Authority

I have been attempting to document my reasons for drifting away from the loose and independent evangelicalism I have been associated with for most of the last 28 years. I discussed the tendency to evaluate truth on the basis of experience and the excesses this has led to. I need to add to that an issue that Orthodox converts like Franky Schaeffer have rather mercilessly pointed out - a poor conception of authority that has led to endless division and as a result a lack of moral authority in the culture at large. My experience confirms his criticisms, even if I cannot quite embrace his final conclusion...

Protestantism is founded on a simple principle. That principle is that no authority-figure in a religious organization deserves unquestioned allegiance. If someone in authority should stray from the clear teaching of the apostles, then their authority is false and even a lowly German Monk should have the right to question him. It could be said, on the positive side, that this shift in thinking in the church had a huge impact on larger culture, further paving the way for a move from the divine right of kings to an acceptance of constitutional democracy. But that move toward democracy and away from the pure authority of the episcopate is most obvious in free church evangelicalism.

Unfortunately this movement away from Episcopal authority may have produced side effects we still do not understand. Our somewhat democratic way of dealing with the issue of authority in many churches means that anybody with a Bible and a title or even a subjective ”call” can claim spiritual authority. Much of my own experience has been marred by constitutional conflicts, varying interpretations of roles of officers, and in the end if one does not agree with the way things are done it is easy enough to simply leave and go elsewhere (which I admit I have done in some cases). The actions of one group of leaders, presumably taken with much thought and prayer can easily be overturned by a subsequent group of leaders on the basis that they felt "led by the Lord" in a new direction. Was the old direction not "led by the Lord"? How do we verify such a thing? Who do we trust? How do we submit? Certainly human leadership can be wrong and decisions sometimes must be reversed, but the balance between change and stability seems almost non-existent.

And on the other hand, pastors and others in church leadership seem to face the opposite temptation. Once entrenched in a position of authority, many find it easy to insist that their directives be followed at all costs and without question. They see a somewhat military “chain of command” that one dare not resist. If a pastor teaches heresy or abusively rules over the lives of those under his charge, there seems no reasonable recourse for those in the congregation to employ. No amount of reasoning, hard evidence and scriptural argument can dislodge such a leader from his doctrinal, intellectual or political viewpoint. Once he believes his view is “God’s way”, the argument is in effect over – or perhaps just beginning.

In either scenario, the tug of war between leadership and the lay people all too often leads to division. Without clear guidelines for establishing leadership and holding leadership accountable, many evangelical churches face an almost impossible task to remain unified. It should be noted that this tension is not completely unique to evangelicalism, or Protestantism. But the proliferation of denominations is both a cause and symptom of the problem.

Is the problem that individualistic American evangelical lay people just don’t know how to submit to proper authority within legitimate roles? Or is part of the problem that many of those in “authority” are not suited for or worthy of the roles they fill? Probably both in many cases. Because authority today is fully grounded in the “me and my Bible” mentality, the legitimate individual response exhibited by the Berean church in carefully checking the teaching of even the Apostle Paul against their Old Testament scriptures can quickly become a subjective witch hunt where folks want teachers who will “tickle their ears”. If they don’t get what they want they establish opposing camps and the battle escalates.

On the other hand, undisciplined preachers quite often do abuse scripture in their preaching and abuse their roles in practice. And if even the most well-meaning of laypersons should raise an objection, they may be accused of “resisting God”, “resisting the Holy Spirit” being divisive, being tools of Satan. Often these accusations come subtly in the form of sermon allusions, but the pattern is the same. Instead of leadership by men whose desire is to serve, there are just enough wolves in clerical clothing whose thirst for power is difficult to bridle that a level of distrust between laymen and leadership has developed that may never be overcome.

In Protestant circles, authority is supposed to be grounded in Scripture and men are supposed to derive their authority from some combination of biblical principle, demonstrated leadership ability, endorsement from other leaders and some level of consent from the congregation they oversee. Each denomination fine-tunes that mixture according to its own recipe. The further the denomination is removed from the first days of the Reformation, the more limited the authority of the leadership.

Catholic ecclesiology, on the other hand, teaches that even a priest who is immoral or a heretic can, because of his office, dispense valid sacraments. One salutes the office, not the man. Hence division is not as prevalent, though my experience with Catholicism is enough to validate division can manifest itself in covert as well as overt ways. It is well known that even some popes have been both immoral and heretics and those under them submitted grudgingly to their authority, or simply ignored them. One tends to think that Luther was right in insisting that such men should not be in authority.

Yet we live in the days of the opposite extreme. We think, as evangelicals, that we know what legitimate authority is not, but we find it difficult to say with any degree of comfort what legitimate authority is. I am weary of the battles. There has to be something more stable than mere congregationalism. I am a big fan of democracy, but democracy is messy business. I am no longer convinced that is what Christ, Peter and Paul had in mind for the church...