Layman column: Is the
re-Reformation under way?
By Parker T. Williamson, March 19, 2009
Parker T. Williamson
Editor emeritus, consultant to the Presbyterian Lay Committee, and an honorably retired PCUSA minister.
If the church today were in the midst of a new Reformation, would we know it was happening? What telltale signs suggest that such an event may be under way?
Some lessons are learned from a Middle Ages period that historians call “The Pre-Reformation,” a span of some 200 years before Luther hammered his theses to the Wittenberg Chapel door.
During the Pre-Reformation period, the institutional church’s stranglehold on European life was fractured, not by reform from within but by secular socio-political and economic initiatives. The church’s hierarchical priestly class did virtually nothing to advance these initiatives. In fact, it vigorously opposed them.
The priestly hierarchical church
When Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of his empire, the church developed a priestly hierarchical structure that paralleled state governance.
As this clergy-dominated hierarchical system mushroomed, priests purchased their bishoprics, endowed positions that guaranteed income for life. The Avignon popes sweetened that deal by allowing clerics to purchase more than one bishopric and by removing the requirement that the cleric live within the bishopric that he served.
These measures resulted in a wealthy clergy class whose steady stream of income flowed largely from the church’s business investments and land holdings rather than contributions from the people. Their distance from those whom they were appointed to serve ensured their lack of accountability. Clergy looked up the hierarchical chain for their marching orders, not to the laity it was called to serve. In fact, clergy thought the laity didn’t matter, for in its view, the church was its clergy.
Secular-led reform
In this closed priestly hierarchical system, reform from within was virtually impossible. But Scripture reminds us that the Lord moves in mysterious ways. His instruments for reform were power hungry kings, lords and nobles. The pope’s power was fractured by the rise of territorial kingdoms whose titular leaders claimed authority over the church in temporal affairs. No longer could the pontiff claim that the clergy who belonged to him were exempt from the laws of the state. No longer could the church assume that vast property holdings under its domain were exempt from state control. The clergy remained free to preach and teach on matters of faith and morals, but when they engaged in temporal affairs, e.g., acquiring and disposing of property, they were subject to the same laws that apply to all other citizens of the state.
No longer given favorable treatment by secular rulers, the pope and his priests lost their ecclesiastical hammerlock that had squelched early attempts at reform. State secularization created the context in which Luther could pound his theses on the Wittenberg Chapel door, Calvin could teach Reformed faith in Geneva, and Knox could preach with fire throughout Scotland. Each of these reformers felt the bite from continuing church/state collusion, but the tide had begun to turn. Secular enforcement of clergy hierarchical control was waning and the Reformers’ faith spread among the people.
21st century parallels
Today, denominational bureaucracies in the United States resemble in many respects the corrupt Middle Ages church. Heavily dominated by priestly hierarchies, national church agencies have relegated the laity to peripheral, altar-boy status while eviscerating ordination standards and accommodating their ecclesiastical institutions to a lowest-common-denominator morality.
Depending on denominational pecking orders for their salaries, perks and pensions – not to mention blessing their ungodly sexual proclivities – many Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, and United Church of Christ clergy show little inclination toward reform. Clergy-led renewal groups exist, but most play it safe, preaching improvement in lieu of reform.
Two developments, both arising from the laity, are fracturing the calcified structures of America’s mainline institutions. The first is money. Lay people whose gifts have heretofore fueled institutional stability and survival are channeling their contributions away from mainstream denominations and into ministries that they trust. Lay people are voting with their pocketbooks, and increasingly their hearts and feet are following their investments. Mainline denominations are hemorrhaging both money and members.
The second development is occurring in the field of church property law. As congregations leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) to join other Presbyterian/Reformed communions that they believe are more faithful to the Gospel, PCUSA officials are claiming their property.
Prior to 1969, the US Supreme Court decided such disputes by arguing that in a hierarchical denomination, the claim of the higher governing body trumps the claim of a congregation. But in decisions in 1969 and 1979, the court opened the door to decide such cases according to “neutral principles of law.”
Under neutral principles, civil courts judge a church’s property claim in the same manner that claims of secular corporate bodies are judged. Now the question is not so much, “What say the pope, bishop, presbytery executive, or denominational document to which property holding congregations never gave their consent?” but “What do the deed, the articles of incorporation, and the bylaws of the local church say?” Where those documents do not contain explicit language granting property ownership to the denomination, the local church may be able to fend off a denominational property grab through neutral principles of law.
PCUSA officials cry foul over the court’s concept and rule of neutral principles of law. Using the spurious argument that the denomination’s claim to a congregation’s property is an expression of its faith, they complain that neutral principles result in a de facto state establishment of “congregational faith” over “Presbyterian faith.”
To the contrary, when assessing ecclesiastical property claims by the same criteria that are employed in secular property claims, the court is simply asserting that church institutions are not above the law in temporal matters. The court cannot tell Presbyterian clergy what doctrines to believe, but when those clergy invoke the name of God while claiming another party’s property, they may find judges increasingly unwilling to genuflect.
Hierarchical control by PCUSA clergy evokes memories of the Avignon popes and their puppets. Just as the Lord used secular forces to fracture that Middle Ages hegemony, so laity giving patterns and neutral principles of law in the 21st century are exposing national church fissures in our time. If that parallel holds true, we may be on the verge of a New Reformation.
The Rev. Parker T. Williamson is editor emeritus, consultant to the Presbyterian Lay Committee, and an honorably retired PCUSA minister.