Upon Figuring Authority

I note this week a letter from a fella we'll call "E." Mostly, he lives in a tent in the woods with other like-minded men and women. As is their wont, E and his set, from time to time, obtain accomodations, as a consequence of certain misdeameanors, lasting from a few days to several months, in the local hoosegow. It is over-crowded, and reservations for what's enviously called '3 hots and a cot,' are hard to get, especially around the holidays. Many's the time I drove a guest, desirous of such luxury, to the police station, to turn himself in on an outstanding warrant, only to be told there's no room at the inn.

When E's on the street, he boasts of higher education, yet doesn't exhibit much drive nor purpose (he must have come across Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs,' since the theory's endlessly trotted out for show as proof of his learning -- perhaps he picked it up in group therapy or through a parole officer - but it stuck for future use in attempts to manipulate conversations with authority figures like shelter managers and social workers). Otherwise, he lives the lifestyle of the average tent-dwelling consumer: fights, feuds, alcohol; a chaotic riotous existence.

When E's incarcerated, all that changes. He writes of the glory of God, how he's found the Lord, and of One Way. My responses suggest when he's next released, he not return to his more or less vacant tent, but join a community where he might perform works so that others may be influenced to live a less harmful life. Upon release, conversely, he resumes his pagan forest revels, until re-arrested, and born again, for the duration of his next sentence.

The phenonmenon is not unknown. The most notorious criminal recidivists of our community, are conspicuous Bible-thumpers, carrying Scripture everywhere within waterproof covers, while reciting verse from memory. Indeed, if they manage to achieve advanced adulthood (age 45 in our neck of the woods), it's likely we'll provide a large-print edition so they may better read The Word in a tent at night by the light of a flickering Coleman one-burner propane gas lamp.

Why is it that E functions behind bars yet can not when free? It brings to mind, once again, the journey of John Henry Newman. As a young Evangelical, he expounded the doctrine of sola scriptura, the Spiritual Authority of the Bible alone. As a Roman Catholic convert, since he longer believed the laity competent to discern Scripture, he wrote of the Bible as a subordinate appendage to an authoritarian Church.

E does not expound upon Scripture a great deal when he's free; he finds worldy freedom more alluring. He only achieves a spiritual freedom when bodily confined. Do we likewise require Authority in our less illict lives where jail does not provide the same desirable accomodation; should Church figuratively and necessarily perform the same function for us as prison does for E?

At many classes in seminary, there's a clique of vocal doctrinal hardliners. I wondered how they'd function as priests when confronted by a parishioner with a serious personal problem. While attending those classes, I also taught a suicide hot-line seminar. When a prospective listener announced she'd refer all callers to Jesus, she wasn't recommended for hire.

At that time of my life, a friend had bulemia. In my way of trying to help, (not surprising to those who know me), I wrote her a report on the subject. While researching the topic, I combed the seminary library for materials. I found one small book, outdated, of not much use.

As I've researched on-line, since then, on similar subjects, I've been likewise frustrated. If I search, on the keywords 'pastoral ministry' for example, I hit peripheral topics, such as advertisements for the minister's pre-written sermons handbook, or multitudinous listings for non-demonimnational churches with the word 'community,' in their name -- like Dunwiddie Restored Light and Harvest Community Church.

In the shelter business, it's not unusual to attend a meeting of one hundred professionals, as the only male. Reading of Jane Aadams, and her work at Hull House, I noticed she'd been criticized by the feminists of her day for suggesting that it was a natural function of women to operate such places. In pondering that, it led to searching under keywords 'feminist theology' instead of pastoral ministry.

I hit upon Rosemary Radford Ruether, described as a feminist theologian, by the on-line Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. She was quoted, "This Jesus is an iconoclastic prophet who proclaims the reversal of the social order, a reversal which does not simply introduce new inequalities, but which aims at a new reality in which hiearchy and dominance are overcome as principles of social relations. Jesus speaks a liberating word which disupts the patriarchal structuring of society with its entrenched relations of hiearchy, dominance and opression; in this sense, Jesus can be understood as the kenosis (relinquishment) of partriarchy."

In response to a letter I'd written on our Church troubles, published in the local rag, in November, a correspondent responded he "does not admit that the Episcopal Church began departing from scriptural authority and doctrine years before gay bishop Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003, which ignited the separation action." It's not a far stretch of the imagination to consider he may be referring to the ordination of women.

Meryl Streep was quoted recently in the last of three excellent special 40th anniversary issues of Rolling Stone, "next to climate, the changing status of women in the last hundred years is the most destabilizing thing that's happened on earth. It's precipitated so many seismic changes and reactions in cultures. I think you can lay all the fundamentalism that's been rearing its ugly head in the world at the feet of that change. It's better for Western women, but that idea, that women have rights, hasn't permeated much of the world, even today. The forces that don't want to consider it are going down hard."

The saddest news story I note this week is that its now believed, upon new discoveries, all the graves of Czar Nicholas II and his entire family have been accounted for. I don't know why that story has always carried such poignance - in the middle of the night, this former royal, his wife, and children, seemingly naieve and innocent concerning their dread fate, were rousted from their beds, and so cruelly executed by the Communists. Perhaps it's the stark juxtaposition of a family in the path of an onrushing inhuman doctrinal Authority, so utterly swept away and destroyed, that is so mournfully disturbing.

In G.W. Bromiley's "Thomas Cranmer, Theologian," I read in my devotions this morning as to how Cranmer and Luther agreed, "There are two kinds of faith. The one is a dead belief, which accepts the facts and doctrines of the Christian faith, but does not have the inward trust in Christ, or live out the Gospel in daily obedience. The other includes an acceptance of the facts and doctrine of Christianity, but it also involves a sure trust and confidence in God's merciful promises, which necessarily expresses itself in life and conduct. It is only the latter faith, the true, lively, and Christian faith of the second homily, which avails for justification."

This circles round to "E." His outward expression of faith is conditioned upon confinement in an authoritarian environment. Is that what's behind those who march under the rigid banner of Spiritual Authority? Are they like E in that the expression of their faith must be conditioned within a hiearchy endowed with the image of patriarchical authority? Is that what makes the existence of women or a Gene Robinson as a new kind of authority figure so threatening?

I must admit during my time at shelter, I was intermittingly disappointed that guests never altered their lifestyle despite of what we thought of as providing a good Christian example. We did not establish an environment emphasizing Authority. We strove, rather, to create a family-like community, to which people might respond in love. In recognizing that you can't save another person through works - only the gift of God's grave can accomplish that -- is not the intentional willingness to love, uncoerced by Authority, despite a lack of immediate returns, the central act of faith, parish and family? If a gift, radiating steadfast hope and redemption, is not freely given or willingly received, it's as hollow as a faith that only comes alive when it's imprisoned.