WHAT'S THE GOOD WORD, PREACHER?

"...One of the shaman's jobs was ensuring that solar eclipses would be temporary. Nice work if you can get it." ~Robert Wright, The Evolution of God

It has occurred to me—with a combination of humility, seriousness, and not a little amusement—that I am the village shaman. (Perhaps I should say a village shaman.) The calling of the preacher traces its lineage back into the mists of pre-history, to the emergence of the tribal wise man, the shaman, the witch doctor (from which profession the line evolves and finally divides, leading, on the one branch, to the humble parish pastor and on the other, the medical doctor – who, for some reason, ended up making more money.)

Although in most religious communities the clergy person is charged with the task of passing on the sometimes narrow, dogmatic beliefs of a particular creed, I mean, for the sake of this discussion, to set that aside. I am speaking of the more general sense in which those who are called to lead various “flocks” are looked to as “wise” men or women – the ones who are expected to say something worth listening to regarding how to find meaning in life and a purpose for the living of one’s days, including:  “How do I go on now that my Mildred’s gone?” “Do I have to take that chemo?” and “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

For thousands of years the primary means of receiving this dispensed wisdom has been in a weekly address of between fifteen minutes and an hour or more in length. (We can take today’s standard sermon length and add five minutes for every fifty years going back in time.) My seminary professors would no doubt remind me (and I agree) that a sermon is not about the preacher’s personal philosophy or homey tips for living. (As one of them liked to say, “Remember, preach the good news, not your good views.”) But I’m speaking here of a kind of “folk” understanding of the preacher’s task.

Although one has to be either a megalomaniac or mighty humble to stand up before hundreds of people every week and presume to talk, uninterrupted, for fifteen or twenty minutes about the meaning of life(1), I think there is something to the premise I am putting forward here, both as a description and an expectation of the preacher’s assignment: The average parish pastor plays the role of something like a tribal shaman.(2) When I’m in the pew and not in the pulpit I do expect to get a word to instruct my life in one way or another.

My intention here is neither to ridicule nor to puff up the importance of my profession, but to observe, both from the inside and the outside, that all societies have had and continue to have their shamans. I write at a time when the persuasive power of the church and its preachers is (at least for the time being) waning. I know there are – and always have been – other “wise” ones to whom the community looks. I was going to list some candidates here, but let me ask, instead, who is your shaman? Is it important for someone to play that role in our lives, whether religious or secular? To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age?”

Where, dear reader, do you get the good word?

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Notes:


For many, the word "shaman" is synonymous with "charlatan." For this discussion, however, I mean it in its more objective anthropological sense as "tribal wise person."


1. "In some cultures shamans have struck anthropologists as psychotic, people who may indeed be hearing voices that no one else is hearing…. The Chukchee used to describe someone who felt driven to the shamanistic calling as 'doomed to inspiration.'” –Robert Wright, The Evolution of God

Martin Luther said that “after every sermon the preacher should fall on his knees and ask God to forgive him for what he’s just done”

2. This is one of the reasons that clergy who are charlatans, or who exploit for their own gain or sickness are so devastating: they’re messing with people’s understanding of life itself. Another post for another time.