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The following is an excerpt from Rites
of Worship: A Neopagan Approach, my book on liturgical
design, preparation and performance. Unlike my sharetext postings,
this text file may NOT be freely distributed on
the Net, since it is part of a published book.
Introduction
These three interwoven factors constitute
the soil in which your decisions about the other factors in liturgical
design will sprout or wither, because they deal with the fundamental
process of decision-making in a liturgical context. You and the
members of your group need to decide who will be making what
decisions, with how much authority, based on what your group’s
obvious and/or hidden purposes are, before any other decisions
— including liturgical ones — can be made.
Leadership
Does your group have temporary, long-term,
or permanent leaders at all? If so, how were they chosen? What
were their qualifications? What roles — clergy, bards, therapists,
polytheologians, choreographers — do they play? Are these
roles predetermined by training and experience, or do they rotate
among the members of the group?
Throughout this book I refer to “clergy,”
as a short term for the people most likely to be leading the
creation, preparation, and performance of liturgies. Obviously,
I believe that the role of clergy is an important one, and that
leadership, if based on genuine competence, is A Good Idea. Within
the Neopagan community, however, and throughout the entire spectrum
of liberal religions, the whole “question” of clergy
is a hot one.
Among the Indo-Europeans,
most cultures believed that anyone could contact the Gods and
Goddesses or do simple folk magic, but that certain sorts of
religious activities, especially those that involved large numbers
of people or particularly difficult magic, required the presence
of specialists (the druids, flamens, brahmans, etc.). During
the rise of Christianity, the general population was discouraged
from doing any sort of religious activities at all, other than
private prayer and meditation, without the direction and approval
of a priest. This eventually led to Martin Luther’s rebellion
and his formulation of the doctrine of “the priesthood of
all believers.”
Luther thought of it as a correlate of the
doctrines of justification by faith alone and of the liberty
of the Christian believer. Like other Protestant affirmations,
this one has a positive and a negative meaning. Positively, it
means that just as every Christian has an inner liberty of conscience
that makes him a “lord over all,” so, too, every Christian
is a priest or “servant of all.” By this Luther meant
not simply that every man has his own direct access to Christ
but that all Christians are “worthy to appear before God
to pray for others and to teach one another the things of God.”
Negatively, this means not only a rejection of the medieval tradition
that practically identified priesthood with the administration
of the sacraments but also constitutes an attack on the conception
of priesthood as constituting a special class in the eyes of
God with a special power and a higher morality. Luther insisted
that the public ministry was simply a matter of practical function
or vocation. It followed that it was not a higher or more religious
form of life with a special standing in God’s eyes. The
Anabaptists, that other part of the Reformation too frequently
forgotten, took the phrase to mean the complete abolishment of
any functional distinction between clergy and laity. No believer
was believed to have any status or function not fully shared
by all. (Van A. Harvey, A
Handbook of Theological Terms, Macmillan, 1964)
These concepts have saturated Western culture
for the last four hundred years, affecting both liberal and conservative
Protestants. When Gerald Gardner was creating what was to become
Neopagan Witchcraft
in the 1950’s, he was still Mesopagan
enough that he took over large parts of this Protestant Christian
doctrine and enshrined it into Wiccan duotheology and liturgy.
In Gardner’s case, the concept became what we could call
“the priest/esshood of all believers,” and every Wiccan
was named “Priestess and Witch” or “Priest and
Witch” at their first initiation into the faith.
Members of modern liberal religions, with
their scientistic biases against magic, can be forgiven for clinging
to Luther’s doctrines. But Gardner really should have known
better. As a practicing ceremonial magician and amateur anthropologist,
he was fully aware that magic is an art and a science that requires
both inborn talent and arduous training, and that priest/esshood
requires (among many other things) real skill in magic —
making it something that not everyone is going to be equally
good at as a career. Yet, rather than go back to the earlier
Paleopagan attitudes about clergy, he chose to perpetuate the
Protestant ones, perhaps as yet another tactic to make his new
religion of Pagan Witchcraft grow as quickly as possible.
To this very day, Neopagan groups tend to
be ambivalent about having clergy. Most have some sort of priests
and/or priestesses, yet the degree of respect and authority granted
to them varies widely. Those groups with radical political and/or
feminist agendas (see below) often refuse to label anyone as
clergy, having completely accepted the patriarchal Anabaptist
doctrine about the nondistinction between clergy and laity. A
given group’s attitude about leadership in general and clergy
in particular is often a product of its attitudes about hierarchy
and egalitarianism, as reflected in the internal structure of
the group.
Organizational Structure
Every intentional group of people — a
softball team, a sewing circle, a dental office, or a coven of
Witches — has some sort of organizational structure, obvious
or invisible, to regulate and guide their power relationships.
In her writings, Starhawk has clearly articulated a philosophy
of different types of power, and the institutions and organizations
that support them: power that is exercised “over” other
people is Evil, power that is exercised “with” others
is Good, and power that comes from “within” each person
is Best. We’ll take a look at her ideas about these concepts
later in this book (see the ethics discussion), for now, it’s
enough to note that her writings, which have been widely influential
in the Neopagan, feminist, and women’s spirituality movements,
show a clear bias against heirarchy and in favor of egalitarianism.
Yet what do these terms really mean?
“Hierarchy” originally refered to
“sacred rule” — a situation where the clergy made
all decisions. Today it usually means any religious, political,
social, and economic system where power is exercised by a minority,
organized into levels of rank, with a few people near the top
making the most important decisions. Examples would include any
of the forty-plus Catholic Churches, most business corporations,
a surgical team, most theatrical production companies, any army
or navy, etc. The theory behind hierarchy is that the individuals
with the most knowledge and experience should have the most power
and need it in order to function effectively. The practice is
that people in power are often reluctant to retire, even when
better-qualified replacements are available, and they frequently
object to sharing even a small portion of their power and prestige.
Of course, they are in any event all fallible mortals, even if
they decide to declare themselves “infallible” and
excommunicate or kill all those who disagree.
“Egalitarianism” (“equal-ism”)
was not a particularly positive word until the French Revolution.
The theory, based intellectually on Luther’s idea (just
discussed) and emotionally on the revolt against the corrupt
French nobility, was that nobody was better than anybody else
in matters that really counted — that is, everybody had
a soul and a nobleman’s wasn’t any more valuable than
that of a peasant (as long as they were both white, male, and
Christian). Eventually the egalitarian theory expanded to include
most human beings, and birthed the idea that people of good will
could sit down together and pool their knowledge to make wise
decisions. In practice, the idea that everyone in a group is
equally qualified to make complex decisions, or that such decisions
are always made best by a majority vote, has often led to disaster.
How do these ideas apply to liturgy? In some
groups, the decisions about ceremonial matters are made by the
person(s) believed (correctly or not) to be most knowledgeble
about ritual — these people usually get called by some sort
of clergy title. In other groups, all members discuss the issues
and vote their preferences, blithely assuming that the majority
opinion will be the correct one. Such groups may or may not have
people named as clergy. In still others, conversation continues
until a consensus has been reached (meaning until every single
person says that he or she agrees with the others). Groups of
this last sort may not have people who are considered to be clergy
at all, and may not recognize any special knowledge or skill
that entitles anyone’s opinions to be considered more important
than those of the others in the group (although covert leadership
almost always develops).
Each of these approaches to decision-making
has strengths and weaknesses. Trained clergy usually do know
enough about liturgy to supervise its creation and performance
quickly and effectively; democratic majorities can at least balance
out the desires of a congregation with the opinions of clergy;
consensus opinion-forming does insure that no one feels left
out of the decision-making process and that everyone feels empowered
by having her/his opinion valued. Yet, as we all know, elites
can easily become tyrannical, democratic majorities are frequently
wrong about matters of fact and art, and the consensus process
usually results in rule by the lowest common denominator —
not to mention taking forever to achieve.
In each case, the quality of your decision-making
depends upon the quality of your people: are they intelligent,
well-educated, knowledgeble about ritual, and sensitive to the
psychological nuances of group interaction? If so, any of these
approaches will work. But if your people are not all such paragons,
you may be in for trouble.
Groups that are hierarchical tend to emphasize
results over process — as long as the ceremony, for example,
turns out “well” (however the group defines that),
the fact that some members might have gotten their feelings hurt
is considered trivial. Consensus groups usually emphasize process
over results — one consensus tradition of Wicca proudly
claims, “Process is our most important product!” Indeed,
with some such groups, process turns out to be the only
significant product.
My personal, professional biases are towards
a combination of the hierarchial and consensus approaches. I
believe that every religious group should have a temporary or
permanent ritual leader, who should be acknowledged as such,
and who should be educated and competent at designing, preparing,
and performing liturgies. She/he should spend enough time talking
to the rest of the group to enable her/him to have a clear idea
of their wants and needs, and should pay attention to the group
dynamics involved. Then she/he should be allowed to make the
relevant decisions, alone or with assistants, until such a time
as the group decides that she/he is no longer producing powerful,
effective, and satisfying liturgies of the sort that the group
desires. Then a new ritual leader should be chosen, preferably
by consensus (otherwise the new leader will have trouble getting
everyone to cooperate psychically during ceremonies).
The ritual leader of a group does not have
to be the philosophical, political, or emotional leader of a
group, but she/he does need to have the members of the group
trust her/him. Just as brilliant works of art are seldom created
by committee, so too, magnificent liturgies are rarely the product
of second-guessing your chief liturgist. Instead, “Give
them enough rope…” and see if they produce macrame.
Agendas
Even once you think you’ve settled the
issues of leadership and group structure, you’ve got to
make explicit all of your group’s agendas — both overt
and covert. Firstly, because those agendas may force you to modify
your decisions about leadership and structure, and secondly,
because your agendas will determine just how important effective
liturgy really is to your group. “Overt agendas” are
the official reasons why your group has gotten together, and
can be spiritual, political, ecological, social/interpersonal,
artistic, theraputic/theurgic, healing, and/or recreational.
“Covert agendas” are usually individual motivations
that you may not want the general public, or even your fellow
group members, to know about. They usually involve dysfunctional
motives, such as an urge to be the constant center of attention,
a need to rebel against authority figures, a desire to curse
your enemies, wanting to fix all the world’s ills, or an
addiction to ritual energies (I’m still waiting for someone
to start a “Mana Anonymous” movement).
If your group’s overt agenda is a radical
political one, for example, you may well decide to do without
heirarchy and have only temporary leaders, if any, regardless
of the impact this may have on the quality of your ceremonies.
If it’s artistic, you may decide to have the best artist
in the group be the leader on a fairly permanent basis, and give
her/him strong authority to run the show. A group that is mostly
interested in creating a schmoozy family feeling, or in having
a good time, is likely to be less worried about excellance in
liturgy than one whose primary agenda is to heal physical and
emotional ailments.
Covert agendas are likely to have negative
effects unless they are brought out and discussed in the group.
If your group has an overt agenda that requires a strong leader
and lots of heirarchy, while several of the members have covert
agendas to resist authority figures and structures, or vice versa,
you’re in trouble. You’re not only setting yourself
up for a difficult time doing satisfying liturgy, you’re
also setting the stage for an eventual blowup of the group.
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