Spiritual Maturity is for the Laity Too Mark Gibbs

In our recovery of the true responsibilities of the Christian laity all over the world, there has recently been a very welcome emphasis on the importance of developing a satisfying lay spirituality. Indeed there has been something of a flood of publications in English in recent months, some very helpful, some perhaps less so. ’

Of course, any consideration of our spirituality must always start with an understanding of the marvellous love and generosity of our Creator. It is a tremendous Christian doctrine that God is passionately concerned that we grow in grace and in the arts of Christian living. He longs that we live in peace and fellowship, that we do well as Christian disciples. Here is the initiative. In no sense do we have to earn God’s rich blessings: nor do we have to beseech or grovel before we can gain his attention. He loves us and longs for our response: here are the grounds for our hope.

And this wonderful call to become God’s servants and indeed his parulers in the work of building the kingdom is to aff human beings, regardless of sex, age, race, wealth, intellectual ability - or ordination. The first prerequisite of any understand- ing of lay spirituality is to understand that all of humankind are called to a high quality of Christian commitment and living and working - there are no pre-selected first-class citizens of the kingdom (bishops, theologians, nuns, social workers, professors) and then second and third class people (the rest of us). When we understand (as many of the Reformed did, and a marvellous number of the Roman Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council) the enormous spiritual potential of so many of God’s people who have been in the past despised as peasants or housewives or clerks or traders, when we realize that God is gracious and generous in calling and using all kinds of very unsatisfactory people - like you and me - then we can see how spiritually powerful the world church may be in the twenty-first century.’

0 Mark Gibbs is Executive Director of the Audenshaw Foundation, London, England (which specializes in questions of the laity), and a Fellow of Vesper Society, San Leandro, California. ’ See the listings and comments in, for example, recent issues of The Church Times, The Christian Century, the Jesuit publication America and h i @ Exchange. ’ I venture to mention here a new report from the Church of England, All ure Called, Church Information Office. 1985.

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Some basic tests It is clear from scripture and from the testimony of much Christian experience over

the centuries that a true spirituality must include certain basic goals if it is not to be corrupted into a selfish sub-Christian self-indulgence or an ineffective and feeble piety. It must help us to develop as mature Christian adults, not encourage or allow us to remain as “spiritual babies”. No doubt we start our pilgrimage as “children”, but there is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that we should remain childish in our ways. It is an old tradition in many religions (and we must admit in some Christian churches too) that there are a few spiritual “experts” who know the divine mysteries - high priests, old wise women or men, miracle workers - and that the ordinary laity are fated to be lesser, ignorant believers. That is not at all true Christian doctrine. Let me say it again, all human beings are called to become mature, informed, experienced Christian adults. There is a fundamental equality in the church of Jesus Christ. We are all members of “a holy nation, a royal priesthood”. So let us be very careful before we dare to proclaim in sermons and discussions that the whole People of God are called, but privately restrict this to white people, or university graduates, or respectable families of our own nation or tribe or cultural tradition. Spiritual maturity is never a matter of such exclusiveness. In particular, let us always remember that in true Christian history (which still has to be written, as distinct from ecclesiastical history) there will be featured many fine saints who have not been particularly literate or even articulate.

A relevant lay spirituality must speak to our individual situations - both the dark tragedies of life (a car accident, a lost child, a slow terminal illness, a wartime death) and also the nagging economic insecurities which hurt so many of us - unemploy- ment, or the fear of it, the decline of village farming and community, womes over promotion or retirement.

It must speak to the sheer dullness of much daily routine, the petty but depressing miseries of many workplaces and neighbourhoods, and the lamiliar dilemma in so many modem jobs, that you are expected to do so much that you can’t possibly do your work to the quality you would really like to achieve.

A family spirituality And a satisfying lay spirituality will speak also to our family situations, espe-

cially in these days when all over the world family and sexual traditions are so deeply in question. Lay people in many parts of Africa are terribly perplexed about questions of family loyalties and of polygamy. Most Western churches have quietly decided - or shuffled - into new attitudes over divorce and remarriage and birth control (and no declaration from church authorites seems capable of stopping this p r o c e ~ s ) . ~

Despite these perplexities about family life today, there are many signs that there are attractive possibilities for developing the modern home as a centre of lay ~piri tuali ty.~ It may be that past styles of domestic religiosity - both Protestant and Catholic - as expressed in holy pictures and images and ornate family Bibles, now

’See the helpful comments by Jack Dominian in The Tablet, September 1985. ‘The work of Dolores Leckey and her colleagues in the Laity Committee of the American R.C. bishops is very important. See her The Ordinary Way: u Family Spirirualiry. Crossroad Books, 1982.

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prove rather unattractive to us. Yet I am constantly dismayed by the anonymity of a good many Western Christian homes, perhaps especially in England. We need good and suitable symbols of our faith in our homes, so as to indicate to our friends and visitors, modestly but definitely, that we are Christian believers. How can we nourish an appropriate spirituality when day after day all the artifacts around us speak of a secular and consumerist society?

In much the same way, we have been over-reacting to some of the old traditions of family prayers. No doubt elaborate daily prayers are no longer possible with our complicated family routines for adults and children alike. But, as some Dutch and other European Protestants have shown, there are still real possibilities for weekly family prayers. And if our teenage children protest, we should not be bullied by them. Simple courtesy should require that they give up ten minutes a week at their parents’ request, unless they have deep conscientious objections. In the same way, it is enormously worthwhile trying to make family plans and budgets for the future into some kind of consciously Christian reflection and looking forward.

Of course, where one parent wants to take the Christian faith much more seriously than the other, then there are deep difficulties. When both partners are Christians, but of different churches (in the USA 40 per cent of Roman Catholics marrying are now choosing non-Catholic partners) the difficulties are frankly not proving so great as in previous generations. In fact, there are reports that Catholic-Protestant or Anglican- Baptist marriages can be very valuable ecumenical experiences, provided the church authorities involved are prepared to build on these situations rather than ignoring or unpleasantly disapproving of them.

Spirituality is also a public matter It is however an old and distressingly powerful mistake to reduce Christian

spirituality just to personal and family questions. These are fundamentally important to us all: we do not normally ooze unconsciously into the kingdom of heaven, and there are deep questions of Christian conversion and Christian commitment which may not be avoided. It is also perfectly understandable that we may care more about our family and our children than about the problems of Afghanistan or Uganda. Nevertheless, any adequate lay spirituality will include an understanding of our calling to’review in the light of the gospel our involvement both in church and in secular structures and relationship. In one way or another, whether we are Orthodox or Anglican or Methodist or Mennonite or Quaker or whatever, we are called to join in a community of Christians. And whether we are decision-makers or - much more likely - decision-sufferers, whether we are rich or middle class or blue collar or desperately poor, whether we are Polish or Canadian or Nigerian, we are called to social and indeed political responsibilities which are often grindingly complicated and com- promising, but which are not ever to be separated from our spirituality. Our understanding of sin and evil, and of our opportunities for good work too, must include a reckoning of how we are deeply entangled in the great systems of our twentieth-century world. And I should like here to stress the word “political”. One of the traps of Christian radicalism is to denounce social evils - lack of jobs, bad health services, racism, sexism and so on - without really getting involved in the practical and often unpleasant and even more often depressingly dull political committees and

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struggles. And the raising of money and the paying of taxes, which will start putting things right.’

Such an emphasis on supporting laity in their ministry in the world has, thank God, been present in WCC thinking ever since the First and Second Assemblies (Amster- dam 1948, Evanston 1954). But it has taken many years for such an understanding to become a central theme in the doctrinal statements of many denominations and in their theological colleges and seminaries. But now, from Lutherans to Southern Baptists and back again, we can find evidence of a renewed concern for the more secular responsibilities of the laity, and for a spiritual support of their discipleship, which so essentially complements that of the ordained clergy and church workers.

It has also been tremendously encouraging to find such an emphasis on the ministry of the laity in the world very prominent in Roman Catholic thinking in and since the Second Vatican Council. I would draw special attention to the admirable American Catholic statement Culled and Gifted,’ which deserves worldwide circula- tion and study.

The world must not overwhelm us It is also basic to a true Christian spirituality that we do not wallow in a mudbath of

messy guilt (which is unfortuantely a common failing of many good Christian reformers and radicals).’ Yes, God calls us to join in God’s love - indeed God’s agony - about the sufferings of our world; and television and radio and the press overburden us with the news of the latest miseries, night after night and day after day. But we are called to work out prayerfully what we can do (more than most of us like to admit), and also what we can’t, and to move ahead as effectively as possible within the priorities we have chosen, and not to be overwhelmed and paralyzed with our consciousness of cosmic evil. Here, above all, it is helpful to have the counsel of fellow Christians.

Where has there been progress? If these are the basics, how are we laity doing‘? I want to offer the suggestion - it

can be nothing more - that today a certain number of Christian laity in many churches are finding certain styles of spirituality very helpful indeed, but that a good many others are much less fortunate.

It seems to me, from reading many books and taking part in many discussions, that a good many of those laity who are growing in spiritual grace are those who are at ease with adaptations of traditional styles of Catholic or Orthodox spirituality, often developed over the centuries by clergy, monks and nuns of one kind or another. For example, those laity who are members of a “third order” -perhaps especially those in the Franciscan tradition - and those who profit from a version of the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius, and those who gain much from a visit to a Roman Catholic or

’See the writings of William Diehl, especially Thank God i f ’ s Mondu?. Fortress Press. 1984. and my own Christians with Secular Power, Fortress, 1983. ‘Available from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. Also published as Audenshan Documenr, No. 91, January 1981. ’See the helpful and positive comments in Richard Mouw. When rhe Kings Come Marching I n , krdmans. 1983; Daniel Jenkins, Chrisrian Maruriry and Christiun Success. Fortress Press. 1984; and Charles Elliott. Pruving rhe Kingdom, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985.

SPIRITUAL MATURITY IS FOR THE LAITY TOO

Anglican retreat house.* Another sizeable minority of lay people are attracted to different, and decidedly more Protestant traditional disciplines. The popularity of Richard Foster’s books is significant here.’ A third group of lay people clearly find help from much less traditional “encounter group” retreats, owing a good deal to Christian interpretations of the psychology of human relationships.

All these are very helpful to some laity, and we should not be surprised that different people find different styles of spiritual education valuable. The People of God are infinitely various. Indeed we do well to suspect any spiritual writer or leader who, either in traditional Catholic or Protestant or “human potential” styles, insists that there is only one satisfactory way of achieving Christian maturity.

Those laity who are less fortunate I must, however, confess to a deep concern for the very considerable number of

lay people today, especially in the cities, who frankly do not find any of these alternatives very satisfying. They are Christian believers, not agnostics or atheists. They do, at least from time to time, hunger and thirst after righteousness. They feel restless and vaguely guilty that their prayers seem shallow (we know from many polls that in many Western counmes there are far more people trying to pray than attend Sunday services). They are often occasional parish attenders, especially for marriages, funerals and major church festivals, but somehow they find our normal styles of worship unappealing, and in particular speaking little to their Monday morning responsibilities. Nor are our special retreats and conferences attractive to these “non-parish” laity: the agendas and priorities suggested seem so “churchy” to them.

Evidence seems to show, at least in Western churches, that this is particularly true of many men, especially men in the harsh middle years of life, but it also applies today to many women laity, especially those engaged in more secular occupations, in competitive jobs in the cities, or in political responsibilities.” It is certainly true of many young people of both sexes, who are deserting the mainline churches in their thousands, even if they have enjoyed good church and Sunday school education in early years. And today they do not necessarily return to parish membership as they start families and “settle down”.

Such lay people cannot just be dismissed as “disloyal” or “uncommitted”. Many of them are trying to work out - often in a rather lonely and unsatisfactory way - what it means to follow Jesus Christ. There are signs from the German Kirchenrags (enormous lay congresses) and similar movements in Europe, and from many North American experiments too, that when such %on-parish” lay people are offered Bible study and worship services and other kinds of Christian learning which clearly speak to their conditions, then they will respond earnestly and gratefully. Especially they long that their work for the Lord, which is in secular not in church structures, and their sincere and often difficult spiritual journeys shall be affirmed in church worship. How often do the Sunday prayers and praises remember the clergy, the choir and the church

‘For example the w e n t WCC publication by Sister Joan Puls, OSF. Every Bush is Burning, Geneva, WCC, 1985. qCelebrution of Discipline. 1978, and Freedom of Simplicity, 1981, both Harper & Row, London. ’“On male/female questions of spirituality. sec Mitch Finlay, “Real Men do have Spirituality” in the Nutioml Cutholic Reporter supplement on praying, 1984.

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workers, and almost entirely ignore the discipleship of those struggling to be faithful in the Lord in the office, the market, the police force or the political party? The regular use of rites affirming the common calling of all Christian people can be a powerful element in our worship, as experience on Iona and in many informal Christian organizations has shown. But our churches all over the world must dig much deeper into these questions about which religious and cultural styles arc appropriate for these “other” laity.

The strengths and temptations of small groups Of course there has been much study in the last twenty years of the rich variety of

small groups and “basic communities” which have sprung up all over the worldwide church, from Latin America to northern Europe, and from Roman Catholic to fiercely Evangelical churches. There are many heated debates about how such small groups should or can fit in with traditional, regional, diocesan and parish structures; and these need not concern us here, except in one particular. The spiritual corruption of a small group is clear when it becomes a clique, or adopts a self-rightcous “we have the gospel” attitude. Such an atmosphere is certainly not helpful, and indeed can hurt very deeply many good Christian people. Despite these dangers (familiar enough to Christian historians and psychologists) it is certainly true that, in one way or another, and working in one style or another, a local parish or ecumenical group can offer a fellowship of mutual support and loving criticism which enormously helps in the spiritual development of many laity. It is time that our major denominations came to terms with this global pehnornenon in Christian living today. Wc should be able to belong both to small groups and to a great denomination.

These are essential Of course certain age-old lessons have to be learnt by us all. It is still true that time

is of the essence in spiritual growth. Time for prayer, for listening to God, for biblical and theological studies. Time for reflection. And the busier we are, the more necessary is this allocation of time for developing our spirituality. I t is true that many church conferences and retreats seem designed for people with leisure (and somebody else to look after the children), or for clergy and professional people who, though busy, can make their own commitments and do not wrestle with the inexorable schedules of secular employment in a corporation or a factory. But many people today do have better opportunities for vacations than was true fifty years ago; and we must be prepared to give up some of these days for some kind of Christian reflection and learning, just as we give them up for retooling our professional skills or our techniques in sports or gardening.

We laity must also spend some money on our own spiritual development. Certainly we may sometimes legitimately complain that our church does not allocate adequate funds and resources for the education of the laity (compared, for example, with the admirable way in which it often encourages the clergy). However, a mature Christian does not spend much time blaming somebody else for such failures: he or she determines to use personal resources to fill up the gaps. A personal or a family budget ought to include something - both in time and in money - which can be invested in spiritual development. Our Evangelical friends often set us a good example in this respect.

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Time, money, and a proper Christian humility before God. This has nothing to do with grovelling, or any kind of dehumanizing subservience before an ominously threatening Almighty. It is simply to acknowledge the fundamental point from which we started - and to which we shall always return -the wonderful generosity of God in calling us to an adult and mature discipleship. It is an entirely proper and satisfying response to God’s call to pilgrimage, and indeed a sign that we are on the right way.

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