The eCrozier

This week I reread Justin Lewis-Anthony’s provocative book: If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him, and I remembered why I was delighted the first time I read it. The book is Lewis-Anthony’s argument for why we need to radically rethink the priestly ministry in our 21st Century, post-Christian culture. George Herbert, as you may know, was a 17th Century Anglican Divine, a writer of well known and much loved poetry, and the author of A Priest to the Temple (or The Country Parson), which offered practical advice to clergy. It is from this advice, and from the legend that grew around Herbert, that Lewis-Anthony proposes such Herbertcidal action. Isaak Walton, his first biographer, engaged in great hagiography making Herbert out to be the ideal for all parish priests who would follow.

Somewhat like the fictional Father Tim in Jan Karon’s Mitford books, Herbert has become this ideal to the distress of Lewis-Anthony and to most of the parish clergy I know. Of course, the truth of Herbert’s life is overshadowed by the legend. He was an academic who never quite reached his promise, a member of parliament who could not handle life as a politician, and a parish priest for less than three years (thus unqualified to give advice) before his death of “consumption” just short of his 40th birthday. But, oh my, his poetry! It is masterful. But a masterful poet does not a good parish priest make.

And that is Lewis-Anthony’s central point. Of course, Lewis-Anthony does not want to really kill George Herbert. No need to since he is long dead. What Lewis-Anthony is most concerned about is what he calls Herbertism: the belief that parish priests should be at the church at all times, ready to benignly bless whatever needs blessing and to affirm all things of the church and community. He or she must go from a funeral to a Friday night football game, from a Rotary Club meeting to a confirmation class, and from the bedside of a dying parishioner to the local school play. And he or she is expected to be in all those places all the time. As Lewis-Anthony writes, the parish priest is to be “omni-present, omni-competent, and omni-affirming.” This is Herbertism.

But even if such a life were possible (and we know it killed poor George in less than three years), we have to ask: Is that the vocation God expects and the Church needs of its priests in the present age? Lewis-Anthony does not think so. He suggests five alliterative alternatives to Herbertism: 1) Rule – have a Rule of Life that reminds you who you are and how you will live; 2) Role – know what you are for in the world; 3) Responsibility – discern what your context is, how you oversee it, and lead in it; 4) Reckoning – be savvy enough to make decisions that are collaborative; and, 5) Reconciling – learn the skill of effective conflict management. Herbertism deals with conflict by pretending there is not any (read chapter 18 in A Priest to the Temple).

I commend Lewis-Anthony’s 5 R’s, but I would add that the parish priest is principally the keeper and teller of the Christian story, reminding people of their baptismal identity and purpose in this world and forming them so they are the ones who are present, competent, and affirming of God’s truth in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

+Scott