Friday, September 30, 2022

Colin Bulley on Recent Factors Influencing the Emphasis on the Priesthood of the Laity

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]))