Abstract
As volume two of a three-volume series, The Pastor in a Secular Age offers Andrew Root’s explicit development of philosopher Charles Taylor’s articulation of secularity as a frame to understand the work of the pastor. To do this Root employs six historical illustrations—pastors who exemplify the ever-shifting purpose of ministerial work as the cultural changes erode the place of God in society. From Augustine, Thomas Becket, and Jonathan Edwards to Henry Ward Beecher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Rick Warren, Root utilizes historical narrative to advance his historical and sociological review of culture and its relationship to pastoral identity. Following this review, Root utilizes the second part of the book to articulate a constructive theological frame for ministerial practice.
At the heart of the book’s argument is Root’s conviction that pastors in contemporary contexts are in a malaise. Secularity—emerging for the past five hundred years—has now become so thoroughly engrained within western contexts that the work of the pastor has become almost extinct. The existence of God is no longer a foregone conclusion, authority is located within each individual, and meaning is determined by personal preference. Being a pastor no longer appears to have any particular or distinctive place within American society. So what is a pastor to do?
To make this case Root deploys case studies of the ministers noted above. Each in their turn reflects the shifts in pastoral identity that lead to contemporary contexts that are largely devoid of meaningful pastoral work. Following the contours of Taylor’s assessment, Root utilizes Thomas Becket to introduce the language of enchantment. The world of Becket was a world where the mystery and presence of God were everywhere and in all things. However, through the long centuries, contexts have progressed through a process of disenchantment. God has gradually been pulled out of ordinary public life altogether. Following Augustine’s ministerial work, the one place remaining is the inner world of the human soul. However, as Root argues, the rich interior life of human existence has come to be so completely protected and buffered that it is quite possible to exercise complete autonomy. Humans can live insular lives without any particular need of God.
Another line of thought emerges through Root’s analysis regarding the relationship between the what of faith to the how of faith. Root articulates Jonathan Edwards’s concern for religious affection—how one lives life reveals whether one is holy. The attention to holy living over and against the content of the faith sends the pendulum swinging toward the increasingly common stance of being spiritual but not religious. Morality is the thing that matters and with the rise of American civil religion, the pastor was one who winsomely invites people into the moral life. Root uses Henry Ward Beecher to highlight the pastor as the personality who encourages a dynamic encounter with God through doing the good and noble things in life.
Likewise, as Root moves toward contemporary contexts, Harry Emerson Fosdick frames the emergence of a modernist mindset bent on offering meaning through therapeutic care with hopefulness in a progressive future. By the time of the last quarter of the twentieth century the rise of postmodernity leaves many folk with nothing but the pursuit of one’s own authentic self. Out of this world emerges Rick Warren, who pragmatically asserts the church actually has something to say to the search for meaning and authenticity. With the savvy of an entrepreneurial CEO, Warren’s vision of a purpose-driven life alters again the cultural landscape.
Before Root turns to his own particular response to “What is the pastor to do?” he introduces Michael Foucault’s lectures on governmental power—as shaped by the biblical practice of pastoral leadership in the image of the shepherd. This move creates the key hinge point in the book. This imagery launches Root’s assertion that God is at work in the world as a minister. As such, the question begins to shift from “What is the pastor to do?” to “Who is the pastor to be?” Such a shift finds its coherence with Root’s own vigorous development of the being and doing of a triune God who still dares to haunt a secular world—particularly in those spaces where darkness and death are keenly experienced. For in those spaces, buffered autonomy and a godless secularity begin to give way to a world where enchantment might yet be experienced anew. And Root’s theological argument suggests that it is just those sorts of places that God arrives into human experience.
Root’s work offers a significant contribution to conversations about secularity, practical theology, and to ministerial practice. Thoughtful pastors attending to the cultural contexts, seminary students, and persons reflecting deeply about the intersection of theology and culture will be working with The Pastor in a Secular Age for years to come.