The Character Question - Christianity Today

While the story is now six decades old, the mere mention of Elmer Gantry's name is still sufficient to evoke a knowing smile. Author Sinclair Lewis, with an assist from Burt Lancaster in the title role of the Elmer Gantry movie, succeeded so dramatically in painting a portrait of a two-faced evangelist that the name has become synonymous with religious hypocrisy.

Any time a public religious figure is exposed in some scandal, Gantry's name is usually brought up. The question confronting us in Elmer Gantry-and in every recurring instance of real-life ministerial immorality-is this: How far must a minister fall in order to be disqualified from Christian leadership?

This is not just a twentieth-century question but also an issue the church has wrestled with throughout its history. Christians have taken several different stances, based on different conceptions of the church and church leadership.

Pastor as elder

Despite having the colorful heritage of the Jewish priests, the apostolic church assumed a concept of the ministry radically different from images of temple, sacrifice, or priesthood. Jewish priests gained their position by being born into the Levitical line. Early Christian practice, by contrast, was more in line with the synagogues of the day, led by respected elders.

Instead of an established priesthood created by Christ to serve the faithful, the dominant idea was that ministry belonged to the believing community, and ordination was primarily selecting an individual to lead so that the whole church could function effectively in worship, service, and outreach.

As Paul outlined the qualifications for church leadership in 1 Timothy and Titus, his criteria did not emphasize family line or some past rite. Instead the focus was on the leader's proven ethical character, on such qualities as being blameless, above reproach, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to much wine, not pursuing dishonest gain.

"He must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined" (Titus 1:8).

"He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap" (1 Tim. 3:7).

The basis for ministry was the leader's continual commitment to live up to these standards. If the minister proved sinful in any serious way, he was treated like any other member of the Christian community. His ability to minister was damaged or lost.

Pastor as priest

By the third century, however, images of priesthood, which earlier had been considered a metaphor for ministry, began to be taken more literally. This view of the ministry as a sacred priesthood eventually altered the common understanding of the importance of the minister's personal character.

The precipitating incident was the persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor Diocletian in A.D. 303-305. One of his official edicts demanded the destruction of churches and confiscation of Christian Scriptures. This edict was enforced with particular severity in Palestine and Egypt, and a number of church leaders in North Africa, fearing for their lives, surrendered the Scriptures to be burned.

Eventually the persecution subsided, but the church was faced with a volatile conflict. A group of reformers known as Donatists argued that many North African bishops were not acceptable for Christian ministry: they had been ordained by these men who had compromised the Christian faith by surrendering the Scriptures.

In time, Augustine, the highly influential bishop, articulated the position that came to be adopted by the Catholic church. He said that ordination was a permanent possession of the individual wholly apart from his relation to the Christian community he served. The church conferred holy orders (ordination), to be sure, but the power to serve came from God through the established priesthood.

This position established two important precedents. First, it gave ordination an indelible character. Sin could not erase priestly power. Second, the validity of the sacraments of the church was not dependent on the moral character of the administering priest. The sacraments were holy within themselves and valid even though dispensed by a sinning priest.

The lasting effect was that personal sanctity was no longer assumed to be essential for ministry. Even if a minister had seriously compromised his faith, his ministry remained legitimate.

Pastor as monk

In the fourth century, the monastic movement spread throughout Christendom as a means for individuals to show special devotion to God. Many churches, after some initial resistance, came to accept the monastic ideals of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Through influential, reforming popes such as Gregory VII, celibacy became an ideal imposed upon Roman Catholic priests as well as monks.

This was an attempt to demonstrate that priests' commitment to God was on a higher level than that of ordinary people. But while the aim was to be slightly more than human, in actuality many priests proved to be very human.

Maintaining the priests' celibacy always posed a problem for the church, and many found ways around the official church policy. Concubines were the most common means. Even Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the pope's personal representative in England, lived with a woman for several years and had two children, and then gave her away to another man, complete with dowry.

These sexual sins, while not condoned, were never deemed sufficiently serious to revoke ordination, since ordination was considered indelible. In some extreme cases of public scandal, a priest or bishop would be removed from a particular position, but his moral lapse was not grounds for disqualification as a priest.

Pastor as spiritual leader

During the medieval centuries, the church never lacked critics of this less-than-holy priesthood. Peter Waldo, Francis of Assisi, and Jan Hus are some of the better-known critics. But the return to the character question for ministry awaited the burly German, Martin Luther, who began by disputing whether God recognized separate spiritual tiers for clergy and laity.

In his Appeal to the German Nobility, Luther wrote: "There has been a fiction by which the pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called 'the spiritual estate'; princes, lords, artisans, and peasants are 'the temporal estate.' This is an artful lie and hypocritical invention, but let no one be made afraid by it, and for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate. … Between laymen and priests … the only real difference is one of office and function, and not of estate."

While Luther provided the philosophical base, it was the English Reformation (especially the Puritans) that began to apply the principles most specifically to the expectations for church leaders.

Puritan leaders set aside the traditional designation of "priest" in favor of "minister." More than semantics was at stake. They removed altars in their churches and abandoned Eucharistic vestments because they believed that ministry focused not on the altar, with its stress on sacrifice, but on the pulpit, where the Word was preached.

A new spirit marked the Puritan ministry: deep devotion, earnest labor, and a high sense of calling. They expected clergy to exhibit spiritual leadership, to embody the gospel they preached.

Puritans considered pastors the sun and rain for the spiritual growth of the churches. On the title page of Richard Baxter's The Reformed Pastor, the adjective was printed in much larger type. But it was no advertisement for Calvinism. By reformed, Baxter meant renewed or revived. The Puritan expectation was a re-formed congregation under the leadership of a spiritually re-formed and vibrant pastor. Much of that leadership we would call "modeling."

William Perkins declared, "He must be godly affected himself who would stir up godly affections in others." He recognized that the greatest and hardest preparation for a ministry of the Word is within.

Eighteenth-century evangelicals, led by Baxter, Perkins, and Philip Doddridge, pointed to five standards in the examination of a candidate for the ministry:

the authenticity of his religious experience;

the acceptability of his moral character;

the genuineness of his call;

the correctness of his doctrine;

the adequacy of his preparation.

The examination usually stressed a "superior order of piety" and "a good report of them which are without." In other words, the ministry was more than communicating a religious message; it was a life commending the grace and holiness of God.

When a minister sinned in such a way as to destroy his spiritual influence, he forfeited his ministerial leadership, not because he was a poor minister but because he was a poor saint.

Pastor as therapist

More recently, pastors seem to have assumed a slightly different role. Instead of spiritual leadership, the ministry seems to be spiritual therapy.

As E. Brooks Holifield has shown in his A History of Pastoral Care in America, after World War II ministers in America began to speak a different language. They entered "the age of therapy." Pastoral theologians in the seminaries taught them that condemnation of the sinner was no longer appropriate. As a result, many of them adopted a new pastoral style in harmony with the growing cultural attachment to psychology and the counseling methods advocated by American psychologist Carl Rogers.

By 1968 public interest in therapy had shaped a popular vocabulary. The emphasis was on "hang loose" and on being "warm and accepting." Even ministers wanted to avoid appearing "uptight" and largely adopted a style that disdained legalism, stern judgment, or any hint of anger in public. The new style called for freedom, openness, honesty, sensitivity, and self-realization. In a word, a pastor was supposed to be "real," as weak and vulnerable as the members of his congregation. That made him "approachable."

The ministry has profited, no doubt, from this new sensitivity to human hurts. We have all discovered that people will go out of their way to find a church that reflects in some small way the compassion Jesus showed for the neglected and abused. Thousands have found help and healing from ministers and churches who genuinely care.

Unfortunately, the down side of this conception of the minister as "wounded healer" appears to be a heightened tolerance of sin, not only in others but in ministers themselves. Must "identification" with people include participation in their sin?

The term therapy suggests a life focused on the need for cure. But cure of what? In the minds of most people in our society, cure probably suggests new power to feel good about themselves and to relate successfully to others. But in the Bible, cure nearly always points toward healing our rebellion and disobedience in the sight of God. And what's cure for the people of God is especially cure for the pastor.

To be healthy is to be holy-not perfect, of course, but fit.

-Bruce L. Shelley

professor of church history, Denver Seminary

Denver, Colorado