Guiding Christian Leaders for Ancient Mission in the Contemporary World

Dante and Me             Meditation 3

 

Clergy Credibility – Recovery

 

            In my book Why Should I Believe You? Rediscovering Clergy Credibility, I outline Dante’s insight into the struggle to turn around clergy respectability. The sad state of church leadership today does not have to continue. This is not about “turnaround churches”. This is about “turnaround church leaders”. It will only happen through a difficult passage of repentance and grace, which Dante calls “purgatory”.

 

            You probably already noticed that Dante uses the classical “Seven Deadly Sins” as a template to describe the increasing corruption of clergy credibility. Overcoming each deadly sin is also his process to redeem clergy and set them on the straight path.

 

            The first step toward redemption involves overcoming pride. The next challenges are to overcome jealousy (envy), and overcome confrontation (anger). These are the steps toward redemption that are most public, because they correspond to the hostility of the public over clergy betrayal, fraud, abuse.

 

            The next steps toward redemption are more private, involving personal self-discipline. Clergy overcome sloth (or laziness), avarice (or obsession), gluttony (or excessive consumption). Just as the credibility of clergy suffered through a descent into the seven deadly sins, so their credibility is rescued by overcoming them in reverse order. According to Dante, Lust (or wrong desire) is one of the earliest downfalls of clergy, and is a final challenge to overcome. The problem with “desire” is that it is give to the wrong thing. Desire for God is the right thing.

Dante and Me             Meditation 2

 

Clergy Credibility – The Demise

 

I first discussed Dante’s insight into spiritual journey in my book Why Should I Believe you? Rediscovering Clergy Credibility (Abingdon Press 2006). I suspect it was received with a resounding “Huh?”

 

I believe that the demise of clergy credibility today is as big a crisis as it was in the 14^th century. Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in the early 1300’s … and the Protestant Reformation was largely provoked by widespread disrespect for the privileged lifestyles and self-serving dogmatisms of that time. The current collapse of credibility has taken some time to develop but followed a similar path. As in the 14^th century, there are outside forces of rationalism, nationalism, and paganism undermining clergy credibility. But as in the 14^th century, the real blame lies with the clergy themselves. This is not simply an institutional collapse. It is a personal collapse of integrity.

 

So, Dante’s descent into Hell, struggle through purgatory, and ultimate ascent to paradise is really an account of the progressive collapse of spiritual leadership in his and our day, and a blueprint for the recovery of spiritual leadership in his and our day.

 

When seekers today look at the sad spectacle of church leadership, they see layers of disreputableness. Here are the progressive layers of the Inferno that is consuming the church:

 

At the top, there are some virtuous church leaders. The steps toward corruption descend first to lustful leaders, and then self-centered leaders, greedy leaders, self-righteous leaders, and heretical leaders. Up until this point, the general public is largely indifferent to the decline of clergy credibility. They will just vote with their feet and avoid going to church. But the next stages of declining clergy credibility move the public from indifference to outrage.

 

Legal and governmental interventions are required to address the abusive church leaders, the fraudulent church leaders, and ultimately the traitorous church leader who betray the spirit of Christ himself.

 

                It is clear that Dante is not just describing different kinds of church leaders. He is describe different stages of spiritual corruption with the personal life of each church leader. Since he has begun by speaking biographically, we know that he applies this threat of corruption to himself as well. We cannot stop at pointing the finger at “those people over there” … whatever denominational or theological rivals we want to blame for the demise of contemporary credibility. We have to see these stages as part of our own spiritual crisis. Moreover, we see that this spiritual crisis is so powerful as to be almost irresistible to even the most virtuous church leader. Sin is that powerful.

 

                In my next meditation, I’ll talk about the first stages of redemption. It is a very hard struggle to change. Repentance and grace will not be easy. It is the “purgatory” requires to retrieve credibility.

 

Dante and Me             Meditation 1

 

One of the most valuable books that I have ever read … and which I reread often, constantly discovering new insights … is The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. It is regarded as a great masterpiece of literature and social commentary. Along with Shakespeare and Cervantes, Dante is the root inspiration of existential philosophy.

 

The opening words contain a metaphor pregnant with meaning. I thought of them when I suggested the concept of “cultural wilderness” in the book Growing Spiritual Redwoods (with Bill Easum).

 

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,

I found myself within a shadowed forest,

for I had lost the path that does not stray.

 

Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,

that savage forest, dense and difficult,

which even in recall renews my fear:

 

so bitter – death is hardly more severe!

But to retell the good discovered there,

I’ll also tell the other things I saw.

 

(I will always quote from the Everyman edition translated by Allen Mandelbaum).

 

We all know that Dante describes his spiritual journey from damnation to redemption through various stages of Inferno and Purgatorio and Paradiso. The journey is a template for the tribulations, yearnings, and aspirations of people today … lost as they are in the same wilderness, unable to find … and for postmoderns, even to believe in … “the path that does not stray”.

 

Apart from the Bible, I find The Divine Comedy to be the most significant guide for spiritual life in all literature. I do not make that statement lightly. I still value reading the antenicene and postnicene fathers, the protestant reformers, Ignatius, Wesley, Martin Luther King Jr., any many more contemporary authors. But nobody captures the journey to redemption like Dante.