The Clergy System
By W. Carl Ketcherside
“No class or order of men that ever appeared on earth have obtained so much influence,
or acquired so complete an ascendancy over the human mind, as the clergy. The Christian
clergy hav e exercised, for about fifteen hundred years, a sov ereign dominion over the
Bible, the consciences, and the religious sentiments of all nations professing Christianity.”
- Alexander Campbell
In this article I am going to discuss what I believe to be one of the gravest errors into
which the religious world has ever fallen. So widespread has it become that it will be
virtually impossible to ever overcome it. So subtle is its encroachment that even those
who deny being guilty of it are nonetheless victims of its malignant influence.
Historians search in vain for the date of its birth, and analysts are just as puzzled
about the motivation which foisted it upon an unsuspecting world. Everyone is agreed
that once it was not a part of God’s revelation or purpose, yet it was suddenly on the
scene exercising a baleful influence and claiming divine sanction for its existence,
intruding itself as an interloper into the vocabulary of those who proudly claimed to
speak where the Bible speaks, and to remain silent where it was silent.
I refer to the rise of the clergy system with its unwarranted and unscriptural distinction
between “clergy” and “laity.” Never has there been a more serious imposition upon the
kingdom of heaven, and never another more widely accepted. How did “the clergy”
originate to first usurp the rights and privileges of all the saints, and then to claim their
prerogatives as a divine right? Some assign he beginning, which ultimately resulted in
“a universal father”, a papa, or pope, to the need for a strong voice to sound out the
position of orthodoxy in a time of schism and heresy.
Others ascribe it to the overweening ambition of aspiring men to stand between their
fellows and God, and exercise a mediatorial office because of a fancied superior
knowledge or life. Still others think the seed was planted in soil fertilized by political
alliance with the church, making it possible for the secular ruler to control the destinies
of a people by elevating men to hierarchical prominence in the spiritual structure.
Whatever its origin it became so powerful that, almost without exception, it became
“the way of life” for religious organizations, and in the case of one, the Roman party, it
became “the church” itself, to the exclusion of other communicants who bore the tax
burden and picked up the tab for its maintenance. So much a part of the thought
processes of our generation has it become that even those who seek to offset it are
tricked into using its vocabulary, and parroting its specialized jargon.
A good example is found in the book Body Life by Ray C. Stedman. The theme of the
little volume is “to search out from the Scripture the nature and function of true
Christianity and thus to recover the dynamic of early Christianity.” The subtitle of the
book is, “The church comes alive.” Yet, in the Foreword, Bill Graham writes, “The
Peninsula Bible Church began with only five laymen.” And Stedman speaks of meeting
“pastors and concerned laymen.” He says a lot of fine things from which all of us could
profit, but when he talks of “the ministry of the laity” as something separate and apart,
he employs “the speech of Ashdod.” There were pastors in the primitive community of
saints but they were also a part of the laos, the people of God.
Perhaps, as we shall later point out, there is nothing seriously wrong with the mere
words clergy and laity. It is the creating of a distinction between them which is so
fraught with danger. The fact is that all of God’s clergy are laity, and all of God’s laity
are clergy. Every child of God is a priest. Every child of God is a minister. Every
disciple of Jesus has entered the ministry. The word of God knows nothing of a disciple
who is not a minister. So long as we pay empty lipservice to this concept while
practicing something which is exactly the opposite, we are hypocritical and acting out a
sham.
Certainly those who justify their separate existence from the rest of the religious realm
upon the ground that they represent a movement to restore the primitive order, ought to
restore first of all the divinely revealed concept of the ministry of the saints, seeing that
it was the gradual renunciation of this which resulted in the multiplication of parties
from the hoary “mother of sects” upon the banks of the muddy Tiber, to the latest little
group following a self-proclaimed member of the “reverend clergy.”
Yet, my brethren, in spite of their anguished protestations to the contrary, betray
themselves in both speech and writing. Frequently, I sit in meetings of brethren, where
a speaker will talk about how he involved “his laymen” in a certain project. A Roman
Catholic prelate could not have said it better. The patronizing clerical tone in which one
speaks of “my laymen” or “my elders” shows how much closer we are to Rome than to
Jerusalem.
Before the precious blood of the Lamb wiped out distinctions and removed all thought
of caste among those who are in him, God had a special clergy. Then the tribe of Levi
stepped forward in answer to the call of Moses at a time of grave crisis, the members
of that tribe were elevated to the status of a professional priesthood. They were
separated from the people (the laity) in whose behalf they were to come before God
with sacrifices and offerings, and in ritual observance. The tribe of Levi found their
inheritance (kleros, clergy) not in the land with the people (laos, laity) but in the direct
service of God.
As priests of God the members of this tribe could perform certain functions which were
forbidden to others under the penalty of death. They could touch holy things which
others were not permitted to touch. “At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi, to
carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister to him,
and to give the blessing in his name to this day. That is why the Levites have no
portion or inheritance with their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as the Lord your
God promised them” (Deuteronomy 10.8,9).
This is very clear and one need not be too astute to observe that under the Mosaic
economy a select group was set apart from the rest of God’s people and ordained to
officiate and minister unto God. It was the exclusive right of the priests to bear the
sacred ark. They intoned the regulation blessing over the heads of the people in the
name of God. The people were barred from encroaching upon or entering the sacred
precincts. They dared not touch a piece of the hallowed furniture.
The priests wore a special garb, a robe or tunic, girded with a special sash, and topped
off with a tall head-dress. No one outside the priesthood was allowed to wear this
distinctive attire and any person who did so would suffer death for impersonating a
priest. The priest was a mediator. He stood between the people and God. Men
approached God only through other men who were empowered with sacerdotal
authority. “If any one of the common people sins unwittingly in doing any one of the
things which the Lord commanded not to be done, and is guilty, when the sin which he
has committed is made known to him, he shall bring for his offering a goat . . .and the
priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.”
A special priesthood must draw its support from those for whom it officiates. The
priests cannot farm or make a living. They must busy themselves with affairs of the
temple. They must keep the ritual program moving. Those who constituted the priestly
clergy could not farm, and those who farmed could not be a priestly clergy. So the
people (laity) had to support the priesthood with their tithes and offerings.
“The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no holding or patrimony in
Israel; they shall eat the food-offerings of the Lord, their patrimony. They shall have no
patrimony among their fellow-countrymen; the Lord is their patrimony as he promised
them.” <>The priest was entitled to demand the part coming to him before the
contributor could use anything for himself. “This shall be the customary due of the
priests from those of the people who offer sacrifice, whether a bull or a sheep; the
shoulders, thecheeks, and the stomach shall be given to the priest. You shall give him
also the first fruits of your corn, and new wine and oil, and the first fleeces at the
shearing of your flocks. For it was he whom the Lord your God chose from all your
tribes to attend to the Lord and to minister in the name of the Lord, both he and his
sons for all time.”
There can be no question but what, under the fleshly covenant, written and engraven in
stones, God created a clerical caste separate and apart from the people. Members of
this group encamped between the body of Israel and the sanctuary where God dwelt.
They wore beautiful robes which distinguished the wearers from the remainder of the
people of God. They performed functions forbidden to those who had not been
anointed.
The Great Change
But the cross of Christ forever wiped out all such distinctions. They were abolished and
done away when the legal custodian delivered us to Jesus, and faith in God’s son
superseded that righteousness which is by deeds of the law. Every child of God is now
a priest. Every person on this whole earth who has been purged and purified by the
blood of Jesus is a priest of God. “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins with
his life’s blood, who made us a royal house, to serve as the priests of his god and
Father . . to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 1.6).
The old covenant, being a covenant of the flesh, with its seal of circumcision in the
flesh, made its appeal to the fleshly nature. It provided pomp and pageantry, ritual and
liturgy, gold and glitter. It had its visible temple of wood and stone called “the house of
God.” But this whole arrangement was temporary. “All this is symbolic, pointing to the
present time. The offerings and sacrifices there prescribed cannot give the worshiper
inward perfection. It is only a matter of food and drink and various rites of cleansing–
outward ordinances in force until the time of reformation” (Hebrews 9.10)
The time of reformation came! The age of which the prophets spoke was ushered in.
The new covenant, written not with ink, but with the Holy Spirit upon tablets of the
heart became a reality. We were no longer minors in virtual slavery. The term was
completed. God sent his own Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to purchase
freedom for the subjects of the law, in order that we might attain the status of sons.
But what happened? Like the trembling, cowering multitude at the foot of Horeb, when
the first covenant was given, we did not want God speaking to us. We did not want to
become a family with its intimacy. We were afraid to be sons. We rebelled at the idea
of a Father. We wanted a God afar off, a remote Deity to be worshipped in an
institution and by a prescribed ritual. One can be a member of an organization, pay his
dues and attend the meetings, without ever really becoming involved. His contribution
pays for the benefits which the institution is created to provided.
So we wanted worship to be something done for us, a performance prepared in
advance and carried out by trained actors whom we could watch and applaud and
appreciate for their skills. We did not want worship to be the crying out of our own
hearts for help or the sobbing on the shoulder of our elder brother, who endured all
things as we do and was yet without sin. We craved an “order of worship” printed in a
program and appropriate to holy days and holy seasons. And the flesh triumphed over
the Spirit. We got what we wanted and we can to through it for an hour once per week
wholly detached in life and concern. Once more the startling questions of yesterday
come echoing through the empty, dusty, cobweb-strung hearts which are no longer
being led by the Spirit. “Can it be that you are so stupid? You started with the spiritual;
do you now look to the material to make you perfect? Have all of your great
experiences been in vain–if vain indeed they should be? (Galatians 3.3,4). We have
not progressed in the Spirit. We have retrogressed to the law. We have gone back to
the weak and beggarly elements. We are acting as if the death of Jesus was a myth
and the cross at Calvary a fantasy. We are not the family for which God planned. We
are an organization of our own design, coming before God with a mixture of Judaistic
and cultural forms which we have blended together and call worship. There is a veil
over our eyes in the reading of the Word.
Let me not be vague. Let me not hint at what I mean. We have refused to believe that
the God who created heaven and earth and all that is in them does not dwell in temples
made with hands, and neither is worshipped with men’s hands as though he needed
anything. So we continue to spend billions of dollars every year to prove that Paul was
mistaken when he stood among the pagan shrines at Athens. One of the strengths of
primitive saints was that they had no shrines like the pagan world. Their God could not
be localized, confined or shut up, so that men would have to visit him as they did the
sick. And now we dedicate buildings to God exactly as Solomon did in the days of
spiritual adolescence, and men stand up and intone in sepulchral tones, “I was glad
when they said unto me, Let us go up to the house of God.”
We have refused to learn that Jesus did away with holy places and holy days. We are
the temple of God. We are the house of God. Men can no longer dedicate material
structures to God who gives us life and breath and all things. We do not go up to the
house of God. It is the house of God which does the going. The only sanctuary God
has on this earth is a consecrated human heart. He recognizes no place as a sanctuary
or holy place because it has stained glass windows, wall-to-wall rug of institutional
quality as the salesman stressed in his pitch to the building committee, or pews to
match the pulpit furniture. I am the house of God when I am in a library, or the
bathroom, or the shopping center. And if I am not the sanctuary of God there I will not
be when I am in a meetinghouse designed for my air-conditioned comfort.
Such a place is only holy when it is filled with sanctuaries, with living, loving,
throbbing, pulsating bodies of the ransomed and redeemed, sons and daughters of the
Lord Almighty, brothers and sisters rejoicing together, weeping together, sharing pain
and tribulation, and joy and peace. When we build a “house of worship” and have a
dedication ceremony, call it temple or what you will, we must think of a clergyman to
conduct the ritual. A temple requires a special priest to minister. The pulpit becomes a
stage for a performance in our behalf and the pews become a grandstand from which
spectators view the performance.
When people find the Lord Jesus in a real and vital way, and want to live very close to
him and experience the fellowship of others in praise that is spontaneous and
unrehearsed they find a pall and chill when forced to sit through a dramatization with a
robed choir and an actor. The praise of God is not intended to be a spectator sport but
the pouring out of one’s own heart. A great many young people in the university, who
come on the first day of the week, often to sit on the floor for lack of chairs, sing
together, share together, sit down at the table of the Lord together, weep over their
sins and comfort one another while holding hands, find themselves when they go back
home in an atmosphere so detached from real life they can hardly stand it.
I hold no brief for the inappropriate jokes and undue levity which pulpit clowns feel they
must indulge in to keep the folks happy and entertained. Many times these are a cover-
up for superficial knowledge of the Word of God and serve to fill in the borrowed
sermon outlines from the latest book supplying such predigested food to harried
preachers who must meet the needs of every other person in the community while
neglecting their own families. There is such a thing as quiet dignity. There is a peace
that passes understanding. But I deplore the cold, sluggish and frigid approach which
Alexander Campbell described as “sacred gloom, holy melancholy and pious
indolence.” The calm of the cemetery hardly appeals to one who has been born from
above.
In Christ Jesus our Lord there is not one item of praise or spiritual performance which
is the exclusive right of a particular class. Any child of God who is qualified may serve
in carrying out the will of God. The relegation of that which belongs to all to a special
coterie of saints is a step away from the simplicity in Christ and God’s purpose.
No one is an authorized baptizer by virtue of position or office. Any Christian has the
right to baptize a person who confesses his faith in Jesus as the Messiah and God’s
Son. This is not a clerical act. It is not the prerogative of an “ordained minister” for
every child of God is a minister of God, and ordained of God to fulfill the divine will. We
should encourage Christian fathers to immerse members of their own families, or those
who lead others to the Lamb of God to immerse them. What is wrong with allowing a
high school student who has been instrumental in the conversion of one of his
schoolmates to baptize that one in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
In open forums the question of performing marriage ceremonies is always raised as an
exception to what I have stated. But one who performs marriages does so as a
representative of the state, not of the community of the saints. It is a license from the
state which permits him to serve in this capacity and the qualification for officiating is
set by the constitution of the state, and not provided within the framework of God’s
revelation.
If “the minister” is jealous and afraid that others will steal his glory, he is a living
example of one who is disqualified by temperament and understanding to fulfill the role
which he assumes. The purpose of special functionaries is to “train or adapt the saints
to carry out the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ.” The body
grows through that which every joint supplies. The best leader is not one who does
everything but one who can get others to do it.
No one has an exclusive right to engage in teaching, exhorting or admonishing the
saints. Why should the talents of scores of brethren be stifled and sublimated so that
one can grow by exercise? Shall we bind all of the members of the body but one, and
let them become paralyzed through disuse? Are not all of the bodily members expected
to perform the work for which they are gifted by the Lord? Are any gifts of God useless
and worthless?
We owe a tremendous debt to men like Elton Trueblood, the eminent Quaker
philosopher of Richmond, Indiana, who has written some of the most startling and
revolutionary material on the subject of “ministry” in our generation. It is startling
because so little of it is heard from other sources, and revolutionary because it is an
honest attempt to restore the concept of ministry as it was in the primitive company of
the redeemed.
No one can seriously read the chapter “A Practical Starting Point” in the book The
Incendiary Fellowship, or the one titled “The Abolition of the Laity” in the book The
Yoke of Christ without being made to think about the great chasm between what we
practice and what God purposed. Unfortunately, we suffer from two evils. Many of our
brethren never read anything that is spiritually enlightening. They consider that is the
“duty” of the preacher. And many of those who read never do so seriously, with a view
to making any real change in their thinking. It is not likely that a Quaker philosopher
will change those who refuse to be changed by apostolic disclosures.
We are tricked into thinking that we are free from “the clergy system” because we have
been clever enough to employ other terms to designate our clergy. But being a
clergyman has little to do whether “the common people” designate one by such titles as
“Reverend” or “Right Reverend.” One who appropriates to himself by reason of his
status, the regulation and conduct of that worship which is the right of all, is a
clergyman whether he admits it or not.
The pagan business world looks upon “the minister” of a church as identical in status
with the parish priest. Both can get reduced fares for the clergy upon airlines. Both can
carry a “clergy certificate” for purchase of tickets on bus lines. In some places they will
both receive cards admitting them to professional sporting events upon mere payment
of the sales tax. In other places they receive a “clerical discount” when they purchase a
suit or topcoat. A lot of those who inveigh against “the clergy system” from the pulpit
on Sunday accept a “clergy discount” on Monday, thus demonstrating anew that where
a man’s treasure is there will his heart be also.
It may have been such casuistry which caused Edward Gibbon in his well-known
literary work Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to write, “To a philosophic eye the
vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.” It is easy to dismiss this
by reminding ourselves that Gibbon was a skeptic, but it might help if we earnestly
weighed the observation.
Not only the world which surrounds our little oasis regards us as the “the clergy” when
we appropriate the function of preaching, and contract to proclaim the word at so much
per annum with vacation time specified. The saints who are taxed to support the
organizational complex feel the same way. It is “the minister” who has his name on the
signboard out front and upon the official letterhead. He has an office in the
consecrated structure, and often a secretary who alone can admit you to the inner
sanctum. The very world we have created for ourselves sets him apart.
In justification for the brethren who hoped to devote their efforts to proclaiming the
message of God’s grace, I must point out that they are upset and frustrated because
they have been caught in the gears of the institutional meat-grinder or are constantly
being run through the congregational corn-sheller. In their hearts they believe in the
priesthood of all believers and in the ministry of all the saints. Secretly, I think a lot of
them resent being put on the stage to say “the right things” in “the proper way” which
means to employ the kind of religious jargon and double-talk which opposes sin without
making it lose it respectability.
But “The System” operates to produce professionals, and a lethargic and indolent
people, good-hearted though they may be, would rather hire someone whom they can
own to “conduct worship,” whatever that may mean, than to worship in Spirit and in
truth. And “The System” operates only to perpetuate itself just as does the political
system or the economic system. And it makes no difference who is elected or selected.
The System does not change.
“The System” uses men so long as they follow its unwritten creed and conform to its
traditional method. But men are expendable. They are good only so long as they
produce. Once they rebel at being owned and made flunkies they will be sent packing
and reduced to a pulp, made to feel that they are deserters, renegades and apostates.
And all of this will be done by good people who think they are following the will of
Jesus. So it becomes easier just to play ball than to fight the team, the umpires and the
fans in the stands. I say it is easier, but deep inside it corrodes the soul.
Sound Words, 1755 Bensdale Rd, Pleasanton, TX 78064, Glynmt@aol.com
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