Exploring the role of the minister. The cop at the door.

I was serving an historical Universalist church, and I was visiting shut-ins. The widows that I would visit that afternoon had been Universalists all their lives, and their parents and grandparents before them. Universalism was part of their heritage going back to the Green Mountain Revolution. They loved the church, which their families had raised and finished in three days after a mass meeting and songfest (rallye) led by Quillen Hamilton Shinn (1845-1907).

Both loved it when I came a visiting, and both always apologized that they hadn't gotten dressed up for the Pastor.

There is an aspect of the minister/congregant relationship which I have never fully accepted. Blame it on John Calvin. Seems the Reformer of Geneva instructed his clergy to visit every citizen of Geneva in their homes once a year. The purpose: to check up on the morals of the parish.

Thus "parish calling" was originally related to "the police" function of the clergy. (Does enforcer have a kinder ring to your ears.) And while we might love to think of pastoral care as a loving ministry of care, there are congregants who would be horrified to show any of their weaknesses, confess any of their sins, or share their problems. The Pastor might judge them "not righteous Unitarian Universalist!"

Not that Unitarian Universalist ministers are not called upon to enforce the rules, to guard the congregation against predators and disruptors. We are expected to be guardians of the community's covenant. But when a congregant feels called to put on the best face, and get dressing up for the Pastor (literally or metaphorically) I feel they have the wrong guy. Not my role! Not me! But it happens again and again.

I have witnessed the easy going, accepting style of liberal clergy all my life, and so this idea of Pastor as cop seems incongruous, but the ghost of Calvin's parlor spies goes on and on.