Oct 03 | Maybe leaders are a bad idea (Letters from the Coast)

Being a crafting nut and introvert, I love nothing more than listening to lectures by people I respect while I busy my hands (it used to be doodling, which I got in trouble for as a kid; now it’s usually crochet, which thankfully there is more grace for these days). This inclination means that podcasts are my absolute Kryptonite. Two summers ago I spent so much time sitting on the couch making baby blankets and listening to podcasts that I almost gave myself carpal tunnel.

What I enjoy most of all is the type of story that takes a hard look at the seamier and stranger parts of human nature. So I love investigative homicide reporting serials like In the Dark and Someone Knows Something, and I love political shows like Canadaland and Some More News (like pretty much every North American Millennial I was bonkers for the Cracked website for a solid seven years and then followed Cracked alumni onto their sophomore projects) but I also love stuff about cults, multilevel marketing, and Internet extremism.

My pinnacle of podcast delight has to be Robert Evans’s Behind the Bastards.

Robert is also a Cracked alum, and actually interviewed me once via Skype, researching for a possible article on seminarians and clergy-in-training. I started listening because I loved the premise: Robert does a bunch of research on one of the titular bastards – who vary wildly, from Hitler to Keith Rainiere of NXIVM infamy to Alex Jones – and writes an essay, which he then reads to a comedian (or, increasingly, other podcasters and activists). It’s very similar to another podcast I love called The Dollop, which looks at American history, but Robert is the only constant and has revolving guests.

It was the first podcast I ever listened to, and I’ve always appreciated Robert’s wry wit and in-depth reporting. Despite his comedy chops he has also worked as a combat journalist and has some serious cred, but mostly I like him because he’s funny as hell and the subject matter fascinates me. There are well-known bastards like dictators and architects of mayhem that have made the cut, but Robert is also careful to include lesser-known folks that fly under the radar as bastards, like Edward Bernays, father of modern PR; Rev. Jim Humble, the founder of a church which encourages its congregants to drink bleach for health reasons; and Renee Bach, a fake doctor who I wrote about in passing a few months ago.

As I started following along weekly, I’ve gotten to know a bit more about Robert’s political inclinations and activism. He tends to avoid identifying himself politically in an explicit way, which I rather appreciate. But one thing he has said several times on the podcast (and on a branded Tshirt) which provides me with the springboard for today’s reflection is, “Maybe leaders are a bad idea.”

I have been thinking of this, in far less articulate terms, for years.

The story of my life has, for the most part, been one of participation rather than leadership. I’ve never felt called to step up or mobilize a group. Part of it is a natural inclination, and part of it is probably just chronic low self-esteem, but it’s a core part of my identity.

You can imagine why being called to ordained leadership in a deeply hierarchical denomination – probably one of the most hierarchical after the Roman Catholic Church – was bizarre and frightening. I got really excited about it in those first few heady couple of years after my spiritual rebirth…and then, once I put myself into a place of greater responsibility as a parish administrator, ran screaming in the opposite direction.

I was eventually dragged back on course by those who saw something within me that they said needed to be present in the church. Damned if I can figure out exactly what it is.

I cannot possibly imagine being a rector or lead parish priest. It’s not just the fact that the job is more like being a CEO than a shepherd. It’s not that I don’t know I’m under no obligation to cram myself into the Father-Knows-Best upper management role that so many others believe is still the ideal or only model for ordained parish leadership. It’s not that I’m afraid or dismissive of the responsibility of caring for others.

It’s more the posture that it demands from me and others: a posture of dependence.

My struggle with that is not the first and will not be the last. Some of my young colleagues and I chuckle that ideally, we should be working ourselves out of a job, equipping the saints to one day have no need of “magic hands” and guardians of tradition because they will know God so well themselves. But as white male Baby Boomers continue to dominate the ecclesiastical landscape of Episcopal/Anglican North America, and dictate its culture, we’re feeling really worn out, and no closer to that Kingdom future…and indeed, who knows what kind of world we’ll even inherit in the next few generations.

The worst part is that our people so often demand this from us. They want clear answers and easy tasks. They want our energy and our newfangled tools of engagement and our families (particularly our children) but they don’t want the responsibility that comes with any of those things. We are no longer the little dictator-psychologists of old. Today those are your bosses and your therapists, or the podcasters you listen to.

We, on the other hand, are reclaiming what it really means to be Christian.

And what does it mean?

One of the most profound moments of my marriage was when my atheist raised-by-white-Tibetan-Buddhists husband, during a conversation about North American evangelicals and their overwhelming support for Trump, turned to me and said, “But that’s not what Christianity is about. It’s supposed to be about fighting fascism.”

I was stunned. Surely this was not the sum total of my faith.

But looking through the great and confusing library of Scripture, reading about the God who, while wildly inconsistent in character across books, is at least consistent in Her desire to be the centre of all life and devotion to the exclusion of all else; reading about the Saviour of my heart who was murdered by the state for being a troublemaker that spurned social norms and roles, I had to admit that was a truer summary of my faith than I had previously thought, in both political and metaphysical terms (and make no mistake, fascism has always been deeply concerned with the metaphysical).

Today, it means tearing down institutions and hierarchies where they enslave and corrupt the people of God – within and without the church.

It means letting go of idols like full pews, “the biggest Sunday School in Canada,” the moral high ground of the community.

The church of the 1950s these people long for and remember so fondly was 99-100% white, and leadership (lay AND ordained!) was 100% male. There is no moral high ground there.

The challenge for me, of course, is that for some reason I threw my money, talent, and energy at an institution which seeks to solidify and stratify us into perfect systems of domination. Why the hell didn’t I just become a Quaker like I keep grumpily threatening to do whenever Mother Church and her beautiful broken children piss me off?

Part of it, honestly, is that this is so entwined in my identity. My family is Anglican. I was raised Anglican. I will always be Anglican. If I am thrown out I will still maintain that I am Anglican.

But another part is that I see the seeds of something new and beautiful which can be nurtured and grown.

Anglicans saw the pain and devastation that could come from rigid and forced-confessional faith in their homeland, and decided to leave it behind, providing space for different theological perspectives. Sure, we’re kind of terrible at it when we all sit down together, but the intent of that instinct, the heart that beats behind this aggravating practice of having it out when we run into problems of interpretation, is, I think, some of humanity’s greatest wisdom. We gather when it matters – and what matters most of all is the sharing of the Eucharist, which we will always strive to do together when we do gather.

Anglicans fought for a prayerbook and a Bible in their own language. The British Empire sought to impose its culture with violence across the world…and yet in pockets of Turtle Island Anglican missionaries sat down with Indigenous peoples to craft Bibles and rites of prayer in their own languages, because it should not take years of Latin and a theological degree to pray to the One who made us.

Anglicans had ridiculous squabbles over things like altar and candle placement and vestments because liturgy is the crown of the Church. I really believe that. No Christian can claim the label without performing good works and being in fellowship with other believers, but this is not the sum total of the Christian life, because good works and community are the baseline expectation of humanity to become more than its instincts. Worship sets us apart from just “good people.” It de-centers our supremacy in our lives and focuses on a source of wisdom and love which is fundamentally other, challenging us to look beyond our desire and our solitude. Worship is what provides us with rich earth for the strength to give sacrificially.

The hierarchy of my beloved church is such a pain in the ass. It encourages spiritual immaturity and piles too much on the shoulders of those who the community calls to bear the burden, often alone. I couldn’t be that kind of leader if I wanted to.

So maybe leaders are a bad idea.

I walked away from my curacy worn out, broken, and hopeless.

Then I became a chaplain. And it’s been the most life-giving thing, and those to whom I report have noticed. Even my friends have noticed.

Even the damn Diocesan photographer, who came to the nursing home where I work to take photos of a visit from the Archbishop, noticed, and commented on it.

Maybe I got on board to model some entirely different (but not original) form of leadership that involves walking beside, rather than ahead.

The other day, at a preaching conference, I thought, “My next business card should say, ‘Chaplain and Preacher.’”

I chuckled to think of myself as an itinerant preacher, walking down the middle of a village road like Jonah, but shouting, “God loves the world! What are you going to do about it?”

I’ve got no aspirations of glory. I’ve got little ambition – something which I’ve admitted freely and sounded almost blasphemous to at least one person I told. I just want to live the very tiny life I’ve been given in this Web of other lives, from the spider in my window to Robert in his studio, with grace and compassion.

Maybe the world would be better if all of us just aimed for that, rather than a crown.