Cleric and Layperson in Muslim and Christian traditions
Hearing a story this morning on NPR about an American Catholic group who had traveled to the Vatican to protest the absence of women's ordination, and the response by some Vatican officials who shooed them away from St. Peter's Square reminded me of a story my maternal grandmother had once told me about her visit to the Grand Ayatollah Muhsen Al-Hakim in the 1960's.
That decade, for those unaware, is about when the Islamic revival was first starting to take hold in Muslim lands, and the notion that a woman had an obligation to cover her hair had developed wider currency than it had, say 10 to 15 years earlier when it was not taken very seriously at all at least among urban groups. My grandmother, a Cabinet Member's wife and therefore necessarily one with wider access to the clerical elite than many (though to be fair clerics tend to be remarkably accessible people if you don't mind waiting a bit to see them), went to see Sayyid Muhsen, a person she, and just about every Shi'i I know from the most pious to the most secular, had a great deal of respect for, to protest this head covering stuff. Was the Grand Ayatollah aware of how hot it was outside in the summer? Didn't he know that the scarf effectively ruins one's haircut, making it entirely pointless to try to look good within lawful circles (among women, within the inner family), something the Grand Ayatollah had considered important and said as much. Would the Grand Ayatollah consider easing this rather rigid rule? (Again, important to note, the headscarf at that time hadn't become the litmus test, the line between secular and religious, the symbol of the Muslim culture wars, that it turned into subsequently. My grandmother years later wouldn't ask such a thing of a Grand Ayatollah, or engage in serious debates about the wisdom of the scarf, even wearing it at times in particular company to defuse hat would otherwise be acrimonious debate.) Upon hearing this, the Grand Ayatollah looked her over head to toe with this look of total incomprehension, said to her "pray. just go pray" and walked out on the wife of the Minister of Education.
I am not actually sure which one of the two I like more from the story, but both actually rise in my estimation. Neither is really diminished to my mind, it just points to a particular lack of perspective between cleric and lay person, particularly a lay person that very much considers themselves part of the congregation and self identifies as such but whose loyalty is perhaps not entirely undivided. That is to day, such a lay person, such as my grandmother, such as those demanding female ordination of priests, views a cleric sort of like they view an elected official. They don't expect the person to do everything they want, they expect them to lead and not just by opinion poll, but they want them to be fairly responsive to the demands of their community. I have an issue says the lay person, with your rule X. It's too hard, or it's too unreasonable, or it's patently unfair in a way God couldn't have wanted, and you should think it over again. Again, not expecting to win every battle, but expecting their views to be considered in the determination of the religious rules.
The cleric, by contrast, views his job as shepherd, that's the traditional metaphor inChristian circles. And anyone who's hung around sheep knows pretty well if you're trying to get them from one place to another, listening to their opinion on the matter isn't going to get you far. They're sheep, what they hell do they know. They start wandering west to get water because the sun is that way and heck it feels good on their face, but what they don't realize is the stream is to the east. You listen to them, they all die. You know better, you lead them. It doesn't mean you don't care about them, it means you know their interests better than they do, and you don't really listen to them, they listen to you if they know what's good for them. And while the Najaf cleric won't go so far as to use THAT analogy, they'll say something similar, just not something that makes a person into an animal which is just a bad idea in Arab culture in particular. (Some mediation group tried to talk about benefits of mediation using animal interactions in Baghdad once. Almost caused a riot with people yelling "I am not a giraffe! I am a person!" I love that quote, so postmodern.) Bashir al Najafi, one of Najaf's current Grand Four, told me in my last meeting with him the cleric is like a doctor. The doctor tells me to take these pills, he tells me, and he points to some on his desk. Some of them keep me up at night, some make me nauseous. But I do it, he says, becuase I know he knows my interests better than me because he's studied it. So far more diplomatic than the shepherd analogy, in fact very diplomatic because in his analogy, he's made himself into the guy who he wants the lay person to be, one who listens and follows and not one who offers opinions when they aren't wanted.
Within Shi'ism, we have quite a few who largely accept the paradigm in theory, meaning they don't claim to offer suggestions, though they might feel rather free to ignore a fatwa or another without necessarily claiming to. (I mentioned in a much earlier post how a few Grand Ayatollahs in the 1960's among them Sadr and Sayyid Muhsen, tried to initiate a campaign as concerns smoking and creating religious restrictions on it. It went nowhere and soon was dropped). As a result, our clerics don't need necessarily to bow to public demands very often. I think everyone pays some attention to public demand, in fact clerics at times will say they'd be more outspoken about particular things, like the more extreme forms of bloodletting in the Husseini rituals, but they'd lose credibility with the public if they did. So to some extent, this is about extent, and on a relative scale, our clerics feel free to walk out on people, even relevant ones. who they find presumptuous enough to tell them how to do things.
In the American tradition, a much different relationship holds in most Christian communities. I still remember the first white person's wedding I attended, a friend in law school, and at the rehearsal dinner I was amazed how the minister sat by and took notes (took notes!) as the bride dictated to her precisely how the wedding was going to happen and what the minister's role in it was. Our clerics don't do that, they walk in, as they did in our wedding, they tell YOU how it's going to go down, and they tell YOU what to say and when, and how long they will talk, and make sure the damn kids are quiet when I give my speech or I swear I won't go on, and so forth. Your telling THEM you are paying the fees and the costs of the wedding and so you get to decide would be as ridiculous to them as your telling them you are also paying for your own coffin so you'll decide when it's time to die.
So the Unitarian minister in the white people's wedding I attended in law school was at one end, where effectively the clergy didn't really claim to do much other than sort of lead in the manner that the public demanded and not act as we know better guides in any sense, and the Shi'a clergy are on the other, where they lay it out and do not expect dissent. What's interesting to me about the Catholic church is how they are sort of stuck in between. They want to be the body of Christ, they want to represent Peter, they hold to theories of papal infallibility which are even more conservative than Shi'a clerical doctrine where loyalty is demanded, unyielding, but the possibility of mistake also present (though if the cleric errs and you obey him, it's all good for you on Judgement Day--hence the obedience is reinforced). Still, even if they have the doctrine, the Catholic Church doesn't have the congregation that really wants to be a flock. Some of that is their own doing, hard to demand that type of loyalty when you're molesting kids, even sheep don't appreciate being led to slaughter. But part is just part of a largely Western process of secularization that has led the lay folk to develop some level of distance from their clergy, and effectively start demanding of them more responsiveness. So then they try to do that, but it's hard, because it's not a role the doctrine seems to support, and they appear clumsy and wooden in listening to the public that is supposed to be in their eyes listening to them. It's a fascinating tension, between changing social realities and a doctrine that hardly takes cognizance of it, that might be good to watch in Western and Muslim circles alike.
HAH
That decade, for those unaware, is about when the Islamic revival was first starting to take hold in Muslim lands, and the notion that a woman had an obligation to cover her hair had developed wider currency than it had, say 10 to 15 years earlier when it was not taken very seriously at all at least among urban groups. My grandmother, a Cabinet Member's wife and therefore necessarily one with wider access to the clerical elite than many (though to be fair clerics tend to be remarkably accessible people if you don't mind waiting a bit to see them), went to see Sayyid Muhsen, a person she, and just about every Shi'i I know from the most pious to the most secular, had a great deal of respect for, to protest this head covering stuff. Was the Grand Ayatollah aware of how hot it was outside in the summer? Didn't he know that the scarf effectively ruins one's haircut, making it entirely pointless to try to look good within lawful circles (among women, within the inner family), something the Grand Ayatollah had considered important and said as much. Would the Grand Ayatollah consider easing this rather rigid rule? (Again, important to note, the headscarf at that time hadn't become the litmus test, the line between secular and religious, the symbol of the Muslim culture wars, that it turned into subsequently. My grandmother years later wouldn't ask such a thing of a Grand Ayatollah, or engage in serious debates about the wisdom of the scarf, even wearing it at times in particular company to defuse hat would otherwise be acrimonious debate.) Upon hearing this, the Grand Ayatollah looked her over head to toe with this look of total incomprehension, said to her "pray. just go pray" and walked out on the wife of the Minister of Education.
I am not actually sure which one of the two I like more from the story, but both actually rise in my estimation. Neither is really diminished to my mind, it just points to a particular lack of perspective between cleric and lay person, particularly a lay person that very much considers themselves part of the congregation and self identifies as such but whose loyalty is perhaps not entirely undivided. That is to day, such a lay person, such as my grandmother, such as those demanding female ordination of priests, views a cleric sort of like they view an elected official. They don't expect the person to do everything they want, they expect them to lead and not just by opinion poll, but they want them to be fairly responsive to the demands of their community. I have an issue says the lay person, with your rule X. It's too hard, or it's too unreasonable, or it's patently unfair in a way God couldn't have wanted, and you should think it over again. Again, not expecting to win every battle, but expecting their views to be considered in the determination of the religious rules.
The cleric, by contrast, views his job as shepherd, that's the traditional metaphor inChristian circles. And anyone who's hung around sheep knows pretty well if you're trying to get them from one place to another, listening to their opinion on the matter isn't going to get you far. They're sheep, what they hell do they know. They start wandering west to get water because the sun is that way and heck it feels good on their face, but what they don't realize is the stream is to the east. You listen to them, they all die. You know better, you lead them. It doesn't mean you don't care about them, it means you know their interests better than they do, and you don't really listen to them, they listen to you if they know what's good for them. And while the Najaf cleric won't go so far as to use THAT analogy, they'll say something similar, just not something that makes a person into an animal which is just a bad idea in Arab culture in particular. (Some mediation group tried to talk about benefits of mediation using animal interactions in Baghdad once. Almost caused a riot with people yelling "I am not a giraffe! I am a person!" I love that quote, so postmodern.) Bashir al Najafi, one of Najaf's current Grand Four, told me in my last meeting with him the cleric is like a doctor. The doctor tells me to take these pills, he tells me, and he points to some on his desk. Some of them keep me up at night, some make me nauseous. But I do it, he says, becuase I know he knows my interests better than me because he's studied it. So far more diplomatic than the shepherd analogy, in fact very diplomatic because in his analogy, he's made himself into the guy who he wants the lay person to be, one who listens and follows and not one who offers opinions when they aren't wanted.
Within Shi'ism, we have quite a few who largely accept the paradigm in theory, meaning they don't claim to offer suggestions, though they might feel rather free to ignore a fatwa or another without necessarily claiming to. (I mentioned in a much earlier post how a few Grand Ayatollahs in the 1960's among them Sadr and Sayyid Muhsen, tried to initiate a campaign as concerns smoking and creating religious restrictions on it. It went nowhere and soon was dropped). As a result, our clerics don't need necessarily to bow to public demands very often. I think everyone pays some attention to public demand, in fact clerics at times will say they'd be more outspoken about particular things, like the more extreme forms of bloodletting in the Husseini rituals, but they'd lose credibility with the public if they did. So to some extent, this is about extent, and on a relative scale, our clerics feel free to walk out on people, even relevant ones. who they find presumptuous enough to tell them how to do things.
In the American tradition, a much different relationship holds in most Christian communities. I still remember the first white person's wedding I attended, a friend in law school, and at the rehearsal dinner I was amazed how the minister sat by and took notes (took notes!) as the bride dictated to her precisely how the wedding was going to happen and what the minister's role in it was. Our clerics don't do that, they walk in, as they did in our wedding, they tell YOU how it's going to go down, and they tell YOU what to say and when, and how long they will talk, and make sure the damn kids are quiet when I give my speech or I swear I won't go on, and so forth. Your telling THEM you are paying the fees and the costs of the wedding and so you get to decide would be as ridiculous to them as your telling them you are also paying for your own coffin so you'll decide when it's time to die.
So the Unitarian minister in the white people's wedding I attended in law school was at one end, where effectively the clergy didn't really claim to do much other than sort of lead in the manner that the public demanded and not act as we know better guides in any sense, and the Shi'a clergy are on the other, where they lay it out and do not expect dissent. What's interesting to me about the Catholic church is how they are sort of stuck in between. They want to be the body of Christ, they want to represent Peter, they hold to theories of papal infallibility which are even more conservative than Shi'a clerical doctrine where loyalty is demanded, unyielding, but the possibility of mistake also present (though if the cleric errs and you obey him, it's all good for you on Judgement Day--hence the obedience is reinforced). Still, even if they have the doctrine, the Catholic Church doesn't have the congregation that really wants to be a flock. Some of that is their own doing, hard to demand that type of loyalty when you're molesting kids, even sheep don't appreciate being led to slaughter. But part is just part of a largely Western process of secularization that has led the lay folk to develop some level of distance from their clergy, and effectively start demanding of them more responsiveness. So then they try to do that, but it's hard, because it's not a role the doctrine seems to support, and they appear clumsy and wooden in listening to the public that is supposed to be in their eyes listening to them. It's a fascinating tension, between changing social realities and a doctrine that hardly takes cognizance of it, that might be good to watch in Western and Muslim circles alike.
HAH
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