When A Theology of Authority: Rethinking Leadership in the Church arrived, all other reading was set aside. Having listened to a podcast where Christa McKirland convincingly unpacks the book’s thesis, I was anxious to read her arguments and learn more. Her previous publication, God’s Provision, Humanity’s Need, was an outstanding contribution to theological anthropology, and is highly recommended. I’m still reflecting on implications from it (some remarks here).
My interest in the topic of authority flows out of decades in church culture (good and bad), as well as a 20-year career in the United States Air Force where authority is not only woven into the fabric of military life but something displayed each time we donned the uniform.
Originally I planned to write one post for the entire book. However, I found so many salient points that it became necessary to chunk this out into three posts. Also, I don’t pretend to write a critical or academic review here, but instead feature insights from each chapter that I found helpful. The arguments McKirland develops are far more robust than what I capture here and her book deserves readers’ careful attention. Everyone will learn something new, have much to ponder, while discovering practical help for “rethinking leadership in the local church.”
The Introduction should not be missed. In fact, I would say to miss the Introduction is akin to navigating a forest blindfold only to bump into trees along the way. The big picture really is here and every reader will find it substantial and helpful for charting the territory. The book is framed in three parts with a conclusion that synthesizes her findings.
Chapters 1-3 lay out what I take to be an anatomy of authority utilizing a framework developed by philosopher Richard De George.1 What is authority amongst human relationships and what do we mean by it? Are there different kinds of authority? Is authority always over or is it authority with, for, or to? Is all authority legitimate? What criteria determines legitimate versus illegitimate authority? These chapters make clear that assuming a one-size-fits-all definition for authority hardly captures important nuances for a clear understanding. Each chapter concludes with a helpful table compiling the types of authority unpacked, as well as a sum of the overall argument.
Chapter 1 speaks of executive authority and chapter 2 nonexecutive authority. Here’s how she sums these kinds of authority:
While executive authority includes the power to enforce a consequence and comes in the form of commanding or acting on or for someone, nonexecutive authority includes the power to influence others. Instead of having authority, one is a nonexecutive authority, and this takes two primary forms: being knowledgeable (epistemic) and being an example (exemplary). The ideal response to executive authority is obedience or cooperation, whereas for nonexecutive authority it is belief or imitation. For nonexecutive authority to be legitimate, it cannot be coerced, nor should paternalism and manipulation be used within this kind of authority (p 55, emphasis original),
At this point in the book, McKirland does not unpack the relationship between epistemic and exemplary authority, explaining how the latter derives its perceived legitimacy from the former.2 That is to say, our actions are routinely the result of what we know and understand to be true. For example, in John 13:17 Jesus highlights the interdependent relationship between what we know and what we do. The blessing is in our doing, but the doing emerges from our knowing (see also James 4:17 for a negative example of this relationship). Likewise, the example of our lives (exemplary authority) is almost always grounded in the content of our knowledge (epistemic authority). To the degree that there is alignment between the two, then credibility grows, and the authority of our lives (both kinds) obtains.
After highlighting risks and dangerous consequences when congregants—or worse, pastors—conflate nonexecutive authority with executive authority, chapter 3 introduces a theological angle on authority and power. Letty Russel, Bernard Ramm, and Walter Liefeld are theologians who have written explicitly on authority and power, and McKirland identifies similarities from their findings with those of De George. These similarities serve to further clarify the nature of and source for authority and power, setting the stage for what is to come.
I was struck by one sentence from Bernard Ramm’s writing in his quest to find a proper grounding for authority. McKirland writes, “Ramm grounds true authority in its relation to veracity—truth” (p 66). In context she is caching out the importance of distinguishing a subject’s recognition of authority from the epicenter of authority itself. Authority, for Ramm, emerges from the “Triune God in self-revelation.” Whether or not others recognize God’s authority is secondary to the fact of God being and having authority. This is a critical distinction that is often missed in American evangelicalism (p 66). For example, I could not help but recall a bumper sticker, once popular, that read, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it”3 where the ‘settling’ was understood to mean, it’s true and therefore authoritative. The response I often had to this was, “Is my belief relevant?” After all, if God says something, then necessarily it is true and therefore authoritative, regardless if I, or anyone, believes it. After all, speed limit signs don’t become law when I choose to obey them. Moreover, this sticker assumes God’s speech was taken to mean written Scripture and was often used to defend the absolute authority of Scripture, despite the fact that Scripture itself intimates “there was a period of sacred history when no written authority existed—from Adam to Moses … In other words, divine revelation, and thus divine authority have taken many forms other than the written Scriptures that we hold in our hands today” (pp 66-67). Not a few evangelical Christians would also do well to remember this.4
What’s more, regarding the relationship Ramm draws between authority and truth, it’s important to note that when it comes to male-only leadership I have often quipped that “authority does not live on or in the 23rd chromosome.” Instead, authority is in the truth, so any human who has access to truth has the concomitant authority when they speak truth. Put differently, truth and authority are gender-agnostic. For me, this is intuitively obvious and one of the first principles why I believe men and women are to be viewed as equal partners in the home, the church, and the world. What functionally distinguishes one person from another is giftedness and calling, skills and competence, character and knowledge.
McKirland wraps up chapter 3 by calling out an illegitimate kind of authority that is often seen but far too often overlooked (especially in churches). Charismatic in nature and appealing to the affective side of our humanity, it is de senso authority, appealing to our senses. In some ways I see this as a riff off of what she calls, “symbolic capital” where self-importance is the goal and self-confidence is the means used to prey on the social dynamics of a group. Quoting New Testament scholar Grant Macaskill, symbolic authority is the “currency that we perceive ourselves to have and expect to be recognized by others” (p 72). Especially as people step into titles and roles, a sense of self-importance is nurtured, and this in turn increases their symbolic capital. The status of ordination can be used in this way, just as Mckirland intimates. She rightly observes, “humans do not have a great track record in stewarding increased status, as this often comes with increased power and a decrease in vulnerability and accountability.” Macaskill again .., “the status of leadership itself can constitute an attractive kind of symbolic capital. It is attractive not because it brings us money, but because it brings us importance, and because that sense of importance is ‘self’-affirming” (p 73). I cannot help but recall Greg Ten Elshof’s book, I Told Me So: Self-deception and the Christian Life, in which he tackles this head on. This book should be read by every Christian, leader or lay (my summery here).
Chapters 1-3 helpfully illustrate how assumptions about authority and power are often taken for granted and why it is important to clarify what we mean by authority and power. Along with a very detailed and thorough analysis of authority, McKirland frequently punctuates these chapters with relevance both for church leadership and lay, thus sustaining reader interests for the chapters ahead.
NOTES
- Albeit with substantive and important qualifications throughout the book that include a Spirit-led ecclesial community, which De George’s framework does not consider. ↩︎
- Chapter 7, pp 125ff does address this under the rubric of interpretation and authority. ↩︎
- At the time when I wrote this, I had only completed reading Part 1 and did not know that the opening sentence in chapter 4 was this very line where she uses it in a slightly different way to introduce Part 2. Chapter 7 unpacks this expression even more so. ↩︎
- Pages 77-79 of chapter 4 helpfully address these concerns further. ↩︎