Behind the Prejudice Against Educated Clergy

Among Quakers (many congregations of which refuse to record ministers), some evangelical congregations, and other faiths such as Baha'i (which does not have a clergy), there seems to be an underlying anti-intellectual bias regarding ministers educated in theology and ministry. I think the prejudice is out of anger, whose root is the errant assumption that knowledge, even in faith seeking understanding, causes the educated person to think he or she is better than others. Relatedly, expertise is assumed, falsely again, to bring with it a more general elitism.These flawed assumptions give rise to the prejudice that being educated in theology and ministry are not of much value, as being uneducated or self-educated in the field are actually preferred qualities in cases in which ministers are used (e.g., many evangelical congregations). All this is a slap on the face to those of faith who have spent years of their lives in seminary or university, and such passive aggression goes against Jesus's message on how to treat others.

No one would suggest that the expertise of a physician from study at university is something to be spurned. No one would say that a lay healer has as much medical knowledge, at least when the person himself is ill, and yet once some people turn to the religious domain, expertise is out, even fair game for insults, in favor of the false notion of equality that affirms that it is at odds with the inequalities in expertise. I'm so used to deferring to the expertise of others whose knowledge I don't have that the refusal seems foreign to me. I do not of course deny that ministerial gifts can be outside the "faith seeking understanding" that takes place in a seminary or university. So I do not suffer from clerical exclusivity, but it is not true that the only alternative is throwing the rascals out, for their knowledge goes with them. A good cleric values his or her theological knowledge/education without being an elitist (yet while fully admitting that not everyone has such an education).

What I shake my head at in utter astonishment is how some Quakers, in refusing to record ministers even to Quakers who have studied for ministry, thereby limit the theological expertise available to Quakers. The assumption in Baha'iism is that every member is an expert; this assumption, however, does not follow from "the priesthood of all believers." Evangelical Christian congregations that prefer uneducated applicants (even those who can speak well) lose the benefits that would come from having educated ministers who can preach well.

People who have studied for years to be a minister should go elsewhere, where people would not only stand to benefit from their theological and ministerial knowledge, but would appreciate rather than feel threatened by the knowledge. Of course we are all the same relative to God, but this does not mean that we don't have different specialized knowledge areas and that some people have more knowledge than others within a field. In fact, to prefer uneducated clergy as a general preference risks a congregation being held captive by ignorance that cannot be wrong. The assumption that stifling accountability comes only from educated clergy is severely faulty; in fact, to the extent that seminarians and divinity students are taught negative theology, which holds that God is in essence unknowable, more not less humility is likely in speaking of God as well as in guiding people.

To say we all have the same expertise demands psychological rather than religious explanation, and to say that knowledge learned from scholars is not of value (in any field, even in religion) reflects a very prejudiced attitude that has all the disrespect and arrogance that is presumed to be in educated people. To be sure, theological and parish ministry knowledge is not the only beneficial ingredient; it does not guarantee good pastoral care even though the schooling includes this area too. To be more educated in religion does not mean that a person has a more compassionate heart. So, again, I am not claiming that only people educated in theology and ministry should be ministers. Rather, I am arguing that the preference, borne out of prejudice and resentment, for uneducated (or self-educated) clergy, all else equal, is unwise.

Behind the Prejudice Against Educated Clergy

Among Quakers (many congregations of which refuse to record ministers), some evangelical congregations, and other faiths such as Baha'i (which does not have a clergy), there seems to be an underlying anti-intellectual bias regarding ministers educated in theology and ministry. I think the prejudice is out of anger, whose root is the errant assumption that knowledge, even in faith seeking understanding, causes the educated person to think he or she is better than others. Relatedly, expertise is assumed, falsely again, to bring with it a more general elitism.These flawed assumptions give rise to the prejudice that being educated in theology and ministry are not of much value, as being uneducated or self-educated in the field are actually preferred qualities in cases in which ministers are used (e.g., many evangelical congregations). All this is a slap on the face to those of faith who have spent years of their lives in seminary or university, and such passive aggression goes against Jesus's message on how to treat others.

The full essay is at "Prejudice against Educated Clergy

Religion and Psychology: The Case of Jemima Wilkinson, Founder of the Society of Universal Friends

Jemima Wilkinson (1752-1819) pivoted from a secular, rather wild youth to being a charismatic preacher and the first woman to found and head a religious denomination. The circumstances of her unusual transformation, including her return to the land of the living from a typhoid coma as a genderless spirit, raise fundamental questions about the nature of the relation of religion to psychology (and, moreover, to secularity).

According to Chuck Mitchell, a curator in western New York, Wilkinson fell deathly ill with typhoid in 1776. Waking from a coma that had lasted for days, she claimed that “she had died and been resurrected as a genderless spirit sent by God.”[1] 

Jemima Wilkinson did not shy away from manifesting outwardly her androgynous identity.

She vowed to remain celibate in order to keep her body pure for God, and rejected her birth name, going from that point on as “the Public Universal Friend.” Whereas she had been “a bit of a wild child” and not at all religious, her sickness transformed her self-identity. She began preaching with charisma and an impeccable knowledge of the Scriptures. “The spirit of life from God has descended to earth,” she preached, “to warn a lost and guilty, perishing, dying world, to flee from the wrath that is to come.”[2] At the time, the evangelical Second Great Awakening was in full bloom in her area of the country. With her ensuing popularity in hand, she founded the Society of Universal Friends, thus becoming the first woman in the U.S. to found a religious group.

Consisting of former Quakers, the Society was naturally controversial at Quaker meetings. Critics trounced on Wilkinson’s post-coma identity as a genderless, resurrected-spirit, which they viewed as a particularly strange aspect of the religious pioneer’s personality.[3] That religious critics would resort to psychology must have felt like a thorn in the side of the androgynous spirit so opposed to the prospect of the rising secularity eclipsing religion amid the Second Great Awakening. 

Is it unfair, therefore, to analyze her from a psychological standpoint? Furthermore, would doing so invalidate her religious transformation, or had she suffered a massive psychological (and perhaps neurological) change while in the coma? The implications for religion itself are huge. If Jemima’s religious awakening was actually a result of neurological/psychological damage from a very high fever, then any religious experience or identity—especially if strange from a secular point of view—would be on the proverbial chopping block.  

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[1] “History Detectives,” PBS.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jemima’s dismissiveness of her physical body is in line with Platonism and the South Asian religion of Jainism.