Editorial for October 20, 2005
By Jim White
As I travel around the state, I try to redeem the time by listening to books on tape. I know.According to some of my friends, I should listen to Christian radio stations or at the very least sermons on tape. But sermons, I've noticed, tend to come in two varieties: Those that excite me and cause me to go faster and faster; and those that put me to sleep. Neither of these options is especially attractive when behind the wheel.
My current attempt to make good use of my time in the car is Herman Melville's classic, Moby Dick. As he describes Captain Ahab's obsession to find (and finish) the great white whale, certain lessons for preachers and churches bob to the surface, as it were. I will share one with you.
Melville describes the pulpit found in a Nantucket chapel. “Its paneled front was in the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on the projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed beak. What could be more full of meaning? For the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow” (concluding passage of The Pulpit, chapter 7).
The notion that the pulpit leads the world is not a universally held truism. In fact, not without some justification the world often sees the pulpit as the rear guard. Guardian of tradition. Last week I read a report that was given at the annual BGAV meeting on June 4, 1863. The committee was comprised of such noteworthy preachers as Jeremiah Bell Jeter, Andrew W. Broadus Jr. and Lyman W. Seeley (pastor of Richmond's Second Baptist Church and committee chairman). The committee was appointed to give a report of the state of the nation (the southern one).
These preachers acknowledged the nation's (Confederacy's) sins, but they apparently did not count slavery among them, for they report: “Though God in scourging us has used the hand of a wicked nation as His avenging instrument, we are daily more convinced of the righteousness of our cause, and have abiding faith, through His favor, of ultimate, and we trust not distant deliverance from our ruthless enemy.” In the report, they placed much of the responsibility for the war on the backs of their northern counterparts. “It is now many years since our Northern brethren, in their fierce hostility to the institution of domestic slavery, deaf alike to the voice of reason and the authority of Scripture, to the pleadings of patriotism and the claims of Christian charity, by their fiery and intolerant fanaticism, furrowed deep and broad the line of separation-thrusting us from their communion as unworthy to labor with them in the fields of Christian benevolence and gospel enterprise.”
I offer this only to illustrate that even those whose preaching skills are beyond debate can become victims of their time and place. These pastors, rather than seeing logs in their own eyes, chose to accuse their northern brothers of “being deaf alike to the voice of reason and the authority of Scripture.” The pulpit-even theirs at this particular point-was the rear guard. They sought to justify what was rather than crying loudly that it never should have been.
But, who am I to speak critically of the likes of these pastoral giants? In point of fact, I am not. Rather than diminish them, I wish simply to point out only how difficult it is for the pulpit to lead the world. It was difficult in the 1960s when preachers had opportunity to let their voices of leadership be heard from pulpits. But, once again preachers speaking from the times and places of their own social contexts often failed to denounce the injustice of racism in our nation.
What will it take for the pulpit to lead the world?
First, preachers must regard all of scripture as inspired and sacred-the overall teaching of the text as well as the individual verses of the text. If our forebears had understood this, they would not have defended slavery on scriptural grounds. They would have understood that although some specific passages from Paul support the institution of slavery the entire context of the New Testament abhors it.
Second, preachers must be courageous enough to speak truth even if their congregations don't quite agree. It's easy to preach against things you know the world disagrees with. It is much harder to preach against issues with which the church has grown comfortable. Now at this point I admit to a healthy pragmatism. Pastors have to begin where people are and educate them in the ways of the Spirit at a pace that has a chance of succeeding. But let the pulpit lead.
Third, it will take deacons and other congregational leaders who are willing to be led by the voice in the pulpit. I am not talking about creating an idol of the preacher. I am talking about laypersons who are so close to Christ themselves that they recognize when the voice of the Lord is coming from their own preacher.
Jim White is editor of the Religious Herald.