thought exercise on Clergy

Michelangelo, the celebrated Renaissance artist, is said to have worn a lighted candle on his cap while he worked, which worked by casting light over the marble or canvas so that no shadow of himself ...

In a book written almost thirty years ago, and yet just as relevant today, the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon laments the “professionalization” of clergy, especially as it relates to counseling....

What is happening to us, we who are the ministers of Jesus Christ? Many of us are professionally, spiritually and financially depressed. The figures produced by studies only serve to quantify what we ...

In my lifetime, the classic image of the devoted parish pastor who could be trusted to rightly preach the word, diligently care for souls, and wisely lead the church has shifted dramatically. With maj...

What is the greatest threat to the church of Jesus Christ today? There are so many threats to choose from. Some Christians would identify hazards like postmodern relativism working to unravel notions ...

New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright recalls being at a party once when someone decided to read a portion of the seventeenth-century Prayer Book for laughs. The Prayer Book includes ...

On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...

As many theologians have helpfully described, there is a healthy place for doubting that is integral to faith. When approached thoughtfully and sincerely, these doubts can lead to a deepening understa...

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once told a parable to illustrate the urgency of the gospel message—and the need for all believers, not just clergy, to share it. A traveling circus in Denm...

In Vanishing Grace , Philip Yancey examines the growing negative perceptions of evangelicals. Although the book was written in 2014, these dynamics have only intensified in the era of MAGA and Ch...

Addressing the clergy gathered at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 was a pivotal moment in the Protestant Reformation. Luther wrote, “God’s Word is more ancient than you and will also be newer and more...

I’ve asked strangers and casual acquaintances, “Why do Christians stir up such negative feelings?” Some bring up past atrocities, such as the widespread belief that the church executed eight or nine m...

The premier personage of Advent is John the Baptist. When he appears on the banks of the Jordan, the cover-ups come to their appointed end. Two thousand years before all the Watergates, Irangates, a...

Sarah Grimke, the daughter of a slaveholder and judge in Charleston, South Carolina, was five years old in 1797 when the sight of an enslaved person being whipped seared her conscience. Like many whit...

Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-ma...

Living rooms and shop windows aren’t the only places where decorations are meaningful features of Christmas. When Iraqi forces expelled the Islamic State from the predominantly Christian city of Mosul...

In his now famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail , Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offers a scathing rebuke of his white clergy colleagues, whose inaction caused him much frustration: I have heard numero...

Thomas Linacre was king’s physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Late i...

I was taking a tour of the Church of Scotland’s beautiful Glasgow Cathedral, which is technically the High Kirk of Glasgow. It is estimated that over 50,000 university students live within walking dis...

I’ve asked strangers and casual acquaintances, “Why do Christians stir up such negative feelings?” Some bring up past atrocities, such as the widespread belief that the church executed eight or nine m...

While primarily known today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift also served as an Anglican priest in his home country of Ireland. While his writing gained significant traction througho...

R. Paul Stevens, Professor Emeritus at Regent College, was visiting the Wedding Church in Cana of Galilee with his wife Gail when a hilarious event took place. After introducing himself to the residen...

One particularly crafty, if not insidious way a “good works” righteousness can seep into our theology is by positioning faith as the pre-eminent work. We must never forget that faith itself is a...

In The Hiding Place Corrie ten Boom tells of the time she and her father needed to find a safer place for a Jewish mother and child they had been concealing from the Nazis. A local clergyman cam...

When I remember that the literal translation of the term gospel is “good news,” I recall a wonderful encounter with her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. In the summer of 2001, I f...

After many years of highly successful ministry, Dwight Lyman Moody had an experience of which he himself said, I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it, it is almost too sacred an experience to name...

Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

At the height of Moody’s effectiveness, between 1874 and 1875, Dr. R. W. Dale, one of the leading nonconformist clergymen in England, observed Moody’s work in Birmingham for three or four days. He wan...

Richard Attenborough’s movie Gandhi has a scene set in South Africa where the young Indian lawyer and a white clergyman are walking together on a boardwalk, contrary to South African law at the time. ...

In England in 1955, a prominent atheist/humanist gave a series of lectures attacking Christianity. In response, the Anglican clergyman John Betjeman, wrote the following poem that deals with the quesi...