Letter to the editor
1
TO TtIE EDITOR: Your February issue has stimulated me to the following reactions. In urging the clergyman to seek a more specialized and distinctive role, we are in danger of constricting his activities until he is confined only to the bits and pieces of the priesthood that the secular helping profes- sions have not found it worthwhile to snatch from him. For the problem is not that pastors are now trying to become second-rate thera- pists, but that secular helpers are trying to be second-rate pastors or priests. Secularity has usurped the tasks of the church to the point that all that is left is preaching sermons or conducting rituals that do not change men's lives. This is the endpoint of a devolution from the time when all helping and healing was centered in the priestly function of medi- ating supernatural power to human needs. We can't go back to the shamanism of the past, but we can take advantage, as Dr. Booth suggests, of the crisis or kairos in the healing professions. It is not only the traditional church that is bankrupt; the old, proud secu- larism is bankrupt too. We await a new link- age of divine power with the depths of man. In the meantime, the clergy (or any Chris- tian) must think, not in terms of a distinc- tive role or thing to do, but of a distinctive way of doing anything--a distinctive kind of person to be. The way is pointed by a member of the Association for Christian Development in Oklahoma City: "I want my life to speak to people of more than just me--of Christ." (Quoted in The New Nuns, a Signet Book.) Such witnessing can be carried out in any walk of life, being the priesthood of the be- liever; but it will tend to carve out new spheres of activity: (I) New forms of prayer and meditation, embodying insigbts from Zen, Jung, and the B-experience of Abraham Maslow. To what extent, for instance, is the current interest in conservation a search for the healing con- templative union with our natural matrix? (2) A new preaching, based on the life history, as Dr. Booth describes it, growing out of confession, which leads first to self-knowl- edge, but beyond this, into a reevaluating of the meaning of one's whole life in the light of Christ. Here the preacher can "rightly di- vide the Word of God," not to a passive audi- ence, but to each seeker individually and ex- istentially. (3) A new morality which is not "the new morality." I feel the "sexual revolution" is going to revoh,e again, and when some pro- phetic movement pulls our fragmented culture together into a new theonomy, I fear many of us will be overtaken while still reading Dr. Albert Ellis instead of St. Augustine, by a new Puritan era which will channel energies now dissipated by drugs and "free sex" into dedication to a cause larger than self. Will the church be ready to lead in a way that avoids the errors of the old Puritanism? (4) Finally, new rituals will emerge. Rit- uals are not made by conscious design, and they arc communal, not private, affairs. They are effective only when the communal rite has a personal meaning, and non-neurotic only when the personal observance has a com- munal meaning. To define anew the cultural form of religion will be to define the form of the pastoral functions also. We could well be thinking about these things through the next twenty years of PAS- TORAL PSYCHOLOGY. CAROL MURPHY Swarthmore, Pennsylvania TO THE EDITOR: I am deeply appreciative of the February issue of PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY. My suggestion is that a great deal more needs to be written on the suggestions of both Dr. Clinebell and Dr. Oates that the pastor is free to go to troubled people without a formal invitation. Further, I personally hope that in the next twenty years most clinical training will move from the hospital to the parish, and that there will be more dialogue between the parish minister and the pastoral educators. Presently, most of what is written is monologue from the educator to the parish. This is unfortunate because their working situations and rela- tionships with people are somewhat different. THE t~v. RAYMOND F. ALLEN Pastor of Wise Baptist Church Wise, Virginia
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Transcript of Letter to the editor
TO TtIE EDITOR: Your February issue has stimulated me to
the following reactions. In urging the clergyman to seek a more
specialized and distinctive role, we are in danger of constricting his activities until he is confined only to the bits and pieces of the priesthood that the secular helping profes- sions have not found it worthwhile to snatch from him. For the problem is not that pastors are now trying to become second-rate thera- pists, but that secular helpers are trying to be second-rate pastors or priests. Secularity has usurped the tasks of the church to the point that all that is left is preaching sermons or conducting rituals that do not change men's lives. This is the endpoint of a devolution from the time when all helping and healing was centered in the priestly function of medi- ating supernatural power to human needs.
We can't go back to the shamanism of the past, but we can take advantage, as Dr. Booth suggests, of the crisis or kairos in the healing professions. It is not only the traditional church that is bankrupt; the old, proud secu- larism is bankrupt too. We await a new link- age of divine power with the depths of man.
In the meantime, the clergy (or any Chris- tian) must think, not in terms of a distinc- tive role or thing to do, but of a distinctive way of doing anything--a distinctive kind of person to be. The way is pointed by a member of the Association for Christian Development in Oklahoma City: "I want my life to speak to people of more than just me--of Christ." (Quoted in The New Nuns, a Signet Book.) Such witnessing can be carried out in any walk of life, being the priesthood of the be- liever; but it will tend to carve out new spheres of activity:
(I) New forms of prayer and meditation, embodying insigbts from Zen, Jung, and the B-experience of Abraham Maslow. To what extent, for instance, is the current interest in
conservation a search for the healing con- templative union with our natural matrix?
(2) A new preaching, based on the life history, as Dr. Booth describes it, growing out of confession, which leads first to self-knowl- edge, but beyond this, into a reevaluating of the meaning of one's whole life in the light of Christ. Here the preacher can "rightly di- vide the Word of God," not to a passive audi- ence, but to each seeker individually and ex- istentially.
(3) A new morality which is not "the new morality." I feel the "sexual revolution" is going to revoh, e again, and when some pro- phetic movement pulls our fragmented culture together into a new theonomy, I fear many of us will be overtaken while still reading Dr. Albert Ellis instead of St. Augustine, by a new Puritan era which will channel energies now dissipated by drugs and "free sex" into dedication to a cause larger than self. Will the church be ready to lead in a way that avoids the errors of the old Puritanism?
(4) Finally, new rituals will emerge. Rit- uals are not made by conscious design, and they arc communal, not private, affairs. They are effective only when the communal rite has a personal meaning, and non-neurotic only when the personal observance has a com- munal meaning. To define anew the cultural form of religion will be to define the form of the pastoral functions also.
We could well be thinking about these things through the next twenty years of PAS- TORAL PSYCHOLOGY.
CAROL MURPHY Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
TO THE EDITOR: I am deeply appreciative of the February
issue of PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY. My suggestion is that a great deal more
needs to be written on the suggestions of both Dr. Clinebell and Dr. Oates that the pastor is free to go to troubled people without a formal invitation.
Further, I personally hope that in the next twenty years most clinical training will move from the hospital to the parish, and that there will be more dialogue between the parish minister and the pastoral educators. Presently, most of what is written is monologue from the educator to the parish. This is unfortunate because their working situations and rela- tionships with people are somewhat different.
THE t ~ v . RAYMOND F. ALLEN Pastor of Wise Baptist Church Wise, Virginia
