Demanding More of Clergy

So yesterday I drove to a hospital I hadn't visited before. They had some really great parking spots reserved for clergy (SWEET) and after parking there I wondered if I needed to register for it. I had to ask like twenty people who you'd think would know about that before I could get a definitive answer from the head of security, who's answer was no, because how could you expect Clergy to keep track of required parking stickers or indicators or whatever?

I laughed about that but in retrospect it bugged me a lot, because it echoed a sentiment that has become fairly prevalent in our culture... very low expectations when it comes to clergy.

I've done some "live-tweeting" (can you call it that when it's done on Facebook?) of times in which I have been visibly clergy, like when I am wearing a clerical collar. It's often amusing how much people get thrown off by it, but it also reveals assumptions about the clergy that I don't like.

It's like I'm a walking anachronism, a relic of a by-gone time somehow transported to this strange future. People assume that I don't understand much of what is going on and go out of their way to be helpful. Which is nice of them, but I do, in fact, know how to operate an electronic device, or hail a cab, or find my airport terminal.

(Well, okay, I DO get lost easily, but did so LONG before I became clergy, all right?)

Now that is all funny, harmless, and a decent way to check the ego, and clerical egos often need to be checked. But there is another side to it as well. It is one thing when people assume I can't handle new-fangled technology like a touch screen. It is quite another when people assume that I have no stake in the world I live in.

I see signs of it all the time, people who are surprised when I am up on current events, or political movements, or the realities of love, hate, pain, death, and suffering. There is a belief in clergy detachment where I am supposed to be separated from all that, again the walking anachronism parroting trite phrases regardless of context and existing in a world that no longer exists, perhaps NEVER existed, in order to do... something.

I'm not entirely certain what that something is, but often I feel as though people assume I am paid simply to be, a reminder of that bygone (or perhaps fictional) time, a museum piece that reminds people of a romanticized era. Go on, say a prayer, it's like what Grandma used to say...

We see it echoed in pop culture ALL the time. The religious figures in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars are, to me, infuriatingly incompetent, but everyone just seems to roll with it because, hey, what else did you expect? Someone has to say these words, but we would never expect that person to actually understand the person they talk about or to, right?

And so clergy just go around, doing what they do, and people just short of shrug and roll with it. What did you expect? They're just a museum piece! So long as they don't physically harm someone (or, most infuriatingly, even if they do) we just let them do what they do, say what they say, and either smile at the pleasant reminder or frown at the unpleasant one. But it's not like it actually matters, right?

Wrong.

I think we need to demand more of clergy, yes, even you, my atheists.

Your departed loved one was worth knowing, and the person doing their funeral should at least make the effort to ask. People deserve respect, and no faith background justifies treating them like dirt. The world we live in matters, and if they believe that their background matters, then they need to be pushing it towards the future, not lamenting the departure of an idealized past.

I don't know if we clergy marginalized ourselves, or if others did it for us. I don't know at what point we stopped being leaders and acquiesced to being memorials, it's likely a chicken/egg argument. Probably it was mutual, with the world telling us it we no longer mattered and us accepting it because, hey, at least we got to keep collecting paychecks, and life is easier when no one expects anything of you beyond not harming someone.

Is there another field where you can literally be paid to not do harm?

Throughout History, Clergy of all religions and creeds have been some of the greatest movers and shakers in the world. We have a unique perspective and an ability to bring together disparate peoples in pursuit of a whole bigger than the sum of its parts. If we are going to continue to exist, we should be trying to make our world better.

And if we're just going to be museum pieces, probably better that we did something else actually useful to someone. Like ditch digging.