also members of the Ministerial Fellowship on an either honorary, full, associate or student basis.
1 (b) ii. Approach
It is this basic diversity of Unitarianism that calls for an approach which may not be appropriate to other churches. This study of ministry involves study of the church from which it derives its meaning and which it serves. Therefore, after the methodology is outlined, theological church models are created in terms of history which show the inheritance of the church and then the present which offers some reasoning in respect of the basis of the existing professional ministry. Then the activity of the ministry itself can be considered in the light of the findings of the models.
1 (b) iii. Methodological Perspectives
Theology as "God-talk", using the Judaeo-Christian model, is an attempt to find a truth about religion that will hold to enquiry. It carries the myth that a truth is possible. The very ecclesiology of Unitarianism is in a sense a denial of that possibility, if the whole of the church is taken to be a unit. Theology also fails as a primary methodology because as a distinctive Christian enterprise it uses terminology and techniques which are likely to trap any analysis into a truth seeking mould that may not be appropriate for the Unitarian body. Theology is for kinds of believers.
Social sciences, however, have always been able to deal with a mixture of ideologies in co-operation and competition. The broadest one most able to deal with relations within a functioning unit is sociology. Sociology is no absolutist pseudo-science, but a perspective of causality. It is also a method of classifying into typologies, which is very useful for a pluralist body like Unitarianism. It leaves committed opinion to the practitioners.
Sociology has been seen as excluding the supernatural guarantee of religious truth because it deals with humanistic causality. But in fact its arguments have mirrored those of liberal theology, so that some, like Scheler (2) (a philosopher, in fact), claimed that behind the conditioned 'real' factors, or our image of reality, are the truthful 'ideal' factors; whilst others, like Mannheim, left unstated whether all is socially conditioned and only hoped that there might be intellectuals who rise above the interests that create the world we see. The debate in philosophy and theology is between the Hegelian style perspective of the idea of linear progress (or what Unitarians called "onward and upward forever"), thus allowing for truth to be real, and the schools of thought saying that we live inside pictures of reality all to do with the way our language and symbolic universe is constructed, rather than with any reality out there that may exist (3).
What counts even more here is the working of sociology as a methodological perspective.
What has been suggested is that social science cannot challenge any ontological theological reality. It cannot offer the content of a theology but can only survey the context. (4)
This is possible and sufficient. Sociology will analyse how elements of Unitarianism relate to one another, being a slave and not a master to the task. Meanwhile, the sociological perspective is clearly determined by the interests of this church, and thus we are not engaged in the disinterested nature of the sociology of religion but rather the denominational questions of a religious sociology that asks about the way the church works and how its dependent ministry is to be understood.
Nevertheless sociological techniques can only take place with data, and this is where historical, biblical, theological and humanistic material comes in.
2. The Nature of the Church: Models of Unitarianism
2 (a). History and the Priesthood of All Believers
Whatever might be present interpretations and beliefs, the roots of Unitarian ministry lie in the Presbyterian Reformation period and its interpretations of the early church and its ministries, particularly the Protestant stress on the priesthood of all believers.
Jesus may have chosen disciples, but he did not appoint ministers in any sense as since understood, and Paul (within 1 Corinthians 12, and Romans 12) gives a list of tasks and specialities in such a way that they cannot (at least all) be meant as offices. Rather they show variety in unity at the time of pure charismatic authority. Where Paul does mention bishops and deacons (in Philippians 1:1), it is unclear what these mean for that church.
As churches developed they did so as structures of members acting under Christ. The apostle could persuade but only in the authority of the whole church under Christ. After much variation, the emergence of bishops, priests and deacons, which first meant visitors (or inspectors), elders, and helpers, was due to the influences of Tertullian and Hippolytus. Hippolytus was not clear whether a presbyter was a priest or not, but only a bishop could ordain. In the eucharist the only offering and sacrifice was in the prayers (it was God who blessed the eucharist), but it was Cyprian of Carthage who said that the priest offers the passion of Christ to God as Christ did. Thus the priest was joined to the eucharist, being someone with special powers to make the sacrifice. Eusebius did not go as far, but after Constantine, and with the decline in Pagan cults, the language of the cultic priest developed in full and from there bishops, priests and deacons became differentiated in the areas of consecration and ordination, and episcopacy was understood in terms of important priesthood rather than understanding the presbyter from the position of bishop, as earlier. From the beginning and especially later, the church could only be fully understood in terms of ministry, power and authority.
The Reformation was, in part, a reaction to the mechanical means of grace held in the largely corrupted priesthood through its mass and its keys to the after-life. In the British situation at the Restoration the key argument was the right of Presbyters to ordain amongst themselves (although they were prepared to accept more accountable non-monarchical bishops) and to be the centre of parish discipline. The Great Ejection on St. Bartholomew's Day 1662 came as bishops reasserted power and authority, and the result was a dispersed ministry which was maintained in times of greater freedom when the Calvinists put their (misplaced) confidence in the doctrinal certainty of the Bible alone. So the Presbyterian system was not restored. Churches split, ministers and peoples moved about, and the non-subscribing Presbyterians, congregationalists and Baptists formed a congregational system. Later some Anglicans, Baptists and Methodists joined this dispersed system which was asserted by the Free Christian wing more vigorously than the denominational Unitarian section. The General Assembly recognises appointed ministers but with limited advisory powers has not affected the congregational principle. At the same time as these changes happened ordination was criticised as too supernatural and superstitious and was eventually dropped.
This tradition then, ever since the Salters Hall Agreement in 1719, has been primarily liberal in polity. It has denied itself any even open democratic means to control faith. This has supported both the idea of the progressive revelation of God and the claim that humans work the best when they are open to freedom, reason and tolerance.
The argument against this position is that whilst such an institution makes sense in a time of non-freedom, or when there is consensus in general about the nature of faith (thus Unitarians were hoping to rationalise and produce pure religion), in the time of secularisation, secularism and full pluralism of religions, religious bodies are expected to stand for a particular belief in competition and co-operation with other particular beliefs. Even liberal and radical Christians attempt to maintain continuing identity; and even if all objectivity to belief is lost, postmodern non-realist views of language might give a way for a continued theological and liturgical structure and identity. The Unitarian reply is that if thought changes, if the means of expression to religion changes, then such limits cannot be set, and faith must continue to evolve, which it does. Furthermore, such change should be evident in worship rather than keeping with increasingly fossilised forms of expression.
The Unitarian ministry is involved, of course, in providing expression to modern faith. There is no agreement as to what this is, and indeed many expressions are very traditional (for the same reasons of identity as given above), but others are very evolutionary and even revolutionary. For some ministers, this presents no problems, because the churches they minister to are of the same kind of strand as themselves; other churches are mixed which again may suit some ministers, and others are changing, but clearly this presents problems to many. This can be seen as a burden or a challenge. This is the inheritance of a completely free congregational tradition. Yet there was a transitional period, as historical models indicate.
2 (b). Christian Belief Equality and Unitarianism
Orthodox Christianity gains its identity by doctrinal statements. It is not the religion of a people like Judaism, or of a culture like Hinduism, or an orthopraxy like Buddhism, but a religion of commom convictions mediated through church institutions to unite all for salvation. Complementarity comes from the democratic nature of all believing in "one Lord, one faith, one baptism". This avoided the elitism of Gnosticism:
To become truly Catholic - universal - the church rejected all forms of elitism, attempting to include as many as possible within its embrace. In the process, its leaders created a clear and simple framework, consisting of doctrine, ritual and political structure, that has proven to be an amazingly effective system of organisation. (5)
It should be recognised that much of this had populist origins:
...the theologian of the early Church was by no means Hilaire Belloc's 'remote and ineffectual don'. He was a pastor, writing for people who were all worshipping Christians, not university professors. Among the pressures playing upon early Christian thought as it developed was the piety of a multitude of Christians. The main factor, for instance, in developing the doctrine of the full divinity of Christ was the practice of worshipping and praying to Christ in the contemporary Church. The main reason why theologians (perhaps a little against the grain) had to take account of the Holy Spirit was because contemporary Christians experienced him. (6)
Christianity ...has always regarded its outworks of eudaemonism and supernaturalism as essential to it. It has been a highly theologized version of popular religion, and has a radical democratic strain in it which demands the same faith be professed by every believer. (7)
It may be that out of this faith democracy arose some pretty autocratic and elitist structures of priesthood, but the important point is that priests and lay people shared the same faith, and although priests came to control the means of salvation it was still open to all, and in the Protestant tradition ministers continued this. The important point is that popular belief as much informed and controlled elite theology as the other way around.
The question arises whether the Unitarian position of faith was rather like the gnostic one: producing an alternative Christianity that was individualist and in some sense elitist and purer, and escaped the heavy supernaturalism and constraints of magical detail in popular belief.
Clearly Unitarianism in the past certainly believed that it was pursuing a purer educated form of Christianity, with its ministers being learned, enlightened, trained and recognised as part of the community elite. Great names fill the history books. This is what has been inherited.
2 (c). Liberal Protestant Evolutionary Superiority
If Unitarianism was a break from the ideal of uniform democratic religion, the question is how this was understood particularly from Victorian times. In fact the whole issue was international and based on a ranking of magic, magical religion, religion, and advanced religion. Much early categorisation comes from missionaries and social anthropologists, but others have continued with surveys of different religious styles being socially rooted (8).
Even one who knows as little of India as I do may suppose the that the world view of the little traditions of India is on the whole polytheistic, magical and unphilosophical, while the different strands of the great Vedic tradition choose different intellectual and ethical emphases: the Vedas tend to be polytheistic and poetical, the Upanishads abstract, monistic, and not very theistic, while the important Vaishnavism and Shaivism are theistic and ethical. (9).
The issues of great and little traditions are too complicated here, except that they suppose the great tradition is predominant whereas very often (as discussed in the origins of Christianity above) popular belief predominantly informs elite belief. But the general idea is that social elites are more advanced economically and intellectually than the general population and show it in their religion, and that some countries are more advanced economically and socially and they show it in their religion. Religion is intimately linked with issues of development.
The important point here is the observation that the beginnings of so-called higher criticism of the Bible were directly related to speculative currents of thought. In the early nineteenth century German romanticism pictured human history in terms of progress from primitive society to the peak of classical civilisation. (11)
Some continue this viewpoint. Bellah (12) in 1964 suggested five stages of religious development. The first is primitive religion where people and mythical beings are closely bound together through ritual. Space appears between people and myth at the next cult stage where religious functionaries gain importance. At the third stage the main world historical religions, transcendence and other-worldly salvation theologies develop. This creates the opposites of institutional religion and secular society. At the fourth stage religious functionaries become less important and a more personal salvation by faith takes over. Finally, this-worldly ethics replaces the importance of the next world.
The theory is crude because Christianity contains both pseudo-magical Catholicism, English rites of passage (occasional pseudo-magical rites of passing through life important to the British), highly supernatural forms of commitment, and intellectual religion. Wallace in some modification to Bellah (13) suggested that advanced societies also contain religious forms which come from earlier social development. Elite intellectual groups advance much more quickly than the mass, Wallace claims. It has to be said, however, that modifications are a sign of weakness and the real power of these views was in yesteryear.
In this thinking, therefore, liberal Protestant Christianity was and is the highest form of religion in the world (and the Unitarian strand helped in the formation of Brahmo Samaj, a rationalised Hinduism). Unitarians understood themselves to be at the top of the ladder, part of the intellectual tradition of Christianity alongside university theology. This is very much part of the onward and upward forever view of Victorian England and of American feelings of superiority connected to the liberal market economy. Thus many of the social elites in Britain were Unitarians, though some on becoming very important and landed moved on to the Anglicans, being the Church of the non-industrial elite and the populace together (which says much about how the British hierarchy has always shunned industry).
2 (d). Salvation by Self
Unlike Universalism, which expected God to save humans, Unitarians saw man as an evolutionary animal with goodness within, able to choose faith and salvation. Unitarianism was evolving towards the golden city aided by the knowledge often of the liberal minister. The fall had gone both literally and mythologically from Unitarian thinking and so came the stance commonly known as pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Ministers were servants of what was available to all through common worship and self-effort.
2 (e). Liberal Welfare Paternalism
Local Unitarian churches, like others, operated on a series of concentric circles. The outer community circle was contact with educative and social groups, the outer church circle was child and adult education and welfare church based activities and the inner circle was the worship. The outer circles created contact with a great many people, some of whom then filtered into the inner circle which was the source of leaders for work in the other circles. Motivation was for the future strength of the church and its social setting was paternalistic and middle class (building the golden city was perhaps a middle class self-belief). Unitarian churches often were connected to middle class literary and philosophical societies. The social missions, and social work within established church sites, were attempts by successful churches to get into the urban life of the unchurched.
It was very important for ministers to be educated and cultural so to be of proper status and therefore able to be the moral bind of the contacts and activity of the the outer circles so to co-ordinate those into the worship.
2 (f). Inheritances, Changes and Professional Ministry
This survey above has been about the glory days of Unitarianism, with some reference to how ministers fitted into the setting. It all happened a long time ago, and the history since is somewhat akin to Britain losing its Empire (both rather connected together): the loss of actual Empire has not been simple, elements have hung on (and can lead to the occasional war) and Britain has had to seek out a new world role. Similarly Unitarian decline has been complex and painful, some churches have continued to look back, and there has been a struggle for a new purpose and outlook.
The Unitarian 'Empire' has gone. The first change is the role of Unitarianism in relation with mainstream Christianity. The high point of theological Unitarianism was a self-confident approach to liberal Christianity, one open to the latest knowledge. But this just dug its own grave. It was perhaps parasitical on a faith that can only ever exist as a set of doctrines and convictions for the salvation of all.
Once the general culture and intellectual climate provided the source of tension for liberal and radical Christianity but now they have to exist in tension with the institutional fixed point of set statements. In other words the debating framework has become sectarian. This is because the popular religious culture promotes a mixture of fading Christian memory, rationality, video images, soap operas and half-superstition. Religion is sectoral and for the committed, and the rest use it for rites of passage.
Secondly, the liberalism chipping away at Christianity mirrored the forces of change in wider intellectual areas. These have been creating relativity in Western society. The last age of the rational heights was modernity, but this is the age of postmodernity. The ladder of rise in all intellectual arenas with hints of eventual transcendance has become a swirl of signs and symbols increasingly pointing in only on themselves (and, brutally, to text itself).
We have deconstructed ourselves so now we see that the old idea that the socially advanced societies had the advanced models of culture and religion was only functional as a self-belief of the time. We ranked their religions because of how we wanted to rank ours, and we had the social power to do the ranking. We now know the way the confidence trick was done, and that the magic trick fails to work any more. And so it now seems a limited way of looking at religion. Magical religion is not superior to magic; monotheism is not superior to polytheism; liberal Protestantism is not superior to Catholic forms; Unitarianism is not part of the top of the tree.
So what was then a superior, informed, Western rationalistic faith at the peak of Christianity, with the Unitarian minister as an influential religious and socially important figure, has become the very model of relativity and fraction. Unitarianism is, for objectivists, an atomised subjectivist church where non-credalism continues to fit it into the times in which it exists.
Once ministers were at the peak of religion; now an equality of faith has entered its ranks. Members of congregations probably know as much as the minister about their own very individualistic approach to faith. A minister cannot preach the best theological knowledge, as in these seeming liberal-subjectivist days no one kind of faith is superior to another - simply because there is no basis today by which such judgement can be made. So Unitarianism has an equality, not through attempts at uniformity but through its highly atomised and dispersed liberty amongst equals.
Wider still the First World War weakened liberal means to salvation, and with the Second World War gave reactive strength to neo-Calvinist theologies of sin and salvation (as with Karl Barth). But those wars led also to decline in self-confidence and so relativity grew, and salvation has become a problem word which few can now pin down. It is a word once key to the supernatural religious task but it has become ambiguous, and interestingly has dropped out of Unitarian language. Simple pastoral concern has replaced salvation.
Unitarianism also faced the fate of other Free Churches. Roman Catholicism after legalisation ceased to be the Italian Mission to the Irish and became the alternative to establishment religion.
The whole cultural, social and religious interaction of Unitarianism, as with all the Free Churches, has changed. The state took over welfare and education and churches began to specialise into religion alone, following the trends of all institutions in urban and industrial society. As the outer rings of education and welfare declined so the inner circle of worship declined too (14). Churches have found difficuly in adapting, even to the latest decline in Sunday Schools. It was once deviant for children not to attend Sunday School; now it is deviant to attend. Unitarianism has been part of this decline.
So now the Unitarian minister experiences great displacement, socially cut off from the rest of civic society and has to somehow inspire and aid declining marginal congregations. It is a harsh, isolated, cold, new world.
Perhaps, though, whilst recognising this inheritance, a point comes where new ideas, new pluralism, a great equalitarianism away from self-deception, and no elitism from education is a new base line to look at the present and ahead. Contemporary models of the Unitarian church are required and only then can the present and new role of the professional ministry be analysed.
3. Models of the Contemporary Unitarian Church
3 (a). Introduction
This section aims to show ways of understanding the church, and analyses them, with considerations of ministry from each viewpoint.
3 (b). The Priesthood of All Believers
The priesthood of all believers is supported in Romans, 1 Peter, and Revelation. These give a view of collective priesthood, and even links this to the notion of believers being sacrificial in service of the gospel and in worship. But this may have had eschatological meaning and, with the world continuing on, priesthood re-established itself.
On the other hand, as in Hebrews, Jesus was seen as the high priest (as associated with Malchizadeck of Genesis who had no father or mother and therefore was either the pre-incarnate Christ or related to Zecheriah, a superhuman prefiguring Christ appearing to Abraham). Christ himself, believed as final, gave the basis for no more sacrifices. But it is again unclear whether Christ was ontologically different from believers, although much later he was confusingly given as fully God and fully Man.
These two New Testament views may be complementary to one another, or not, depending on interpetation. But in the Unitarian tradition that does not hold Christ as a final high priest, nor has a focussed belief, does "priesthood of all believers" mean anything? It may be no more than a convenient phrase.
Christianity is only a belief option, and no description of authority can use its forms exclusively. The Unitarian Church is not of the Body of Christ, not even as a set mythology, but has all kinds of importations and influences in empiricist, radical symbolic non-realist, realist-liberal, strident, very supernatural, and superstitious approaches. Unitarianism is simply a "liberal-democratic ministry of all" assisted by a professional paid ministry.
Perhaps in a radical theological sense Unitarianism can be a priesthood of all believers in that now we live in another eschatological age, due to the weakening of inherited religious forms, and that each must be a priest to her own religion and her own belief (15). The phrase, however, probably does not readily suggest dispersal, and the language still seems inadequate.
Other traditions promote priests, like Hinduism, Buddhism and home grown Paganism, and such non-near Eastern religions do not have an equality of faith that suits the priesthood of all believers idea. But given the greater radical diversity of faith at least it can be said that Unitarian ministers do not hold higher or more rationalistic forms of belief!
Perhaps for Unitarians, mythologies and belief packages are essentially secondary to pastoral concern for basic humanity (in which ministers have a significant role), in that mythologies serve humanity and not the other way around, and there is neither the ability nor reason today to mould humanity into a consensus of belief.
3 (c). Unitarian Middle Way
One historically informed view of Unitarianism sees it as a rooted and continuing stream, largely of the community beginning with the Great Ejection of 1662 and continuing with Protestant dissent in all subsequent eras. It promotes faith in God, common sense rationality and simplicity. It even has an 'orthodoxy' about it in that it distrusts deviants like postmodernists, Easterns, psuedo Free Catholics, and those ministers who currently try to reinforce their own reactionary understanding of Presbyterianism. This view likes the chapel culture and has a family of Unitarians feeling about it.
This view has a naivity about it in our 'era' of the three minute culture. The Unitarian church cannot now be a slowly acquired taste and only continue self-regeneration as before (e.g., its families). It must take from outside and deal with the fast input of other traditions and importations which may not go through any real assimilation. Thus wider changes radically affect the movement. Soon there may be no central character, but rather a very diffuse nature to Unitarianism (and its ministers). The doors are open and the wind rushes in. Like the priesthood of all believers model, this view needs to take account of the increasingly vast diversity of Unitarianism today.
3 (d). Progressive Revelation
This model maintains continuity with both a supernatural and liberal or objectivist past. It is realist (God transcendent as well as immanent), or at least semi-realist (God the ground of being or a pure ideal). It believes that God is revealing truth that includes Christianity but can go beyond it, and that revelation may give both a human centred as well as a Christian theism. Thus progressive revelation is like a continuum of faith.
The problem is that it still keeps the idea of superiority, being that of the latest form of true faith. Whilst keeping supernatural and objective views of truth it fails to give grounds for discriminating false from true views where they contradict (as must be done if there is objective knowledge). Thus people end up with God on their side, and a parallel here is where theologians talk about process theology which is theistic by implication, whereas it might properly be claimed that process theology is simply the development of human opinions given a theistic gloss in the quest to give it truth backing. Progressive revelation, like process theology, is the last stage of objective theism and totters on the brink of fully and only human approaches to religion.
The continuity of progressive revelation means that ministry takes its justification from past forms. The problem is that it is either tied to those forms or that there is insufficient basis for continuing a separate ministry in that the latest revelation suggests more equality, more lay leadership, and perhaps the logical end of the ministry altogether unless some new revealed function exists for such a trained definable grouping. Perhaps it is better to look at the church and ministry in other ways.
3 (e). Pluralist Church
Alan Ruston in Christian Dialogue: A Unitarian Response (16) describes three kinds of believing. There are those who emphaises the Jewish and Christian traditions as "the quarry whence we were digged", those who affirm a spiritual force of East and West, perhaps using another world faith, being theist or deist, and those who place emphasis on human reason, motives and responsibility beyond the images of traditional gods.
In 1964 the Theology Section of the G.A. Faith and Action Commission Report identified six categories of belief, supplemented by two more in The Inquirer of 8th November 1986. The categories are liberal Protestant Christianity with Jesus as revealer of God (yet always with continuing progressive revelation), existential Unitarianism which uses the myth system rather like mainstream liberals, non-Christocentric theism which is God orientated without Jesus, Universalism of all faiths, the agnosticism of religious humanism which may be non-theist, Unitarian pragmatism where religion works especially in crises (although there is no ultimate view of the universe), mysticism which is often natural in orientation, and social commitment which is a view of religion as social action.
These typologies are not watertight but show the spread of belief. However, they do no more than describe, and do not in themselves show any dynamic or tension in terms of trends or relationships.
They suggest a continuing ministry born in times of more coherence but now having to relate to vastly different kinds of (incoherent?) evolving belief, with no overall pattern or purpose to the church or the ministry.
3 (f). Dividing Church
This approach is more analytical and dynamic because it shows a Unitarian Church that is under strain due to decline. For some the old inherited liberal Protestant position is under strain as it lacks vitality in modern times: members push the denomination in a more radical and distinct humanist and multi-faith direction; the alternative approach sees that the Unitarian Church ought to be recognised as and seen to be a church: this means greater conformity of Christian forms to stop the drift towards deviance. There is a greater difference between these two groups than positions within each.
For the first group, ministers as service leaders inevitably play the role of a trained vanguard in the ways of faith and developing new forms of worship, although they aim to be non-clerical and highly democratic; for the second group the ideal of ministry as a calling is raised and practices like ordination increase, and perhaps the eucharist grows in importance.
3 (g). Post-Christian Church
This approach focusses more on the wider large scale change in cultural meaning which affects religion. This can be known in its religious form as post-Christianity. It affects mainstream and Unitarian churches.
A second death of religious images, not unlike that which took place in the eighteenth century but more complete, is occuring in Western culture, leaving the religiously-minded to grapple with the ideas of impersonal theism, of religion in a valid Buddhist style, which takes little account of older Western ideas about God. The barbarians have arrived, twilight has descended, and this time when it lifts the Western Churches will probably have ceased to function... (17)
In the wider scene, knowledge is becoming problemmatic as past worlds of meaning once seen to be true subsequently turn out not to be. Instead worlds of meaning are cultural paradigms which do and will shift. The discovery of facts mean nothing until put into systems of meaning. Our systems are very human, invented as picture worlds, and are very dependent upon language. The debate is between those who say that behind our words and pictures there is some objectivity and those who say that all we have is text and symbol and just picture-worlds. The latter do not say that there is nothing 'concrete' 'out there', but that all reality and all meaning is simply what text best fits the process of human thinking and becoming at any one time (18).
This position claims that liberal reductionism is simply part of the process of postmodernity whilst otherwise wanting to hang on to the last vestiges of objectivity in knowledge. Religious postmodernists also say that all we have is text, symbol and human picture-worlds. There is no meaning beyond these: God is a human construction which only exists for the human functions the language performs. For postmodernists, those who become more liberal in theology are reluctant to go that stage further. They remain semi-realists in a process actually going towards non-realism.
Now for the mainstream where Christian symbols and text are compulsory, the effect of understanding in the postmodern sense is like as follows.
What about a theological text? Clearly it will not be of the older cosmic-dogmatic type. Instead it will be christological. That is, it will be made of fleshwords. By the way it is made it will seek to awaken the creative-desire flow of the religious life that it describes. (19)
The problem for Unitarianism is that it has always had a highly objectivist 'say what you mean and mean what you say approach to religion'. This is why, whilst comparable forms of Christianity in the mainstream have become liberal and radical, for Unitarians the voluntary maintainence of the same Christian language has become associated with objectivist conservatism.
It seems clear to me that we are no longer the radical movement we were once seen to be, though to some extent I think this is because other Churches have caught up with us, rather than we have retreated. Indeed, as Arthur Long pointed out in his 1978 Essex Hall Lecture (Long, 1978), recent theological history is in many ways a vindication of liberalism. But where does that leave us today? As a denomination I fear we are too cosy, that somehow we have lost the challenging edge we once had. Have we nothing left to contribute theologically? Must we leave liberal pronouncements now to Anglican academics and bishops? (20)
So whereas in the mainstream the worship product looks much the same with different interpretation, for Unitarianism distinctive liberals and radicals choose different forms from the conservatives (often forms implicitly going towards or at a non-realist form of understanding).
This is the reason behind why academic theology seems to have a continuing life with ever increasing sophistication in the mainstream in this post-Christian age, whereas theology in Unitarianism has practically died out. Unitarians seem to continue objectivism and so the decline in its form of meaning becomes the decline in theology. For the mainstream the question is what the compulsory forms of inherited text and ritual can mean today, and so academic theology continues (perhaps making black look white).
Also, for much the same reasoning, whilst the mainstream liberals and radicals can continue to use the practices and language of ministry and understand them as symbolic inheritances, Unitarians grapple with the objectivist problems of a separate ministry. Thus there is great resistance to, say, those who desire ordination, and a reactive heightened objectivity of meaning given to it by those who have it.
The winds of postmodernity hit the church of voluntary language harder than the rest. This is not to say that the mainstream churches have it better. Their ministers' problem is that non-realist liturgies deal with intended objective language, and so their conservatives may find ways to detect and not allow liberal and radical interpretations of the same compulsory texts. After all, mainstream conservatives have the text on their side, whereas Unitarian radicals have absolute creedlessness on their side. That may, in the end, be the ultimate distinction. As Unitarians freely come to terms with the changing nature of language and symbol, with its ministers clear in conscience, the mainstream may end up in contradiction, with its liberal and radical ministers in moral contradiction. Yet for the transition, Unitarians are also divided between objectivist conservativism and postmodernity.
3 (h). Beyond the Mainstream: Heterodox Liberal Church (21)
This view continues to see the Unitarian Church as both divided from and yet defined in terms of the mainstream. Its dissent and what it dissents from is part of its identity. But in today's situation of pluralised mainstream churches, this kind of label needs greater examination, and of course there is the issue of whether this labelling is helpful or parasitic.
This dissenting to and from a tradition at the same time is made more complicated because now Unitarian plurality is beyond other mainstreams too. However, as a methodology the argument relates to the Christian mainstream, and then it can go further.
This mainstream has various kinds of belief. There is traditionalism, the maintenance of detailed historical certainty, of which there is at least one approach for every denomination; conversionism, a forward looking sin centred dynamic approach, which spans denominations and consists of charismatics, fundamentalists and evangelicals; orthodox liberalism, which tries, using various complex theologies, to keep at least the doctrinal minimals that keep Jesus as definitive; and heterodox liberalism, which abandons objective minimums. These are matched by viewpoints of authority relating to Weber's charismatic, traditional and bureaucratic (classical) typologies, Burns and Stalker's organismic typology, or systemic authority (22), and human relations authority (23). Conversionism depends on the charismatic base of leading individuals and their interpretations of what the Bible and the Spirit says; traditionalism uses traditional defensive stances; orthodox liberalism employs bureaucratic authority where churches defend their basic identities but relate to wider society, and support careerism and ecumenism; and there is heterodox liberalism with systemic authority where theological specialists have such knowledge that they ignore the doctrinal minimum and self-delegate to themselves their own basis of faith.
Unitarian belief is also heterodox liberal in that it too does not defend basic minimum views as a matter of course, but also there is no bureaucracy of belief, no body of Christ, but an association whose faith comes from the desires of its members, and this distinguishes it from the mainstream. Rudge says about human relations authority:
...this kind of organisation is a voluntary human creation; and this is a denial of the doctrine of the church as a divine society, which is implicit in those images that appear to provide the theological basis for the human relations approach. (24)
Instead, he sees it a post-industrial form of operation (a dissolution of the rationalist industrial hierarchy of the bureaucratic model) where the goals of the group simply emerge from the meeting together of the group. It is therefore humanistic and not based on supernatural knowledge and instead enshrines individual conscience. So the difference from the systemic is that no dissent is involved within an institution because there is nothing laid down and defended to dissent from. In its constitutional process, it is "experiential", to use adult education terminology (see below).
The categories of the mainstream and separated dissent can apply generally to ideological institutions as a whole, and so what counts in terms of human relations heterodoxy can apply in any setting. So any mainstream institution will have its defensive traditionalism, its attacking conversionism, its practitioners and managers of the centre and its radicals. And there are those who cannot fit in to such a bureacracy and must be separate, whether traditional, conversionist attacking, or liberal/radical. Only the middle section does not separate, as its raison-detre is to be a functional bind for the others (not that it always avoids dysfunctionalism in this as its neighbours in the institution grow apart).
In practical terms the split heterodox position has some strange side double-take side effects when comparing separated dissent with the Christian mainstream. In the mainstream the heterodox must act within a narrow band of language - "preaching the Word", however sophisticated is the interpretation, and so as a result the minister stays (very) roughly in tune with the congregations, whereas potentially the Unitarian minister's views can become audibly out of tune with those who hear in any particular place.
It also leads to a peculiar situation where that diversity of human relations faith allows clericalism because a particular church hears the same kind of presentation and viewpoint so often. This seems to be the central charge of illogicality of a separate ministry in congregations: what can ministers do in a fully pluralist situation? It might be better for ministers to train and encourage members to take services under ministerial co-ordination, so that a wide participation of ideas and forms takes place. Either that or ministers should so design what they do and say as to encourage internal debate as part of education, development and pluralist formation and solidarity.
3 (i). Church of Chaos
There is a certain common sense logic that a church in a pluralist society should stand for a definite - if broadly interpreted - creed. Not to do this invites resulting chaos, whatever the benefits of supporting the stance that changing knowledge from the surrounding culture outside should affect experiential processes and allow religious belief inside to evolve and change naturally and freely. A comparison is useful here between how a church of limited diversity tries to keep a united message, and how this relates to one that does not want to try. The Church of England has had to tackle the problem of containing diversity within its basic credally defined system, and the Doctrine Commission put its mind to this issue in Believing in the Church. Thiselton's chapter in particular (25) explored the relationship between the individual and the corporate body, using mainly a humanistic approach promoting the idea of corporate memory coming through the creeds, the sacraments and the Bible.
Using linguistic theory he states that: "Only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning" (26) and puts these into the idea of paradigms of thinking (whilst accepting their limitations regarding knowledge). The point is that these packages of information are adopted and made operative on the basis of "an objectified stock of knowledge common to a collectivity of actors" (27).
[Therefore,] in these terms, a Christian concern about the place of the Bible, or about tradition or orthodoxy, has little to do with intellectual conformity as such. What is at stake is the maintenance of conditions under which it still makes sense to speak of "standards of role performance".
What matters, from this standpoint, is whether when deviations or eccentricities occur, they are identified as permitted deviations or eccentricities. (28)
So there is the question of changes of thought, but according to Thiselton, people like Luther and Kierkegaard did not see themselves as innovators but used the tradition's "effective memory" (29).
All this is so humanistic, and rather clever, but it does unconsciously suggest that Christianity is nothing more than a form of Reformed Judaism. To stop this Christ has to be a supernatural tradition-starting figure, and indeed on the question of myth, which outsiders may see as false but gets re-interpreted within the institution in an individual/corporate dialectic, revelation is needed to strengthen the system.
In the end the chapter (and the book) is intellectual politics, and an attempt to control Anglican radicals, but it is legitimate to protect boundaries (as the Labour Party has had to do) and one of the problems of Unitarianism, and its crisis of meaning for the nature of its ministry, is that it never protects its boundaries because there is no defined boundary and nothing to protect it with.
Chaos, however, has its forms, as in the Heisenberg-Bohr view of quantum physics where there is no determinism, only statistics; no objectivity, only observed realities. The forms are freely created, dice thrown, probabilites across many observations, where "complementarity" means that properties of knowledge of one object exclude other properties of knowledge of the same object (30). This means that in participant-observation (in this scientific sense) in our cultural paradigm, there are practically speaking a limited number of realities of religious packages observed according to the way each individual sees things, and whilst one may exclude the other, there is a flux of positions for debate and each (hopefully) has internal consistency. Chance may form new thought paradigms. The only issue is whether the chaos is accepted as useful (perhaps as a means of self-testing or giving vigour for development) and natural to what is, afterall, the nature of all approaches to knowledge today. Religion should not be different.
Thus there are many views of what the church, and therefore its ministry, is about, which are likely to be contradictory, but sensible within. Beyond that, nothing can be said. Those who want a supernatural view of ministry will find the humanist view unsatisfactory, but they cannot force the issue, just as the other participant-observation cannot. So, there is no one model of ministry: only the one that you choose to describe it by. Indeed this essay is an exercise in just this kind of particpant-observation.
3 (j). Learners' Church
One model co-ordinates with features of a general humanist model, consistent with ideas of post-Christianity, post-structuralism, and heterodoxy on the human relations model. It involves a concept of the church and ministry completely removed of all supernaturalism.
The Learners' Church is so named because it is a voluntary association which can take its insights from the progressive theories of adult learning.
Just as learning is not simply a process of the expert handing over previously unknown knowledge to ignorant students, so religion is not the expert minister preaching "the Word" to docile hearers. Rather, just as students already have a wide experience of the cultural world and have assumptions of how things work, so members of congregations already have their views and experience in the fields that inform religion. As the educator must find ways, in an affirmitive manner, to tap into the fact that people are already knowledgable with their own constructs and cognitive styles, so must the minister engage with the congregation to bring out what is already there. The counsellor and the educator and now the liberal/radical pluralist minister affirms people as positive enquirers to be assisted.
There are revolutionary effects of this way of seeing a gathering of people called a church. Gone is all triumphalism of liberal superiority from the experts of the Victorian age; it is now a partnership of searching, and the minister is the enabler.
Within a church, learning in a broad sense takes place much of the time. A sermon may, of course, teach material formally, but if something is said that resonates with everyday experience then experiential learning takes place. Devotions (perhaps through participation, but also through their general style) try and create solidarity of a congregation. The minister or leader facilitates this. And the social activities offer further self-development.
Here there is the need to look at a theoretical parallel as in the views of Paulo Freire. Freire believed that the Brazilian system of education was oppressive, with the large majority living in what he called a culture of silence. A root and branch change was required based on the "ontological destination" of humans - that full humanness is found in our creating culture, in our enquiry and reflective consiousness. This liberation theology of education translates into action. Educators must be multi-disciplinary and research thoroughly their region. The community leaders invite them, and co-investigation in the area takes place to get into the "thematic universe" of the locality. Then, once the community leaders have been consulted, the process begins of getting people to affirm their own culture and contradict their resignation using movies, tapes, role plays and pictures to generate discussion, in "circles of culture", of co-ordinator and students, discussion to understand their community and lead to action. (31)
Using this model the church sees itself as a community to challenge given ideology (including religious) in which, after the church has invited the minister or trained leader, negotiation takes place about the means by which to address the congregation about their sense of religiousness and response. Clearly this must resonate within the congregation, and the discussions (32) and services must generate response and debate for both individual and community action, either in terms of further thought or social action.
The minister is trained in the ideologies and practices of religion, and is given time though payment to engage with people. It is, however, further skill that specialist knowledge can release their existing knowledge.
Of course, this liberation theology of the congregation is an ideal, but one consistent with the Unitarian setting.
3 (k). Church Models and Ministry
Unitarians just disagree too much for any language to be used in general as within the mainstream. There is no superior theological position in this age - but the age can be analysed. So there are the models of priesthood of all believers, Unitarian middle way, progressive revelation, pluralist church, dividing church, post-Christian church, heterodox liberal church, church of chaos and learners' church. As described in some of the models themselves, each analysis is internally consistent but may contradict with other models; each analysis is a form of language, and each may be selected according to individual stance. And then a theology may be expressed and some of the consequences for ministry follow.
Some kind of conclusive remarks can be made, however, from the viewpoint of this essay. The priesthood of all believers is a fine phrase, but, like the middle way view, does present an accurate language for the Unitarian form of community. Also neither today help to explain a professional ministry. Progressive revelation leaves more problems than solutions in both theory of the church and ministry. Therefore, human perspectives offer more. The pluralist model is static and suggests the ministry formed in coherence is facing incoherence. The dividing church suggests that there are in essence two groups in the church and therefore two types of minister. The post-Christian church is a cultural and linguistic analysis that comes right into all churches and exposes how Unitarian radicals move to other forms of worship and expression towards a non-realist direction and that this divides them from objectivist conservatives: thus widening division again. Human relations heterodoxy is the institutional analysis for such changes, that faith derives voluntarily from the groups, and chaos theory shows how faith types thus derived relate within themselves but not necessarily between one another, and so do views of ministry. This may be a depressing conclusion, but it, like the divisions, has to be faced.
However, the learners church does offer the means by which ministry as enabling and facilitating works with a human relations heterodox system where the faith already contained needs to be encouraged, where circles of culture must be created. A healthy church is one prepared to face and debate and discuss its variations and divisions and cope positively with the stress levels that no doubt exist.
It is not necessarily the case that ministers must be the facilitators of congregations. They can perhaps train the leaders. So it is that matters of the make up and activity of ministers and leaders become important. So far the discussion has centred upon how ministry is based theoretically. There clearly is a need for training, and a theoretical overview, and a ministry can exist because a learning human relations heterodox church needs them.
4. Ministry and Authority
4 (a). Introduction
The make up of the ministry and other leadership, and the tasks done from the voluntaristic base also invites questions of position and authority. There also remains the hangover of the confident liberal past that puts the present into greater context.
4 (b). Biblical Models
4 (b) i. Descriptions of Types of Minister
Once again this is a starting point for a denomination that has roots which involve reference to the Bible. Also the New Testament gives off a number of functions for its various titles of leaders.
The bishop, or overseer (episcopus), has the role of teaching sound doctrine, guardian and keeper of souls, has the care of the church, is hospitable, acts as a steward and is in charge of God's work. He should be morally exemplary with self-control, maturity and not get drunk. He is appointed by the apostles and has a sense of individual calling.
The elder (presbuteros) should be of apostolic appointment, be paid living wages, be first among equals, have autonomy, give service, be pastorally based, strengthen and aid communication of those around him, give co-ordination and be involved in policy.
The deacon is a servant chosen by the local church and confirmed by the apostles who receives specific functions and has general authority to do them, and he is sound in doctrine.
The above categories of leader are all "he" as women are only given as helpers, supporters and who must be subordinate but who can pray and prophesy and may be enrolled in service for work with widows. But women might be counted as deacons or even apostles.
There is no one model of ministry throughout the New Testament and they relate to churches with different systems and at different times (with the added matter of eschatological expectations).
4 (b) ii. Usefulness for Unitarianism
Unitarianism does not normally ordain ministers and, given its human relations base, it has no hierarchical ministry; it is open to both sexes and various sexual orientations; and it is not engaged in the promotion of sound doctrine. So its ministry is not biblical in these respects. However, ministers surely feel responsibility for the evolution of Unitarianism as a heterodox church, they are subject to the local church choosing a minister and the denomination recognising the ministry, lay leadership of churches is another form of ministry, and many supposed biblical functions are surely largely sociologically functional whatever the religious beliefs and ideology involved, particularly being paid, teaching, communicating, strengthening, care, hospitality and stewardship. So the latter are central to human based models and especially the learners' church. The minister as first among equals is also useful and interesting.
4 (c). Means of Authority
4 (c) i. Theoretical Authority
A minister is given authority at selection. It stands that the leader with worship and pastoral concerns is given trust to operate. The important point here is selection itself. Richard Hanson says:
What makes any minister a minister is the expressed intention of the church in ordaining him. (33)
She or he is not (necessarily) ordained, but a minister cannot be self-chosen. The minister may feel some sense of calling or suitability, but it is the whole church that makes the selection. The denomination through its trusted structures makes decisions to train, and the autonomous congregation using that also gives more trust at selection. The first selection is then recognised back at denominational level at the Annual Service of the General Assembly. Clearly the trust at denominational and congregational levels is ongoing, and a breakdown at one or both levels removes some or all of the authority of the minister at the particular level.
This is where behaviour of the minister is important. The trust is returned in the moral use of time within the job description and beyond. This is a difficult area because it is so subjective, but something of the ideas of character indelibilis and potestas are useful. The idea that a minister obtains character indelibilis and potestas (originally, power conferred by orders and denied to those without orders such as to convert bread and wine into the body and blood) as objective realities, as believed in the Middle Ages, is nonsense, but the minister's personality should relate to those.
This is not to argue for the ideal of ministerial perfection. Inadequacy, as a matter of being human, should be part of developed sophisticated notions of character and power. Still, some kind of human personal spiritual process (prayer, meditation, reading, appreciating the arts) is involved in the ongoing trust and task of being a minister. This gives credibility to pastoral action, of the inadequate ministering to the inadequate.
4 (c) ii. Authority from Separation
The processes of industrialisation and specialisation, and the development of education and welfare services led to a great expansion in the service sector and therefore the professions. The professions were pre-industrial in origin, but went through the same processes of specialisation and new growth as industry. The key to being professional soon was knowledge, a code of ethics, and restricted entry. Even though its basis comes at first from being attached to the landed gentry in economic substance and social style, the ministry called itself professional in seeking the same status, and required training (although theology is not essential for the work of ministering). Ministers, even Free Church ministers, have never escaped this association, least of all Free Christians.
Unitarian ministers are called professionals, except that, like all ministers, they are not professional in any sense of specialisation. Instead they in part act as administrator, adult educator, odd job person, social worker and social icon. The minister holds no career speciality of knowledge.
But what ministers have is removal from specialisations, they stand beyond and have time. They counter the impersonal nature of organic solidarity. These marginalised are in a sense transcendent personal icons of living. They can be those to whom all can go to for a sense of transcendence in pastoral and personal terms. Unlike for the social worker or psychotherapist concerned with knowledge and techniques, the minister with time has personality to meet and act with other personalities who seek a depth of self-reflection. The minister is not a professional, and authority is not to be found there; the minister is a person with time, somewhat separate, both useless and useful, and here a gentle but real authority exists.
4 (c) iii. Authority from Activity
Discussion of the bases of the church and therefore ministry involve much theory, but probably for the most part congregations do not think in these terms. They are more likely to give authority based on kinds of expectations and forms of activity.
A weak church, in terms of the learners' church model, may want its minister to be a guru, able to reverse fortunes and produce congregational salvation. The members themselves from their circle of silence and expectations may project a lot of authority on to the minister. A church may project these needs even more so if there is a long tradition of great ministers in the glory days, and the congregation may be puzzled why a minister today cannot repeat what took place before.
Fears and expectations may be a route for a minister or appointed leader to at first tackle the circle of silence by asking members for their views and anxieties. The task in fact is to reduce these projections of authority (which are unstable, especially if results fail the expectations) by building the confidence of the congregation so that the minister hopefully achieves the situation where only the rudder needs to be touched from time to time and where the engine itself is in the congregation. Authority, then, will be altered to that due to a facilitator; a congregation is changed to that which is open, discussive, debating and lively, and where it is receptive to new people and new ideas.
The facilitator will have ideas to present to the congregation in services and discussion, but the point of the presentation is not to teach like a jug of water to empty mugs, but to so frame things that the thoughts primarily stimulate and connect with real life. Thus if some members relate what is said to their everyday experience, then experiential learning takes place. When ideas create such a buzz, when devotions bring together, the facilitator achieves stable authority. Here is achieved the notion of first among equals. All are involved but one acts as guiding facilitator.
4 (c) iv. Authority and Leadership
Through character, separation and activity the minister does not aim for personal or bureaucratic superiority. A good concluding model is that the minister is first among equals.
4 (d). Changing Times
4 (d) i. Introduction
Unitarians have shared their difficulties with defining authority with others because of pluralism, the decline of the supernatural, marginalisation in society, reduced resources and lower attendances. Ministry in its external and internal status seems to have declined and thus stands in effective competition from lay leadership. These processes are ongoing and call for response and planning options, and proper incorporation of lay leadership.
4 (d) ii. Mainstream Models for the Future
Anthony Russell's The Clerical Profession (34) discusses how the clergy are marginal to the community, elitist within a popularist culture, associated with restrictive practices of the professions, draw models of leadership not from comparable voluntary leisure associations but industrial management and the armed forces, and that this expensive and static professional image encourages lay passivity and inflexibility. These criticisms are in the main of Anglican clergy but have some relevance to Unitarian ministry.
The problems as Russell finds them leads him to propose three futures for the church's ministry (35). The church of the traditionalist future is a declining church and tries to be an anchor of stability in a changing world. It is conservationist in style and theology. It leads to regimentation and, especially in Catholic forms, keeps self-defined special activities restricted to the ordained ministry. The church of the adaptationist future tackles the problem of resources and attempts to increase its relevance in modern society without major internal changes. This means an increase in the number of non-stipendary ministers and a greater role for the laity; but ordained ministers preserve their unique Eucharist roles. The church of the reformist future is committed to being in the world. Its moves from the parish and the circuit to the cell and the network. There is an ordained ministry but an active laity carry out all roles including the Eucharist.
The problem is that for traditionalists the adaptationists are too prepared to change whilst the latter will not change enough for the reformists.
Clearly, the issues between this mainstream model and the Unitarians are different, especially given that no unified Unitarian theology exists that raises the sacramental role. But a similar approach can be applied.
A traditionalist Unitarian church of the future is also declining. It is conservationist with a nineteenth century (and before) Unitarian theology. Its ideal is a minister to every church, but this is not achieved, due to limited finance, organisation and church polity, and the result is stagnation and drifting. The Unitarian church of the adaptationist future begins new but uneven programmes for lay leadership, ministry training, religious education, social responsibility, development; but no fundamentals are tackled in terms of thorough application, church polity, and distribution of ministers, and the result is very patchy growth with unaffected areas of decline and closures. However, the Unitarian church of the reformist church however is much more interventionist in such schemes and puts total lay and professional ministry on a planned and strategic rational footing. Some ideas about reformist ministry are suggested below.
4 (d) iii. Ministry: Tradition, Adapt or Reform?
Clearly, all Unitarians minister in various ways to one another, and the nature of this ministry can be varied in source as well as in reception. In the present conditions, there becomes a very grey area over the differences between lay pastor and minister. It seems only to be a difference of formal training (the result of which must be unclear, because learning also happens through experience, and the quality of college training is not guaranteed, and personalities of lay pastors may be seen as 'spiritual' as trained ministers).
Lay leadership is growing, if only because ministers are more expensive. This leads to adaptationist measures, like a minister of many churches having to develop lay leadership in those churches. Other fortunate churches continue with one minister, but some go without and can (and do) wither away.
Many ministers undoubtedly trained to serve one congregation. To serve two often doubles the workload and is seen not to work as effectively. To serve more than two strains credibility as to the possible success of what is supposed to happen. However, the functional and biblical model of bishop, presbyter and elders are surely helpful. It would be better to develop lay leadership as the norm, with ministers of districts in active support (36). Lay leaders could be given prime responsibility for the day to day running and servicing of each church. The minister could act as an overseer (bishop) and co-ordinator of activities between the group. Ministers would give occasional services at each church, and discriminate in pastoral duties, but mainly delegate activities and act as an on-site trainer for lay leaders (and in turn be trained by them!). The minister would identify and work with other ministers and be a link from the the localities to the denominational centre.
Current decline can lead to proper organisational response. There will always be those congregations which can and will afford a full time minister for one church, with money to spare, but all church lay leaders and lay leaders should recognise they are part of an operating functional network. Trends towards centralisation are natural and ought to be planned for, and perhaps alternative ways to finance ministers should be found.
Into that network would fit all plans to do with religious education, social responsibility, and development, and the structure of Essex Hall would, as such, run through into the structure of ministers as overseers and lay leaders as congregational enablers.
Another concern is recognition of the ministry. In the Unitarian setting, ordination is a private and voluntary matter and obviously in this condition creates controversy and division. Instead there is an induction service into congregations. Here is a pure congregational system, and yet all can properly continue to regard themselves as ministers when they have positions outside congregational responsibility. This seems illogical and messy. So are ministers only ministers when attached to congregations or do they become a minister for all time, and if so is the one simple welcoming at the General Assembly an alternative to ordination or not? Clearly, to be a minister is not simply to be attached to a congregation, but involves a commitment of the personality; and therefore a ceremony prior to entering into the first ministry (whatever form it takes) seems sensible, and the General Assembly should recognise the minister after such a ceremony. It is adaptationist in the way Unitarianism now has ministers in managerial positions, but if there was some means of recognition beyond congregational entry this would be seen as structural and functional and reformist.
Clearly, a cultic understanding of ministry is to be avoided, and the sense of simplicity and equality about ministry now is valuable. But in our age of postmodernity, where art, symbols and words are all we surely have, ceremony (ordination, or an alternative) can and should be welcomed.
4 (e). Conclusions of Ministry and Authority
Authority is important, not as a matter of status but rather as a matter of function and organisation. Especially in the Unitarian tradition, authority is derived, and not cultic. There are issues of the decline of authority in all churches, but these represent opportunites for change beyond adaptationist tinkering. There are possibilities for change which put the derived authority into a system with more structural sense. There is, however, an afterthought relating to all this: Unitarianism likes to be untidy, and perhaps this is a consequence of its wanted liberality. But maybe some tidying up would help.
5. The Unitarian Church and the Ministry
Clearly, at times when a radical uncertainty has come into Western religion, the maintenance of a separate ministry is problemmatic. Yet this time of radical uncertainty, when the mythology of greatness has died, offers its own patterns and possibilities. There is a place for a professional ministry, and it can work within a highly (and principally) pluralist human relations heterodox setting like Unitarianism.
A broad view has been offered which reflects the postmodern setting around the church and inside the church, and which illustrates the nature of the the church and its ministry. It suggests how ministry can best function in a tidy manner, and be understood today. However, in Unitarianism, all have their own views on what the church is and what ministers do and should do, and the purpose of this presentation is that debate and discussion should take place.
Adrian Worsfold
May 1990