Apostles, prophets, bishops, and a pope

Dec 04, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols
Recent comments over the ‘London affair’ of a few weeks ago revived in me some thoughts and feelings about the more general affairs of the church – specifically the institution which embraces believers of the Christian faith, and the believers

themselves collectively known as the body of Christ. I was particularly concerned over the apparent hypocrisy perceived to be engaged in by some leaders who flaunt their authority, their wealth, their divine connections, and their apparently self-bestowed titles.
While growing up, the words Reverend and Father were the most common titles of religious leaders in our society. Later Pastor came to represent a broad sweep of ‘men of the cloth’. Subordinate to them were the Elders and Deacons. These titles meant little to me; my parents being the chief expounders and enforcers of Christian morality in my life.
Anyway, the former gentlemen were generally thought to be of unimpeachable character. At that time, in my child’s mind, apostles and prophets were confined to biblical literature, and bishops to the Catholic/Anglican churches. Bestriding them all like a colossus was the infallible pope.
Over the years more names for religious leaders appeared including the ‘new’ pastors, prophets, apostles and bishops. And we now have a self-styled pope who, like other mortals, has proven to be anything but infallible. ‘Pope’ London’s bridge seems to be falling down instead of upholding its function of bridging the gap separating sinner from creator. His britches fell too, not of their own volition. But His (local) Eminence is a mere man, and a man has need of sexual union with a woman. Fine, but there’s the small problem of preaching but not always practising moral rectitude.
Throughout human history man has struggled to rein in his libido in the face of moral and legal no-nos. The struggle has been lost as much as it has been won, and I suspect it will be so until time’s end. Lust is one of the seven deadly sins mentioned in scripture and it is closely tied in another – greed, which has helped define the meaning of the kind of immorality to which every human heart is suspect. And when religious leaders capitulate to them, well then you sometimes have what I call the David dilemma.
According to scripture, the biblical King David had at least eight wives, one of whom, Bathsheba, was married to another man when he called her to the royal bedroom. He knew his affair with Bathsheba was wrong and ungodly, but evidently his lust for her temporarily overrode his loyalty to God’s will. His son Solomon amassed a monumental harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines in violation of God’s will. Before them the patriarch Jacob had two wives and their two handmaids, all of whom bore him children. The bible makes it pretty clear that although these were men of God, what they did was against His will, and each of them suffered the consequence of his actions.
In more contemporary times (over the last two centuries) numerous stories have circulated concerning sexual deviancy in the church, particularly the Catholic Church. Among the most prominent are tales of the sexual abuse of children by priests, the rape of nuns and the murder of their newborn babies and fetuses, and the discovery of mass graves holding children who had been under the care of Catholic clergy. A few of these stories have been discredited, but the numbers, especially with respect to child sexual abuse, are staggering. Read Wikipedia’s ‘Catholic Church sexual abuse cases’ and gauge for yourselves.
We ordinary mortals who struggle to balance our body’s natural sexual urges with the precepts of the Holy Books which warn us about them, are often overwhelmed by guilt and embarrassment when we give in to the former. But some men (and women) of the cloth appear to suffer no such qualms over such fleshly excesses. Stepping back a little with objectivity, both the church leader and the ‘sinner’ can say to each other plaintively, ‘Look what you’ve done!’ But we usually expect the latter to be reproved by the former and shown the way to repentance in order to avoid eternal damnation. But who pastors the pastor, or prompts the pope to correction?
If someone feels he or she has been chosen and anointed by God to do His will, and that will includes engaging in acts deemed immoral (and sometimes illegal) by human standards, then it is no wonder that so many religious figures seem to disregard man’s laws and pompously declare that they answer to a higher power. Scattered across several North American and European cities are churches that practice everything from nudism to satanic worship. Have you ever heard of Theistic Luciferianism? And of course there is the ubiquitous televangelist spouting the newfangled prosperity gospel. It’s like having your congregation gambling for heaven while you enjoy its bounty here on earth.
But I guess when you call yourself a priest, pastor, prophet, apostle, bishop, or pope, you permit yourself the luxury of imagining that your ‘anointing’ places you in the realm of the untouchable. (Not of course the Indian Hindu type) Furthermore, under the umbrella of religious freedom you can basically do what you feel like within certain broad parameters; in the US, for example, the first amendment severely limits any form of government regulation of ‘the church’. So one may praise God in the nude, have sex with multiple partners (See Liberated Christians) pay homage to Satan, and use congregation-generated funds to buy Lear jets and live in million-dollar mansions.
Of course there are thousands of good, great, amazing church leaders and religious figures, past and contemporary. (I like to think of the late David Wilkerson as one such) But that same religious freedom just mentioned may be responsible for some of the more outrageous stories I have read/heard of over the past few years. In the US, a female pastor preaches with her nipples exposed while another reportedly has sex with male members as a means of their salvation. And in Brazil a pastor allegedly convinced congregation members that his semen was holy milk which they had to ‘drink’ in order to be spirit-filled. Truth, in some cases, may indeed be stranger than fiction.
One of the weirdest videos I’ve seen on the internet was of two American televangelist pastors in church, engaged in what I call the ‘running of the bills’. Scattered across the steps leading to the altar were loads of cash – tithes and offerings. They ran to and fro trampling the notes, one of them screaming “Whooo, put some anointin’ on this money. Prosper! Prosper!” Members of the congregation ran up to add their offerings to the overflow. The pastors appeared ecstatic.
The new prophets, apostles, bishops, and a ‘pope’ no doubt feel, righteously or self-righteously, that they are doing a great work for God, preaching the gospel and helping save sinners from hell. With our own human failings and with the church balancing law and religious liberty, to what degree should we judge or condemn actions which, though generally perceived as immoral, are engaged in by supposedly sane adults, or consenting ones like ‘Pope’ London and his paramours?
I don’t have a very clear answer. Do you?

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