-by Bill McPhailNow while I hardly agree with Emerson’s transcendentalism that suggests that God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth can be intuitively experienced directly from nature, it is difficult to ignore his keen intellect and his great skill as a lecturer, essayist, philosopher and poet.
While I may be inclined to agree with American novelist Herman Melville of Moby-Dick fame that Emerson indeed had “a defect in the region of the heart”, few men of his time were his equal in diagnosing the spiritual impoverishment of the mendicant church of his day which was failing to be a countervailing voice to an increasingly secular society.
Upon visiting England in 1833, he made few friends with his subsequent essay on English religion. “The curates1,” he wrote, “are ill paid, and the prelates2 are overpaid. This abuse draws into the church the children of nobility and other unfit persons who have a taste for expense. Thus a bishop is only a surpliced merchant. Through his lawn I can see the bright buttons of the shopman’s3 coat glitter. A wealth like that of Durham4 makes almost a premium on felony. Brogham5, in a speech in the House of Commons on the Irish elective franchise, said, “How will the reverend bishops of the other house be able to express their due abhorrence of the crime of perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of God that when they are called upon to accept a living, perhaps of £4000 a year, at that very instant they are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and administration thereof, and custom-house oaths. The Bishop is elected by the Dean and Prebends6 of the cathedral. The Queen sends these gentlemen a conge ďélire, or leave to elect; but also sends them the name of the person whom they are to elect. They go into the cathedral, chant and pray and beseech the Holy Ghost to assist them in their choice; and after these invocations, invariably find that the dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with the recommendations of the Queen.”
Surely, one does not have to wonder long what Emerson would write about “the name it and claim it clergy” of our day who build their personal financial kingdoms on the contributions of the poor.
Closer to home, however, and even more pointedly would be Emerson’s distain for those carefully orchestrated moves we often make in the church in our staff or board meetings in which after participating in a perfunctory prayer, we pronounce our plans and programs to be the will of God. One suspects that much of what we claim to be “dictates of the Holy Ghost” are little more than our own wills, hidden behind a façade of piety.
When we spend more time organizing than we do agonizing, more time planning than we do praying, and then cavalierly declare our decisions to be the will of God, how to we maintain our integrity with God and our credibility with man?
I wonder what our next staff or board meeting would be like if each decision were truly initiated and led of the Holy Spirit?
May God deliver us, lest we prove to be 21st century prebends who not only fall prey to the materialism of our day, but whose piety is little more than a hollow pronouncement devoid of true spiritual reality.
1A curate is one who is invested with the care, or cure, of souls of a parish. 2A prelate is a high-ranking member of the clergy who oversees the curates. 3The shopman referenced was a salesman come to sell high price goods. 4 The Lord Bishop of Durham who had extraordinary leeway to appoint his own Sheriffs and Justices, administer his own law, levy taxes and mint his own coins. 5Henry Brougham was a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom. 6A Prebend though a stipend given by a collegiate church or cathedral to the clergyman (Dean) came to refer to the one who benefited from such stipends. An Act of Parliament dissolved the system of Prebends in 1836; three years after Emerson wrote his essay.
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I wish all clergy in this day could read "PREBENDS, PIETY AND PRONOUNCEMENTS."
I was recently privy to a conversation between the mother of a young minister, and her husband. She suggested that her son should accept an offer as associate minister from a certain church full of affluent professional people, rather than take another offer given by a church full of "blue collar workers." She felt it would better advance his career if he accepted the affluent church. He accepted a position with the affluent church. As a
minister's daughter, I grew up among ministers in the l940's and 50's who had that same mentality, who, when it came down to a final decision about which church to pastor, considered salary, location, educational advantages for their children, almost anything but the will of God. I had no desire to be part of the church world then, but later, as a young adult was drawn into the Kingdom through Loran W. Helm, who not only preached leaving all to follow God and do His will, but lived it. I was excited by the thought that one can do this. I believe that when the church, starting with the leaders, gets serious about doing the will of God, we will bring the world to Christ.
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