Leadership is and has been for some decades a hot topic’. Leaders in church and state no longer have a natural authority by virtue of their role. They have to earn it and defend it. Mr Blair seemed at one stage to have a charismatic authority which would restore a moral ideal to politics. Now that has worn thin because of too much spin and too little consultation. The Archbishop of Canterbury was hailed as a spiritual leader, a great thinker and generous in his judgements. Now he is criticised as too intellectual and insufficiently decisive. The Labour party will be holding leadership elections in the fairly near future; the 2008 Lambeth Conference will be likely to discuss the role and appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Communion of the future.
We look for leadership but we are uncertain about what sort of leadership we want. We live perhaps in an authority vacuum.’ And that as the Cambridge theologian Nicholas Lash has argued is dangerous. He gives the example of parent and child and the moment when the child first says shan’t’, you can’t make me.’ The parent may try to argue to make the child see sense, but in the end parental power wins out. Do as you’re told or no computer games for a week.’ Loss of authority gives way to the exercise of power. Anarchy gives way to dictatorship. Authority and power are not the same thing. Authority implies a moral relationship a free acceptance of leadership and obedience between rational individuals within a community of mutual obligation. The authority of religious and political leaders is based on a delicate balance of culture, personality, efficiency, and confidence. Authority rarely has to be claimed or asserted until it is well on the way to being lost. If you don’t do as your told, you’ll go to bed with no supper.’
That, however, is not the sort of thing an archbishop can say. So what have we a right to expect of authority and its exercise in the church? Towards the end of his life Cardinal Newman wrote about the church as a triangle of forces existing in creative tension. Christianity is a religious rite a pattern of prayer and holiness, centred on the pastor and his or her flock, and appealing to the emotional and mystical side of our nature. Christianity is also a philosophy or system of thought and enquiry, nurtured by a long tradition studied within schools of theology and appealing to our intellectual nature. And the third side of the Christian triangle is political or institutional depending on a religious equivalent of the civil service with a system of decision making for its good governance. Each element has its own scope and direction but if the church and its leaders are to exercise a proper, stabilising and nurturing authority which elicits the willing support and obedience of the flock all three elements have to be working together in creative tension and dialogue. The truth of God and of our humanity is too rich and complex for it to be otherwise. There are no simple solutions to a crisis of authority either in a person or a book or a tradition. A crisis in a relationship is not resolved by one person asserting a particular way of seeing things, or a particular way forward. The way out of the crisis is made possible only if people are prepared to risk discovering new things about themselves and if their vulnerability in that process is respected and treated tenderly.
An Australian Bishop has recently argued that if the Anglican Communion is to retain and strengthen its global identity, the Church of England must be disestablished, the headship of the communion must be separated from the see of Canterbury and elected democratically, and the Lambeth Conference held in different parts of the world. There are many issues involved in such proposals but they clearly point to a new kind of authority (predominantly conservative and evangelical?) emerging within Anglicanism. It is not yet clear whether such a new kind of authority would recognise the necessity of the delicately complex structure which Newman describes.
So what we might ask does the gospel have to teach us about the exercise of authority? In the accounts of the temptations of Jesus we see the possibility of his using power in situations where his authority was being rejected power to make stones bread, power to claim the protection of God, power over the nations of the world. And he is tempted to claim that power on the basis of things said in Scripture. But he rejects the power and the use of Scripture in that way to simplify and coerce situations. In a paradoxical way Jesus’ refusal of power is the source of his authority. We see this summarised in a passage from Isaiah, which Matthew adapts to present his understanding of Jesus’ leadership. Behold, my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; he will not break a bruised reed or quench a smouldering wick till he brings justice to victory and in his name will the Gentiles hope.’
Because Jesus does not seek out and engage in controversy, because he does not wrangle in the streets, his words when they do come are the more authoritative. As he has said of himself earlier he is gentle and lowly in heart.’ Because he is tender towards those who have been hurt by the world and its authorities, those who lack courage to commit, he is all the more attractive to those seeking guidance. In bringing the righteous will of God to victory he is nevertheless gentle with those who are weak, hesitant, or slow to understand. This is not a condemnatory judgement but a supportive justice. The more he risks failure the more his authority grows. As he surrenders control, so the mysterious providence of God becomes more apparent.
It would of course be too simple and too ambitious to ask our leaders simply to copy the leadership of Jesus. The threefold nature of the church does require in its institutional aspect some kind of control, and the imposition of decisions agreed by the majority alongside the debates of scholars and the prayers of holy men and women. Nevertheless, the model of Jesus leadership is always there to question the way in which our decisions are made and implemented. He will always be there, standing quietly with those whom the church’s decisions bruise and with those whose faith flickers tentatively in the draft of a prevailing certainty. He is servant, son and chosen instrument of God; his message is for the whole world, but his mission is accomplished in obscurity and before it is vindicated the messenger is crucified. We do not ask that much of our leaders but both they and we should bear in mind the true nature and burden of leadership in a church authored and authorised in this way.
With my love and prayers
Father Stephen
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker