Book Review: THE PASTOR IN A SECULAR AGE – Andrew Root
This volume is the middle in a set of three where Andrew Root explores for us how recent cultural movements impact faith formation (book 1), the role of the pastor (book 2), and congregation life (book 3). All three books dialogue with Charles Taylor’s seminal work, A Secular Age, working out the implications of Taylor’s thesis in ways that is grounded, practical, accessible, and focused.
This book (tracking with Taylor) describes how culture has moved from an enchanted view of the world, where God is present and active, to an immanent view, where we live inside a closed world of cause and effect, and God is outside of our reference. This is one strength of the book – it is trans-historical. In order to understand the contours of the current milieu, it needs to be referenced against other social-historical moments, which have led us to where we now find ourselves.
Beginning with Augustine in the 300s, Root walks us through several worldview frameworks, and he outlines the prevailing assumptions, and the accompanying practises of pastoral ministry that ‘fitted’ each historical context. As each stage of history is explained, a preeminent pastor grounds and illustrates the model pastor. At the ending of a season, a new insight emerges and gains widespread acceptance, resulting in a shift in the context, which gives rise to an adaptation in the practice of ministry. This brief table will attempt to (inadequately) capture the journey Root takes us on.
Put together, the cumulative effect of the loss of an enchanted view of the world, a buffered self, a separation of the private life from the public, church as community of the like-minded, to church is there to help me, to church as optional as I work out my chosen identity – all of this leaves the 21st century individual as caught in a secular immanent framework. God’s presence in the world is not expected or sought. Humans are autonomous actors who imagine our own hopes, and plan and enact our pathways to self-actualisation.
Before we move to solutions, we need to insert another table, which sits alongside the previous one. This table also is the product of Taylor, as he reworks Emile Durkheim.
Durkheim’s religious glue was all pervasive, then we chose to attach ourselves to a denomination, now the glue bottle is firmly in my hand as I use it to stick together my chosen identity. God is an external power, but a self-help validator and cheer leader beyond my immanent world.
A sovereign God is surplus in this world of human agency, also rendering pastors superfluous. At this point, Root strikes a chord with his audience. Many a pastor will empathise with feelings of being a marginalised, displaced voice in the life of their congregation members. As Taylor observes, disenchantment does not leave people enlightened and liberated, but rather empty, sensing there is an otherworldly dimension to life, yet in a spiritual malaise and without a compass.
Is there a model or mode of ministry that fits the 21st century secular age? Root suggests there is. He suggest that God is a personal God who breaks through our immanent secular structures in occasional events of ministry. The role of the pastor in this age is to sit alongside people in their disruption, call people by name, and ask leading questions (Root demonstrates how time and again God does this in Scripture e.g. Hagar, and in history). Pastors are to fan spiritual curiosity into flame, and then invite people to respond to their brokenness by entering into ministry (as happens in Scripture). For it is in giving that we receive, we are shaped to serve as Jesus exemplifies. As humans serve others, they participate in the resurrection event as it unfolds anew in the present, in ways that feel authentic, real, and yet are spiritual and more than just imagined.
Speaking personally, I had extreme mixed feelings as I read this book. I felt understood and validated. His description and prognosis of the 21st pastor as peripheral and dismissible rings true. His explanations as to why previous models of ministry no longer generate the same outcomes put words to my experience. Just when one feels despondent, his description of how God is a God who will be who he will be (Ex 3:14), coming to minister to broken people, whose arrival breaks through our cultural blinkers – it is a compelling and inspiring picture of a contextualised ministry.
Root has fleshed out the irrelevance that pastors feel, the spiritual malaise that all of us feel, and shows us a way forward that is not stymied by our cultural blinkers. He backs this in with some unorthodox but brilliant theological insights. Yet I have some qualms.
Each of the preeminent types of pastors were products of their age, who ministered to their era – agreed. And yet, each also sought to express ministry that was contextualised and still simultaneously faithful and continuous with the ministry of Jesus. We are called to minister in and out of season (2 Tim 4:2). Pastors have long practised a raft of activities, such as preaching and teaching, prayer, visitation, counselling, rebuking, modelling and leading. I suggest framing ministry as having longstanding repeated modes and themes that require contextualised emphasis and tweaking might be a more accurate and fruitful framework.
Second, Root emphasises where we ride with the wave of culture, not fight against it. I agree, but remain of the view we are called to do both. Contextualisation entails ministering to people who inhabit this culture by speaking their language and prophesying against the idols of this age. Every cultural moment elucidates and shrouds dimensions of the gospel. Churches and movements that align too closely with this moment, tend to find themselves out of step with the next moment.
Whatever its’s limitations, this remains an deeply insightful book that grounds and makes practical suggestions for how we tweak and tune our ministry to engage with this new (secular) age.
© David Rietveld, 30 Sept, 2023.