The question of church order is, perhaps, the central issue of the American Episcopal experience. Episcopalians are Anglicans in the broadest sense, but we are not members of the Church of England. Our history is not directly that of the English village and its parish church, of archbishops or monarchs. American Episcopalianism was forged in the context of industrial revolution, democratic experimentation, and religious pluralism. Although Anglicans had been in America since European settlement began, the Revolutionary War nearly destroyed the colonial church. Early Americans who were still committed to Anglicanism needed to recreate their church in a democratic mode—a hierarchical church with presumptions of prelacy was inappropriate in the new nation. They conceived of a democratic episcopate, an admixture of the traditional roles of bishops and clergy with the new ethos of vox populi. Thus, American Anglicanism evolved into the Episcopal Church in the United States: a church of “mitre without sceptre.”[1]
Although solved in theory, some tension between the traditional ordering of the church and American culture remained. Through two centuries of church history, questions of order, authority, structure, and polity arose with some regularity and were resolved based on the theological insight and ministry needs of a given generation. Historically, the Episcopal Church often has proved itself a flexible and culturally responsive institution. Thus, when “authority” has been radically redefined by the culture, and when vox populi includes the voices of people previously unheard or unheeded, it is natural that the contemporary church revisits these questions.[2] Thinking through our polity in relation to culture is a central part of American Episcopal identity.
Throughout our history, however much the church has changed, we have tried to maintain a consensus of dual emphases: that the church should be an ordered community reflecting Anglican understandings of scripture, tradition, and reason; and that God’s mission is best carried out when spirit is embodied in form and when forms are enlivened by spirit in our common life.
Although these emphases are sometimes in tension—as they often seem to be today in relation to contemporary concerns—the dual nature of this consensus is not new in the history of God’s people. Scripture itself points toward both order and dynamism in the community of God’s people. Historically, orders emerged as specific responses to practical needs for mission and ministry in early Christianity. It became clear that God not only calls people into the laos but also calls some people within the laos to serve the body in particular ways: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12). Through time, this calling by God to individuals for service to the laos became institutionalized into its historic form: the three orders of ordained ministers as bishops, presbyters or priests, and deacons. Thus, the practice of ordaining such individuals emerged to serve the body on behalf of God’s mission.
How, then, do we understand the meaning of Holy Orders in the context of the ministry of all baptized persons, the relationship between order and the dynamism of God’s people on mission? It has been suggested that the two are “a mutually corrective necessity.”
We should all gladly acknowledge the one ministry that is embodied in Jesus Christ and which through baptism becomes the property of all believers as one priestly people. This is not in conflict with [the corollary] that one ministry is essentially and substantially embodied in three co-equal and co-temporal orders that are the outward and visible sign in the sacrament of order…This order is one way in which the Holy Spirit concretely shaped the koinonia of the covenant people for its mission.[3]
This understanding can be further understood in the theological analogy “found in the union in the one person of Christ of the messianic offices of prophet, priest, and king, as Jesus redefined them, even as he redefined messiahship.”[4] Thus, prophecy translates into diaconal service to the church and the world, especially the poor and outcast; priesthood is understood in the terms of Christ’s self-offering sacrifice; and kingship is humble oversight for the sake of apostolic mission.
Further enriching the idea of “a mutually corrective necessity,” the orders exist relationally within the laos. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintained, the ordained ministry “comes neither before nor after, neither above nor beneath the congregation, but within and together with it. One is not the subject of the other—the subject of both is the Holy Spirit—nor is one the object of the other, for that would mean that the office of ministry was at the mercy of the communal spirit or, alternatively, that the congregation was deprived of its right to judge doctrine.”[5] In this relationship, imbued by the Spirit, any seeming contradiction between the ministry of the laos and that of ordained persons dissolves.
Therefore, in the spirit of Anglican tradition, we strongly affirm a theological both-and: first, God calls all baptized persons to be agents of the kingdom and missioners of God’s reconciling love in Christ; and second, God also calls some people within the laos to serve Christ’s body, the mission community, in particular ways. Among these are the ordained, who share an indispensable call to faithful leadership in the laos on behalf of God’s mission. In ecumenical conversations and in the ordinals, the Episcopal Church has consistently maintained that the essential ideas that describe the relationship of ordained ministry to the ministry of the baptized are pastoral oversight and godly example.[6] “The goal of the ordained ministry is to serve th[e] priesthood of all the faithful. Like any human community, the church requires a focus of leadership and unity, which the Holy Spirit provides in the ordained ministry.”[7]
When we speak of the relation of ordained ministry to baptismal ministry as a relationship of pastoral oversight, it is as defined above, “humble, self-emptying service to others.” In a contemporary society, “oversight” may be misleading because “over” may be wrongly interpreted by some as autocratic hierarchy and may bring to mind “overlord” or “overseer.” Yet, oversight as Christ-like service should characterize the relation of the entire ordained ministry to the ministry of all baptized persons. Every aspect of oversight is, and must be, rooted and grounded in the Word of God and the person of Jesus Christ, “as an educator, community builder, a listener, a learner, one who expected great things from his friends, a person who took the risk of truly delegating tasks.” Upon this basis, “we lay the foundation for an understanding of the priest as part of a mutual ministry of all the baptized. . . . The task of the clergy is to nurture corporate ministry, not be the minister.”[8]
Their further call is as an example: “to model sacramentally—and so to foster and facilitate—the life of the whole priestly community.”[9] The ordained are to be seen as “icons, living reminders, and animators” of the congregations with whom they worship and serve.[10] The purpose for the ordination of deacons, priests or presbyters, and bishops is to provide pastors or shepherds to serve the community as models or “icons” of the fundamental priesthood to which all persons all called. “The ordained person is primarily a sign, a sacrament of the priesthood of all Christians, which is the priesthood of Christ.”[11] Through service and sacramental spirituality, pastoral oversight is inverted into a vision of the foot-washing Christ embodying for all disciples the life of service to which they are called.
Growing out of this identity, the pastoral role involves the ordained in a variety of practical responsibilities. Some of these they perform themselves, some are shared, many are delegated. They include, among other things, the final responsibility for coordinating the activities of the church’s fellowship, promoting what is necessary and useful for the church’s life and mission, discerning what is of the Spirit in the diversity of the community’s life, and guarding the church’s unity. The ordained have a designated responsibility for celebrating the sacraments, proclaiming the word, and overseeing pastoral care and outreach. Through these things, God’s people are empowered by Christ for the work of the kingdom.
Because of their call, ordained individuals enter a life-long process of formation in community. They must continue, through prayer, reflection and collegiality, to cultivate the gifts and responsibilities which are confirmed in ordination. At the same time, as they seek to grow in devotion, insight and stature, deacons, priests or presbyters, and bishops, remain with all the laos, drawn up into a process of transformation into the likeness of Christ. The baptismal community is the setting in which the calling of the ordained person takes place, the matrix of personal growth, and a model of spiritual formation for the congregation: community and pastor are one in Christ.
Thus, the Episcopal Church maintains the traditional three-fold order of ordained persons set within and serving God’s kingdom through the ministry of the entire laos. Because they are part of the ministry of all baptized persons, the ordained participate fully in Christ’s mission, characterized as priestly, prophetic, and serving.[12] The ordained—deacons, priests or presbyters, and bishops—uphold and reflect these Christ-like qualities to the whole community to enrich and empower the Body as it engages in God’s mission. And, although not often noted in the church’s theological tradition, the laos model and exemplify Christ’s one priesthood, the person of Jesus doing God’s work bringing about the kingdom of love and reconciliation. In an equally indispensable biblical call, they sacramentally represent the totality of Christ’s ministry to the ordained with whom they are joined in mutually supportive mission. Thus, the ordained must look to the laos as a sacramental reminder of God’s kingdom and their call to faithfully serve Christ’s body.
[1]Frederick Mills, Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York: Oxford, 1978).
[2] The shift at this time in American history is not only “cultural” in the broadest sense. It is also generational. At this juncture, baby-boomers (usually defined as those born between 1946 and 1964) are taking their place as leaders in all American institutions—from politics and business to education and the church. The anxieties, tensions, and world-view differences between those born before WWII and those born after can hardly be understated (with the transitional 1935-1945 cohort displaying characteristics of both sides of the WWII divide). And the words “order,” “authority,” “institution,” and “structure” have been at the heart of generational world-view tensions since the 1960s. In many Zacchaeus sites, as well as some of our conversions, generational issues became clear. Baby-boomers generally define “authority” subjectively and relationally; the pre-WWII generation defines authority objectively and institutionally. These differences have profound implications on understanding ministry—clerical and lay.
[3] Robert David Hughes III, “Lutheran-Episcopal Relations and a Trinitarian Theology of Ministry,” Sewanee Theological Review 43:2 (Easter 2000), 170.
[4] Ibid., 171.
[5] From Bonhoeffer’s lectures while he was dean of the Finkewalde seminary in Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (revised ed., Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000): 446.
[6] ARCIC I, The Final Report, “Ministry and Ordination,” paragraph 9; The Anglican-Lutheran Niagara Report (1987), 20; and The Anglican-Reformed, God’s Reign and Our Unity (1984), 80.
[7] ARCIC I, The Final Report, 33.
[8] Ward B. Ewing, ordination sermon, May 29, 1999.
[9] Countryman, Ibid.
[10] Bishop Jim Kelsey (Northern Michigan) in a letter to the House of Bishops committee on the “Theology of Priesthood.”
[11] Countryman, 86.
[12] Hughes, Ibid.
