Authority, Church

Authority is a major issue in the church today, as it is in society at large. Although the older generation tends to accept and respect authority in most spheres of life, members of the dominant baby-boom generation have constantly questioned it in their private and public lives. In place of standards and institutions they prefer to assemble their own values from a range of sources or replace those in authority with people who have similar views to themselves. This is partly why public life is presently in such turmoil. There is less deference toward those in authority in the institutions of government, law and education and increasingly in science and medicine. The same is true in religion, both at the denominational level and in the local church.

This distrust of authority is even more pronounced among the “buster” generation. Though the younger members of this group, teenagers, have often rebelled for a time against various forms of authority, among those who are older in this group is a more nuanced approach. They believe in a more egalitarian, participatory view of authority. For them authority has to be earned, and this has more to do with who a person is than with the position the person holds or what he or she has achieved. If this group encounters problems with authority, it is less likely to confront it or seek to change it directly. Its members will tend to sidestep it or sometimes create new structures for doing what they feel is important.

In an important book on the subject, sociologist Richard Sennett describes the fear of authority that many people have, often because they have been deceived by it too often. The main difficulty today is that we want to believe in strong figures, but we are not sure about their legitimacy. What complicates matters is that often in rejecting illegitimate authority, we remain tied to it in some way: we substitute complaining for doing something about it, allow our view of authority to be negatively defined by it or entertain illusions about life without authority. Two illegitimate forms that authority often takes are paternalism, the authority of false love, in which some make others dependent on them for meeting their needs, and autonomy, authority without love, in which some operate without recourse to others but in fact exercise disguised power over them. We need to renounce these false forms of authority, not only by disengaging from their power over us but also by refusing to define ourselves in terms of being their victims. The question then is to understand, respond to and practice authority in ways that are legitimate.

The Meaning and Types of Authority

The word authority is frequently misused or misunderstood. In common speech it is often identified with authoritarian. The latter refers to the illegitimate use of authority involving coercion or lack of justification. Some simply identify authority with the exercise of power, but they overlook the fact that authority is granted to people—through the traditions of a society, the casting of a vote or giving of voluntary allegiance—not just claimed or seized. Authority is a characteristic not just of the person exercising it but of those upon or with whom it is being exercised. It implies some degree of trust between the two that it will be duly accepted and responsibly used. In a quite genuine sense authority is entrusted by followers to leaders and held in trust by leaders for followers.

Discussions of the different types of authority owe much to the seminal writings of the sociologist Max Weber. Authority is generally classified according to three types.

Traditional authority. This is accorded to people or structures by the conventions, laws and accepted procedures of a society or organization. Such is the case with the authority that parents have over their children, for they are entrusted with this by the society or extended family. In time this is transferred to children as they grow up to adulthood. In the church this is primarily the kind of authority that the pope has in the Roman Catholic Church.

Rational authority. This is accorded people or structures by reasoned agreement. In the wider society this happens in the political arena through the ballet box or in a voluntary association through elections held at an annual meeting. In some denominations moderators are chosen as a result of the considered vote of a general assembly or council, and in some church polities senior pastors are called as a result of the careful deliberations of a selection committee.

Charismatic authority. This is accorded to certain key figures because of the beneficial influence they have or impressive results they achieve. A positive example of this in American society is Billy Graham, who is revered as a national, not merely religious, figure. In many newer congregations and denominations leadership emerges and is recognized on charismatic grounds, as, for example, with John Wimber in the Vineyard movement.

These three types of authority are all what sociologists call ideal types; that is, they are ways of analyzing authority rather than exact descriptions of actual figures or structures. The present pope, for example, also has a degree of charismatic authority and for those persuaded by the logic of his encyclicals, rational authority as well. In time, all of these types of authority tend to become institutionalized or routinized, as with the decision by Billy Graham to pass over his evangelistic association to his son Franklin.

A Biblical Approach to Authority

The early church was interested in the way power was interpreted and communicated, including the issue of authority, though it was not a major preoccupation for the early Christians. Paul, for example, really uses the word authority only in connection with one local church where he happened to be under challenge (2 Cor. 10:8; 2 Cor. 13:10; see in a different sense 1 Cor. 9:4-18; 2 Cor. 11:7-10; 2 Thes. 3:9). Occasionally, however, issues did arise concerning what kind of power in the church was legitimate, how this was practiced and discerned, and who exercised it. The chief authority was, of course, God. Acknowledgment of God and obedience to God were paramount for every believer and congregation, and this took precedence over everything else. This does not settle the issue of authority, however, for while divine authority is sometimes opposed to all human authority (as the apostles said with regard to political leaders, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God”—Acts 4:19), it is mostly mediated through human figures (even unbelieving rulers if they act rightly, since a ruler “is God’s servant to do you good”; Romans 13:4). This is also the case in the church. The basic Protestant principle that each individual (or each congregation) owes basic allegiance to God should not be defined to mean that they can ignore all other forms of authority. The basic issue, then, is when, how and by whom does divine authority come to us through other people?

The best place to begin in deciding this is to look at the person of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). Christ at one and the same time exercises the Father’s authority (John 5:19, 36; John 10:36-38), yet Christ also is an authority for those who believe in him. Like the Father Jesus does not exercise authority in a coercive way. Although the church has sometimes forced people to become Christians or do what it wants, this is not the way Jesus operates (Romans 15:7, Galatians 6:1). He desires our full-hearted assent and love. It is similar with the Holy Spirit, who operates with the consent of the minds and wills of the people of God, not, as in pagan worship, in ways that compel people to say or do something over which they have no control (1 Cor. 12:1-3; 1 Cor. 14:26-28). In other words, though divine authority is forceful, it is not forced on people. The basic reason for this is that it is based on love, which courts and woos rather than compels, and is based on truth, which seeks to convince and persuade rather than dogmatically insist on its acceptance. This is the way the gospel came to us, and we received it. It was God’s love, Christ’s sacrifice and the Holy Spirit’s drawing us that led us to embrace the gospel and give ourselves to it.

In the church this divine authority is mediated through all the members, but through some more than others. Whenever God speaks through any person in the church or works through some action they perform, that word and action have authority, as also does the person through whom they come. Sometimes it is a particular group in the church who represents the mind and character of Christ in a fuller way than others, though no group ever represents it entirely. Sometimes particular individuals in the church will demonstrate over a long period of time that much of what they say and do is reflective of God’s nature and purposes, but God always remains operative through coworkers and other people in the congregation. This is why giving authority to just one person or to a group in the congregation is wrong. Paul is a good example here, for even though he brought the gospel to the churches, they should not listen to him—not even to an angel—if he departs from that original message (Galatians 1:8-9). In other words, his authority is derived from God and obtains only so long as he is faithful to God’s message. In another place, even though Paul is confident how a disciplinary case should be handled, he does not decide the issue himself but insists that the whole church come together to face the issue and deal with it (1 Cor. 5:1-5). At the root, authority resides in the whole congregation: in this respect the early churches were a precursor of a democratic attitude toward politics, with the exception that they were to come to a common mind on important matters, not to make decisions by a majority vote (2 Cor. 13:11).

False ways of exerting authority come before us in the New Testament. These include people boasting about their preeminence, dazzling others with eloquence, or manipulating and controlling the church (2 Cor. 10:12; 2 Cor. 11:5-6, 16-19; compare 2 Cor. 1:24). Another instance is people using authority to tear down good work God has done rather than to further build on it (2 Cor. 10:8; 2 Cor. 13:9). It is only those seeking to disrupt that good work whose arguments and actions ought to be destroyed (2 Cor. 10:4). Genuine authority uses the language of persuasion (1 Cor. 14:6) rather than command, as Paul himself does on almost every occasion (for a rare exception see 1 Cor. 14:37), and rests upon love rather than a desire to control (Philemon 1:8). Genuine authority also works with, rather than lords over, people (2 Cor. 1:24) and comes to them primarily with “a gentle spirit” (1 Cor. 4:21), only in extreme circumstances with a stern word. None of this means that the authority exercised is weak or lacking in power: lacking in the exercise of worldly power, yes, but of divine power, no (2 Cor. 10:1-3).

This approach to authority is normative for us today. All too often it is the world’s view of authority, and way of practicing it, that rules in the church. It has been vested in the hands of one person or a small group rather than in the whole congregation within which certain individuals and groups have considerable respect and influence. In relation to people in the church it has had more to do with controlling and submission than with equipping and empowerment. It has operated most often according to a chain of command and prior decision rather than through argument and persuasion in search of the mind of the Spirit. Where this is the case, it is time things changed, not only because from a biblical point of view it is wrong but because current changes taking place in society make it unacceptable. Not only among the young but in the business world as well, echoes of biblical insights into authority are reappearing as credibility, not formal power, becomes the centerpiece of leadership and as collaborative approaches to leadership take the place of solo performers.

» See also: Church Conflict

» See also: Church Discipline

» See also: Equipping

» See also: Leadership, Church

» See also: Love

» See also: Organization

» See also: Power

» See also: Service, Workplace

» See also: Structures

References and Resources

T. Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Wiley, 1964); R. Banks, “Church Order and Government,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. G. F. Hawthorne, R. P. Martin, D. G. Reid (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992) 131-37; R. Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early Churches in Their Cultural Setting (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994); E. Best, Paul and His Converts (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988); H. Doohan, Leadership in Paul (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1984); R. A. Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1994); R. Sennett, Authority (New York: Vintage, 1980); H. Von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (London: A. & C. Black, 1969).

—Robert Banks