Religious Titles

We love our religious titles, especially those of us who are ordained. To be quite honest, I have become ambivalent about those titles. I have engaged in numerous discussions with other ordained folk and they all make excellent points around this issue. Some say that church members want to know who their pastors are and that they want to know that their pastors are well trained, prepared for ministry, and can be trusted. In those traditions in which bishops are named as bishops (I say that because virtually every tradition has someone in the bishop’s role, even if they don’t call them bishop), people look forward to the bishop’s visit and want the bishop to dress the part, act the part, and claim the title. I understand all of that and can’t disagree with it, but there is another side to all of this.

I am an Anglican by heritage, an Independent Catholic by ordination, and a follower of Jesus and all the great spiritual teachers of all traditions by practice. As a member of the clergy who has always worn clerics I have countless times been told by people I meet on the street how nice it is to have the identifiable presence of a clergy person on the street. For me clerics have always been about radical availability, and I am happy that people have on occasion taken advantage of that availability by asking me to counsel them and/or pray for them.

You may be wondering, what’s the problem? The problem is that a significant minority of Roman Catholic priests and bishops world wide have so disgraced their office that I cannot help but wonder if we non-Roman clergy are the victims of guilt by association – particularly those of us who are catholic with a lower case “c” and so wear clerics and are called bishop, priest, and deacon. When a person who has been raised outside the church, or who has left it in the past, sees my collar can they see past the pedophilia and subsequent cover up by Roman Catholic priests and bishops? When I say, “Hello, I am Bishop Craig,” are they concerned for their children?

To be sure, I take steps to ensure that my appearance is different from institutional clergy. While I do wear clerics, and ofter wear black for its slimming qualities rather than purple, I most often wear jeans with my clerics. I no longer wear a cross, but rather an ankh. I smile and laugh in public, and wear my prayer beads wrapped around my wrist – but can anyone see past the collar?

There is, of course, another side to all of this. We progressive Christians have a history of allowing our language and symbols to be co-opted by fringe groups – so much so that even to say “I am a Christian” has become tantamount to admitting you are a fundamentalist extremist nutcake. The fish symbol, for the first few hundred years the primary symbol used by Christians in the Europe and parts of the Middle East (the ankh was used in African Christianity) now adorns the trunks and tail gates of the aforementioned fundie cakes. We need to begin to make choices about what languaging and symbols we are going to fight to hold on to, which we will fight to reclaim, and which aren’t worth the effort. In this process, we will need to discern new ways of telling our story and new language to use in that effort.

The truth is that I am more comfortable in a collar than in the uniform of the hospital visiting Protestant clergy: suit, tie, and optional fifty pound leather covered study Bible with six ribbon markers in assorted colors hanging out the bottom. I hate neck ties and I have back problems that make carrying the aforementioned Bible problematic. All kidding aside, I am not willing to surrender my catholic (small “c”) heritage to the pedophiles, criminals, and sociopaths who should never have been afforded the honor of Holy Orders in the first place.

Watch for me on the street!