Who Do You Trust? The Issue of Spiritual Authority

Who Do You Trust? The Issue of Spiritual Authority

*This article previously appeared in an issue of _Creation Spirituality_ magazine.*

A few weeks ago I was attending a pagan seasonal festival with another former Southern Baptist, and found myself commiserating with her over the final death of the "Baptist ideal." As wine flowed, fire crackled, and our pagan friends danced with abandon, my friend and I, both liberal Christian clergy, were discussing the recent affair of a North Carolina Southern Baptist Church which had decided to bless homosexual unions.

The decision, as we heard the story, had come with no small amount of prayer and consideration. When their board of deacons decided in favor of the unions, all hell broke loose in the Convention.

This is hardly surprising. We had been watching with increasing uneasiness as the denomination slowly became more and more reactionary and fundamentalist. The fundamentalist takeover is by now pretty much complete, with Southern Baptist moderates forming their own sub-denominational groups.

Finally it was decided that this particular church should be expelled from the Convention. This is a historic decision, because one of the things that makes Baptists Baptist is the hardcore belief in the autonomy of the local church.

Early Baptist history is really quite rebellious and anything but authoritarian. Classically, the individual church decides what it will and will not do and teach. Pastors have the pulpit, but it is up to the deacons (laity all, the equivalent of elders or the vestry) to hire, fire, and make the "big" decisions.

But then, my friend-who had actually studied Baptist history in depth-told me of a doctrine which lies at the very foundation of Baptist thought, but which neither of us had ever heard in all of our years growing up in the denomination: the doctrine of "sole competency."

Mostly a reaction against authoritarian clericalism in the Roman and Reformed churches, "sole competency" proclaimed the right of each individual believer to decide for him or herself how they interpret the scriptures.

This radical idea gives one a glimpse of just how revolutionary the early Baptists were, and how far removed those who currently use that name are from their predecessors.

To quote the Psalmist: " O how the mighty are fallen."

Similarly, few of my Roman Catholic friends are aware of the declaration of "internal authority" found in the Declaration on Religious Freedom of the Vatican II documents. "Internal authority" refers to the individual's responsibility to follow his or her conscience regardless of whether that conscience is in conflict with civil or religious authorities. I personally know many faithful Roman Catholic people who exercise artificial birth control, yet agonize over what is, after all, common sense and good conscience.

Why the secrecy? Why is it a secret that the final religious authority resides within each one of us, for each one of us? Why do we hand over our power so quickly, so willingly?

Because we were taught to do so. In their phenomenal book on religious authoritarianism, The Guru Papers, Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad write that "if children are taught to mistrust themselves...as adults they will have little option other than looking for someone else to trust." They go on to explain that if people are conditioned not to trust themselves, "they will give away what power they have to those they think can protect them. The problem is that in doing so, one is no longer protected from one's protectors.... This leads to corrupt, power-driven hierarchies that care little about the well-being of people" (emphasis mine).

Although hierarchical abuse is no stranger to Buddhism, the Buddha claimed no divine inspiration or external authority. His teaching condemns "blind faith," and emphasizes trust in one's own personal experience and capacity for critical judgment. "Be not led by the authority of religious texts," the Buddha said, "nor by mere logic or inference...nor by the idea 'this is our teacher.' But...when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them."

The Goddess tradition, too, is exemplary in advocating oneself as prime spiritual authority. Ginia Webster in the Temenos Journal says that self-trust in regard to spiritual matters is crucial to living the "Goddess Lifestyle." "It is," she says, "following your inner voice instead of listening to external pressures. It is trusting your own wisdom, and knowing that the details will fall into place as you move in the direction of your heart's path. It is trusting with confidence that you know what you know, you see what you see, you feel what you feel."

It is like my pagan friends in ecstatic motion all around us, trusting their hearts, trusting their feet. And now I wonder to myself, why is it that my friend and I were mourning on the bench, instead of dancing in the Spirit?