Clericalism
I guess there’s always been a bunch of folk who saw themselves as intermediaries of sort between God and man. How come? Well I believe that bizarrely the roots of religious belief can be found in mob violence – the founding murder, so to speak. I’d better explain.
Ancient man lived in small extended family groupings or prototype tribes. When something went wrong in their fight for survival and things began to get a little heated, a scapegoat was quickly found and dispatched in a fit of rage. This unexpected blood-letting released a quasi sense of cathartic peace in the remaining family members, who began to interpret it as the blessing of the Divine Spirit in the Sky! “Ah, so if we kill someone or something on a regular basis, we can obtain the favour of the One above. If we sacrifice to Transcendence, blessings will flow.” The birth of sacrificial religious thought which sadly continues to this day.
Over time, the tribe asked for volunteers to dot he dirty deed and so the priesthood was born. Those not afraid to get blood on their hands in exchange for a new prestige within the community. “We are a cut above the rest,” became their sacred slogan as they sharpened their clerical knives. And so it has continued through the ages. For some the blood is still part of the killing vocation, for others it’s now a symbolic role, dispensing the wine of the slain Lamb on a regular basis. Since time immemorial we have been into blood and so it remains. Further exploration of this obsession is for another day. What I really want to focus on is the sociological residue of such a belief system – the clerical class.
Now, let me say that I’m friends with a number of priests of varying shades. I’m not here to question their motives or their devotion to the Divine; rather I wish to question whether they are needed. Of course, when professional livelihoods are involved the cleric understandably fights back with 2000 years of Christian tradition or even more in the case of the older religions. I can understand that all too human reaction. When we need food on the table for our kids we’ll perform all sorts of pastoral back flips to justify our existence.
No, do we really need a professional class of priests, pastors and dare I say it, Apostles ( for my Pentecostal friends) in order to know God. Do we still require the experts to stand between Divine Source and man? Well, if we still insist on communities that centre around a round of religious gatherings in a purpose-built building, then the clergy still play a role, albeit an organisational one. For, let’s face it, if there wasn’t a paid official to do all the stuff, the whole system would collapse due to apathy. Folk have always wanted a Moses figure to go up the Mount and come back with a tabletised list of instructions from God, especially if they can also perform the role of CEO for the business named church.
I guess I’m saying that we don’t need a bunch of men or women to dispense the Divine for us, for Presence already dwells within. What we may need is one almighty shock to our ego system, that reveals this dramatic truth, one that rarely comes through the dedicated efforts of the clergy. A sudden death, a health scare, a divorce, redundancy etc all have the potential to jolt us into an Awakening experience. The place for answers is within, in the depths of our ego screams. There the Light dwells and we knew it not. Most folk within clerical systems of ministry are nice folk, though not all. Yet, there very existence may divert folk from meeting the Divine, heart to Heart. A little ministerial cul-de-sac that seems to help for a while until a new top-up of concern is needed. Life is messy and it’s there that Divine Love has chosen to dwell.
The trouble is that the priest/pastor/reverend etc can feel that it’s their job to keep the whole God show on the road. This is often done by teaching the particular dos and don’ts of their interpretive tradition. Having joined the clerical class to help mankind they can so easily end up propping up a moral empire based on the interpretive add-ons of their religious tradition. It’s so easy to switch into control mode in the name of the God of freedom. It’s the historical virus that invades the very heart of religious systems. The priest once more stands as judge and jury on the whole God-man thing, tempted to shed blood, albeit verbally on the chosen scapegoat.
Finally, let me tell you a wee story. A couple of years back here in Lincoln, I was out for a walk along the local High Street when I noticed a bunch of Christians doing their evangelistic thing. Always willing to have a chat will fellow God folk, I stopped and entered into a friendly chat with a guy, who turned out to be the pastor of the gang. At first our conversation was friendly but soon it was strongly inferred that I should be a church member and come along to sample his particular brand of gathering. At this point I suggested that the pastor try a wee experiment. Why not stop all church gatherings for a year, when folk could just mix with society at large. After 12 months have a meeting to see how many people had become Christians through contact with his flock. Unfortunately, I saw sheer disbelief in his eyes. “Dylan, I couldn’t do that.” “Why not?” I asked. “Well, frankly my members wouldn’t make it if it weren’t for our church programme.” Enough said. ” The Christ within would wither up and die if the pastor’s flock didn’t get their weekly worship session and sound Bible instruction.
The clerical system at its worst methinks.
Writer Dylan Morrison 
Great thoughts to be welcomed by all clergy NOT. For me(not a clergy), I think you’re spot on.
Thanks Ross. I reckon that endless cases of religious community effort prove our hypothesis.
🙂 Dylan
Interesting thoughts. Where does the “founding murder” theory come from? There may be other ways to account for the appearance of “religious specialists” in various cultural settings, I imagine.
Hi Beth. French philosophical anthropologist and Catholic Christian, Rene Girard came up with the theory, after examining the Cain-Abel myth of murder and subsequent cultural development, and Yeshua’s words re the Satan as a murderer from the beginning. His books tick all my boxes except the mystical ones re religion and culture. Girard sees the Stan as the skewed human respnse of scapegoating following desire contagion. Hope that helps!
🙂 Dylan
Yes, I’m familiar with Girard’s scapegoat/mimesis theory; had forgotten the ‘founding murder’ part. I’m still not persuaded that the creation of specialists in the area of religious observance requires theoretical grounding in such a violent worldview. Girard overdoes the foundational role of violence, in my view, and fails to see the role of grace in human affairs.
Hi Beth.
Thanks for your wee comment. I’m not sure that Girard does overdo human violence for it is the major problem that we face, one that religious belief has tended to ignore for much of its long history. At times it has even justified violence as ‘righteous’ violence with armies and battleships receiving the supposed Divine blessing via clerical intermediaries. I reckon that grace has always been present in human affairs but has only fully manifested fully in the life and resurrection of the Nazarene. There is a non-violent core within man, planted there by Source but often the fractured, defensive psyche-soul or ego flows with the violent contagion birthed by conflicting desire fields. Post Yeshua it’s certainly not all doom and gloom though the darkness of human violence increases as the grace of Light shines ever brighter in its midst.
Dylan, obviously God does not require theological conformity. Otherwise we would have it. Most people don’t trust their own intuition and instincts and prefer to let the clergy do their thinking for them. It would be nice if the clergy would just take a vacation and let everyone think for themselves. Most of us intuitively know right from wrong and that love is better than hate and that kindness and generosity are better than selfishness and greed. We don’t need organized religion to know that. We are all divine by nature and connected with God by default. We may stray from what is best for us during our earthly sojourn, but sooner or later God leads us all home, having become wiser for having undergone the process. In my view, it is far better to not know who we really are than to be deceived into thinking we are something we are not. We have the clergy to thank for the latter.
Hi Richard! THanks for dropping by and commenting. Yes, we do tend to avoid Reality at all costs, preferring to receive it from another. I guess the role of the cleric is often a case of the Emperor’s New Clothers. Very few folk will declare the nakedness of the expert in all matters of faith and practice. 🙂 Dylan
Dylan, not all clerics are like that. Many secretly know the truth and try to gently steer their congregations in the right direction and at the same time still hold onto their jobs. My former pastor was a closet universalist. My current congregation is United Methodist and the openly encourage diversity of theological thought.
Hi Richard. Many clerics enter ‘the ministry’ with the best of intentions, yet most will admit privately that the system is inherently dysfunctional and try to reform it from within. Persinally, I don’t often see this happen. Rather, the system eventually extinguishes and light within the cleric and the game goes on. It’s not always the cleric’s psyche that is responsible for the illusionary trick, but those of their flock who are looking for a god/man to follow rather than risk an encounter with the great Mystery in a personalised and ego-deactivating manner. At least that’s my take on it having been on both sides of the fence in my time. 🙂 Dylan
interesting ,but what do you mean by expert, aren’t you taking on that role by writing as you do, and why do you assume that clerics see themselves as intermediaries without out whom the people cannot hear from or access the divine? That is not how I would describe my role, I accompany those who want that accompaniment, I lead yes, but not under the asumption that I am the only one with access and often I learn from and through others on the way. Your view of priesthood is rather archaic I think!
Hi Sally
Thanks for dropping by and commenting. I did warn my clerical friends that they may not want to read this wee post but I guess your curiousity prevailed. I guess that I’m trying to show how we’ve ended up with a clerical system within Christianity and the effect that it cam have on both ‘lay folk’ and ‘clergy’ alike. There are some wonderful folk who sign up to the role of a professional cleric and channel their love for the Divine and their ‘flock’ through that calling. You, are clearly one of them. That having been said, I suspect that the average church attender may have a different perception to their cleric than the cleric may have about themselves. I suspect that many do see their ‘minister’ as a priest or intermediary in a subliminal sense, while the cleric may perceive themself as simply an organisatonal leader, one of the flock. In some denominations the cleric is still regarded as a priest, carrying out the sacred duties that nobody else can be ‘trusted’ to do. In my view that is wrong and creates a dualism within a group of believers that encourages both hero worship and apathy. Of course, as a spiritual writer I can also fall into this trap, as can my readers, though having been through hierarchical church systems in my youth I can usually smell a Moses syndrome when it tries to emerge, especially within my ego. 🙂 Dylan