Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

The name Richard Hooker rings no bell for most vestry members. More than a few clergy haven’t heard of him, either. It’s a shame.

Along with Thomas Cranmer, father of the Prayer Book, Hooker is responsible for the distinctive way Episcopalians “do church.” Richard Hooker was an English priest and theologian, born in 1554, during the reign of “Bloody Mary.” He died in 1600, at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. His age was like our own in that fighting and bickering had consumed much of the church’s energy for about as long as anyone could remember.

Hooker is chiefly remembered as the author of a very long book which introduced a way of thinking, and more specifically of dealing with conflict, which has guided Anglicans ever since. His publisher, apparently unconcerned with marketing strategies, let Hooker give his book a singularly boring title: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

The Polity is not, however, a boring book. Hooker's writing style, though plodding by modern standards, is a model of precision and clarity. Moreover, because he addresses a church exhausted by fighting, his message is as up-to-date as this evening’s newscast. Vestries are often caught up in church fights, and although it is nowhere stated that a vestry's responsibilities include conflict mediation, that’s often what vestries do—or would if they knew how.

Official job descriptions notwithstanding, conflict mediation is perhaps a vestry’s most important task. Here are three observations on conflict mediation drawn from the wisdom of Richard Hooker:

Conflict mediation is essential
Most differences aren’t worth a fight. The issues in Hooker’s day differed from those today. They included whether to name churches after saints, what vestments the clergy should wear, what happened to the bread and wine on the altar when the priest prayed over them, and how the church should conduct its business. Sex was not an issue in the late 16th century, but feelings were as hot then as now, and partisans on all sides were as gifted at name-calling as modern partisans are.

Although a few beliefs are central to the Christian faith, Hooker said, lots of things are less important than they seem, and on many hot issues there is no “right” or “wrong” way. It’s permissible for the church in different places and at different times to adopt different policies.

Trouble arises, Hooker said, when we fall in love with our own opinions: “Nature worketh in us all a love to our own counsels. The contradiction of others is a fan to inflame that love,” he wrote in the preface to the Polity. Clearly, that hasn’t changed.

A few paragraphs later, Hooker wrote that “there will come a time when three words uttered with charity and meekness shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit.” We still await that time. We can pray for it, and when disputes arise in our parishes and dioceses, we can behave as Hooker did—with “charity and meekness” rather than “disdainful sharpness of wit” (of which he was more than capable).

Old and new together
The old and new both have their place. The more extreme of the Puritans, Hooker’s opponents, wanted to junk 1,500 years of custom and tradition, dismantle the church as they knew it, and create a more biblical or “purer” church (hence their name). Hooker, tongue possibly in cheek, commented that “people in the crazedness of their minds possessed with dislike and discontentment at things present...imagine that any thing (the virtue whereof they hear commended) would help them, but that most which they least have tried.”

But Hooker was no foe of change. He recognized that traditions must evolve and adapt themselves to new times and circumstances. In particular, he said it is a mistake to expect the Bible to provide an answer to every question and then impose those answers on all future generations. The Bible left a lot of interesting questions, even important questions, unanswered. One must not “make the bare mandate of sacred scripture the only rule of all good and evil in the actions of mortal men.” It is even permissible to act contrary to biblical injunctions, Hooker said, when the times and circumstances which called for them have passed.

Fallible leaders
All leaders are fallible. In Hooker’s day, as in our own, some church members refused to accept a priest or bishop who held views contrary to their own, insisting on rigorous doctrinal purity. Hooker knew that some priests and bishops (and some lay people) entertain kooky notions now and then, but he saw it as a human failing not to be belabored since God is not limited by human foolishness. It’s easy to create a stir, he said, by pointing the accusing finger at someone in authority.

Writing specifically of bishops, Hooker said that Christ had placed them as the “chiefest guides and pastors of our souls” and that “we look for much more in our governors than a tolerable sufficiency can yield, and bear much less than humanity and reason do require we should. Too much perfection over rigorously exacted in them, cannot but breed in us perpetual discontentment, and on both parts cause all things to be unpleasant.”

Both the clergy and the laity like to gossip about the slightest failing in their bishop. If we’d exercise a little charity towards those in authority over us, give them the benefit of the doubt, cut them a bit of slack—in short, treat them as we'd like to be treated—things might be more pleasant all around, and we could then devote our energies to proclaiming the Gospel and following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.