Colin Bulley, himself an apologist for the traditional Protestant understanding of the “Priesthood of All Believers,” noted that recent impulses towards emphasising/promoting the priesthood of the laity have been informed by a lack of clergy, social issues, and the ecumenical movement:
A rediscovery of the role of the laity
Scholars
have discerned the following factors as contributing to a rediscovery of the
laity’s role in the church: first, the relative paucity of the ordained noted
above which has resulted in ‘the development of the phenomenon of small congregations
thrown back on their own resources’; second, a desire to rediscover the
personal aspect of life through relationships within community; third, the
longing to bring about social and economic liberation and justice often linked
with the keenness to bear witness to the insights given in Christianity;
fourth, the return to liturgical sources, at least within the Roman Catholic
Church, resulting in the rediscovery of the laity’s active role in the church’s
worship; and fifth, new biblical and theological insights in the church on this
subject, the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches contributing
significantly.
This
greater emphasis on the laity’s role in the church’s life has inevitably
increased the pressures to redefine that role in comparison with that of the
ordained. So has the perception that it has not yet been as fully articulated
and realized as it should be. (Colin Bulley, The Priesthood of Some Believers:
Developments from the General to the Special Priesthood in the Christian Literature
of the First Three Centuries [Studies in Christian History and Thought;
Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2000], 4-5)
The
desire to reunite the churches
.
. . The focus in these attempts on the issues of ministry and the sacraments, with
which the question of priesthood is so closely bound up, has been necessitated
b the fact that the non-recognition of the validity of other churches’
ministries and so of their sacraments has been one of the most significant
hindrances to reunion. This has resulted in both documents which have been
produced as a result of inter-church discussions aimed at producing greater mutual
understanding and agreement and documents which have aimed at contributing to
these discussions. (Ibid., 5; examples of such documents include those of the
Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission [ARCIC]))